CHAPTER II
A few days later, Felix Koch came back at an unwonted hour, between dinner and supper, and beckoned his wife to a private conference. Her luminous eyes, as she went, testified to a hope that the mystery enveloped a fur cloak.
Presently Richard was summoned.
“Row about Lothar von Relling,” he explained nonchalantly to Deb afterwards.
“Lothar?”
“Gloomy little beggar with the astonished hair who came here once to tea.Youought to know, Deb. The whole shindy concerns you. What have you been up to?”
She reflected a moment before confession. Prudence prompted the query: “What do they say I’ve been up to?”
Richard chuckled—then became instantly solemn. “This morning, Herr Sanitäts-Rath Oberunterammergau von und zu hellofarau Maximilian Hauffe called upon the honest and respected banker, Felix Koch, to complain that his daughter Frieda-Marie had been slighted and insulted by said daughter’s plighted husband-to-be, Lothar von Relling, who was seen two evenings ago in the darkest portion of the Grünewald—need I go on?”
“N-no,” said Deb, “you needn’t go on with that part of it. Tell me what the Kochs are saying?”
Richard dropped into a creditable imitation of Felix Koch:
“So I say with dignity to Herr Hauffe: ‘Herr Hauffe, tell me only this: is your anger at what has occurred, is it because my guest is a Jewess? because I myself am a Jew? If so, I regret, but I will not move in the matter.’ And he replied, taking off his hat: ‘Herr Koch, let me now assure you that there is no one in this town for whom I have a respect more profound than for yourself; I am a broad-minded man, and had your guest been a Christian lady, which she is not, I should have still been obliged my present course in defence of mydaughter’s honour to pursue.’ At this I started up, and put on my hat, and gave him my hand in friendship, and together we went to Frau von Relling. Ei, but Dorzheim stared to see us arm-in-arm; twenty-seven Catholics alone took off their hats to us——”
“Is there lots more about hats, Richard?”
“No, the rest is mostly about Lothar and you. The whole town is simply ramping. You’re a goose, Deb. ’Tisn’t worth it. Why, he’s only six months older than I am—and a German!”
“Do you supposeIgot any fun out of it?” she flared.
But it was niggardly to grudge something that lay within her power to give. Or wasn’t it?... Chastity—the girl in white armour.... To give so easily, though—she remembered Doctor Steele. And the gloomy little boy had thirsted for that one kiss; too inarticulate to ask for it; too comic, in his owl’s spectacles and low collar and vertical crest of hair, to make a silently romantic plea, he just sat on the pile of logs looking up at her in dazed sickly reverie, as she came towards him along the misty blue road that meandered among the fir trees behind the town. She understood that by lightly dropping her lips on to his, there, in that scene, at that hour, she could give him an exquisite moment to carry through the sentimental years into manhood. Why not, then? The girl who withholds such chance gifts in her power, for the sake of what was called her bloom, what was she, after all, but a miser?
Deb’s kiss was just an impulse of almsgiving. She did not shatter the boy’s ecstasy by speech. Hardly pausing in her walk, she bent ... he had a vision of her serious mouth and warmly glowing eyes ... and she went swiftly on.
Frau Huldah von Sittart, who witnessed the idyll and reported on it, could not have been expected to interpret its psychology correctly. But to Richard, Deb tried to explain.... It was intolerable that he should suppose she enjoyed kissing scrubby little schoolboys.
He listened, brows knitted severely: “But, my dear kid, that sort of philanthropy is rather dangerous, isn’t it, where men in general are concerned?”
“It’s just whether one is to be generous or stingy—oh, don’t you see? ... to give what matters so little to me, and so tremendously much to them——”
“Make a habit of it, you’ll end by giving what means so much to you and so precious little to them.”
Richard’s wisdom was a mere accident of repartee; and Deb did not smile; she very rarely smiled; but her voice at all times held a certain clear joyousness that was in startling contrast to her tired little face; her voice was a child, years younger than her lips or her eyes. So that Richard could only dimly suspect her of hidden laughter as she said: “I esteem your judgment, but—you’re rather precocious, aren’t you?”
“Good Lord, no!” he shouted, appalled. “I’m sensible. You can’t walk about dropping kisses.”
“Dropping magic,” she corrected him gravely. “And if I’m not the poorer, and am quite sure they will be the richer....” She tilted her head defiantly: “Richard, I’d rather be royal than—good!”
Richard pondered a moment over this. His sister watched him with eyes that were half sorrowful, half impudent. Most people would have been astonished that she could confide such feminine subtleties in a brother eight years her junior. But she had never yet been disappointed by a rebuff from Richard that was sheer scoffing schoolboy and no more. He possessed certain qualities she lacked, of uncompromising fairness and sanity. Also, he was shock-proof; an imperturbable Mahomet to whom all mountains came, and were received in a take-it-for-granted spirit.
Sometimes Deb wondered just where, in all this mass of solidity, lay buried that mysterious streak of understanding—kinship, perhaps—on which she relied.
Now he said: “Well, I wouldn’t practise your theory of magic-dropping in Dorzheim, if I were you. ’Tisn’t the right place for it. Too many Germans about. Germans take things seriously.”
Richard was right. Dorzheim did take this act of Deb’s with great and exceeding seriousness. They had primarily consulted Richard, and begged him to reprimand his sister, in the Teuton spirit that the male, in all emergencies, takes precedence.
The pastor and the schoolmaster and Frau von Relling and Herr Sanitäts-Rath Hauffe and Huldah van Sittart and Felix Koch paid one another a succession of formal calls. Then suddenly Frau von Relling called no more upon the Kochs ... and small wonder, since Frieda-Marie Hauffe had been promised an exceptionally large dowry, and it was sheermadness for Lothar to have imperilled this. True, Wanda von Relling still came to Marianna’s At Home day; but this was merely an act of defiance towards old Frau Koch (not on speaking terms with Marianna) who had condoled with Frau von Relling (not on speaking terms with Wanda) on her affliction for which the younger Koch household was responsible. And anyhow, all Dorzheim knew that Wanda had tried to get Sigismund Koch and had failed; so naturally and out of spite, she would choose to continue visiting at the house of Felix (not on speaking terms with Sigismund).... But all this led back to ancient history; and Dorzheim, flushed and garrulous, was not to be diverted from the delicious new scandal of the daughter of Herr Sanitäts-Rath Hauffe insulted through the medium of the English girl staying with the Felix Kochs. Well, and had she not flirted with Ralph van Sittart as well? Half Dorzheim had seen her do it. The other half of Dorzheim had noticed her drinking coffee with Sigismund Koch; yes, actually setting her cap at him, the buck of the town, the famous rake—Ach! and did Felix know?... “And what was she doing walking alone in the woods at that hour of evening?” demanded Frau Huldah with relish: “Do modest maidens walk without escort? Though to be sure I have heard her say she is already twenty-three; doubtless she is in fear she will be left sitting.” “And Lothar von Relling is a Protestant; has been confirmed only half a year ago, with my Karl; that comes of it, then, when one permits oneself to be intimate with a Jewish family; I could have told Frau von Relling....”
The scandal threatened to broaden into religious controversy.
And Frieda-Marie, poor wormling, was, ach, inconsolable! Hitherto in Dorzheim a betrothal was sacred. Others of our sons may follow Lothar von Relling’s example of insubordination. To prevent which calamity, Lothar was first expelled from the Gymnasium; then locked into his bedroom; visited alternately by the pastor and the schoolmaster; finally, banished to an aunt and uncle in Dresden. Lothar went, darkly uplifted in his martyrdom; thrilling to a certain deathless memory; but wishing, nevertheless, that before going he might have had a word or two with Frieda-Marie, of whom he was very fond, and who was after all his betrothed....
Still without a smile, Dorzheim settled down to see what Deb would do.
Deb did quite a lot. She was heady with her first draught of conspicuous unpopularity. Vivid and defiant and a little frightened too. Never before had she found herself so the centre of animated disapproval. And as none of those who disapproved were of the people who mattered to her, she was not hurt, nor cast down, but merely possessed by the mischievous wish to do her worst on the propriety of Dorzheim; to avenge their harsh dealings with inoffensive little Lothar von Relling; to yield them more and more material for spiteful gossip. In brief, to earn their condemnation—these folk, who would not, could not, laugh.
She had plenty of social opportunity for exploiting her histrionic demon. For whatever Dorzheim’s private opinion of Deb, etiquette decreed that Frau Koch’s guest should be shown “attention,” should be feted and entertained. Dorzheim did its duty by Deb, and so considered itself free to censure her. She was invited to attend numerous afternoon coffee-parties, and one big dinner-party at which lawyers and doctors and their wives formed the majority, and Felix Koch was the only banker, as he gleefully informed Deb. She learnt then for the first time the exact ladder of snobbery, of which the apex is the nobility; thence on a descending scale to the military—the professionals—bankers—merchants—clergy and schoolmasters—everybody heedful of their head among the feet on the rung above; everybody ignoring the humbler position of their own feet. Jews had their own parallel ladder of snobbery; and actors and artists were not properly considered on any ladder at all.
The great event of her stay was a Masonic entertainment, where she was conspicuous in her dead-black crêpe-de-chine evening-dress. “An unmarried girl in black—Gott in Himmel! And brunette too; had she been a blonde, one might have forgiven her, though even then——” Most of the other ladies wore afternoon toilet; and a few were in tartan blouses with the neck ripped out, and dark skirts. At this party Deb made the acquaintance of the owner of the largest jewel factory in Dorzheim; who the next day formally conducted her over the premises; into the cavernous underground workshops; dimness speckled by small shaded red lights; at each separate table a man in tinted blinkers intent on a heap of precious stones that he would sift carelessly through his huge hairy fingers, before selecting one for his mysterious tools. Noneof these men looked up as their employer and his party passed among them. Deb felt the sunless air choked up with hatred and menace; the whirring of the thousand little machines oppressed her; it was an evil place—and she remembered Koch’s allusion to the Socialist influence and possible trouble....
Home-life did not exist for the Kochs; every evening, when no set form of entertainment was offered, Felix and Marianna, Deb and Richard, sat in the big restaurant in Lindenstrasse; sat there for two or three hours, drinking coffee or syrups, eating sweet cloying cakes; while the men roared their politics or slammed the domino-cubes on the table, and slowly obliterated their womenfolk in clouds of foul smoke. The group about the Kochs was always a large one, and included the younger brothers who had been hastily sent for from neighbouring towns on rumour of Deb’s enormous dowry. Deb was herself responsible for this rumour. It was one of her first acts of devilry. Actually it procured her three proposals ... her excited fancy multiplied these to a grotesque figure out of all proportion to the truth. The trio of smug-correct young men, overwhelming her with staccato bows and wired nosegays and compliments which an intelligent child of ten might have disdained, made their offers of marriage almost simultaneously, and were all three accepted, with meek surprise that they should care for aportionlessdamsel ... at which they melted to the limpness of three candles left in a strong sun, and melted out of Deb’s sight, and melted away from Dorzheim. And two of them, because they had begun to love her, kept silence as to the reason for their withdrawal. But Ludo Salzmann wrote vindictively to the sister-in-law who had summoned him. And Deb, compelled in self-respect to commit one villainy the more, accepted Sigismund Koch’s invitation to drink tea with him in his rooms ... “English fashion—yes, I have dwelt some time in England.”
He had been accidentally introduced to her at the Lodge entertainment. And afterwards Felix remarked wrathfully, and hardly in the spirit of Masonic or natural brotherhood: “You are not to speak to that fine fellow. You understand? Not with my consent. Hundert-tausendteufel!—and what did you think of him?”
“He’s very handsome,” demurely.
“Ach, he is a scoundrel! And do you know what they call him in the town, with his brown curly beard and pale face?They call him Jesus Christus. That’s a joke, you see.” Felix laughed uproariously, and Richard asked: “Why is it a joke, sir?” “But can’t you see? He, my brother, is aJew... and they call him Jesus Christus!” “But Jesus Christwasa Jew,” argued Richard stolidly. Koch stared at him. The English had no sense of humour. He turned the conversation from wit to politics: “What in your opinion are the present aims of Mister Usskeess?” But Richard was unable to fit the name to any English statesman of his knowledge, so did not take up the challenge.
With all his reputation of a fascinating rake, Sigismund behaved at his tea-party with exemplary decorum. Moreover, he had invited his mother to be present. Deb liked him better than any one she had met since her arrival in Germany.
“What are you doing in Dorzheim, for goodness’ sake, child?” This query he put when he was escorting her home.
Deb laughed. “I wish I knew. I ran away from a scrape——”
“To find yourself in worse scrapes here?”
“You’ve ... heard something about me?”
His eyes twinkled. “Tongues wag in Dorzheim.”
“May—may I come to you about it ... if things get bad?” For in spite of bravado, she was becoming apprehensive of the sly malice ever more apparent in Marianna’s conversation; of the enmity piling up against her; and of a vague, more impersonal enmity which, strangely, seemed to loom behind.
“Heaven protect me—and you too!” exclaimed Sigismund in mock horror. “And you suppose Dorzheim would regard me, me of all people, as a suitable confessor for your sins?”
It was evident that Sigismund prided himself on his reputation as a “dangerous man.”
“Where have you been this afternoon?” demanded Felix.
“To your brother’s flat. It’s—it’s—a very pretty flat, isn’t it?”
The banker grew livid. “I tell you, Fräulein Deb, he is trying to marry you for your money.”
“He did not try anything of the sort!” indignantly. “And I have no money. And your Frau Mama was there.”
“That was an arranged insult to me,” Marianna declared.
Marianna was enraged because her well-planned intentions with regard to her husband and Deb had miscarried. Yet more enraged, because they had not quite miscarried. Moreover,Sigismund happened to be the unknown rival whom Felix suspected in the background. If this does not accord with his care in providing an adequate chaperone for the little English rebel who so indiscreetly accepted an invitation to his rooms, let it be remembered that there is no element with whom the true rake deals more circumspectly than with girlhood ... until he reaches the age when chastity becomes desirable instead of formidable.
Marianna was further enraged because Felix had said he could not afford visitorsandfur cloaks. The von Rellings had ceased to call. And now Deb was drinking tea with her mother-in-law—and not even bothering to lie about it.
And yet, when Richard proposed abruptly, at supper, that they ought to be thinking of departure, both his host and hostess were unable to stem themselves in mechanical utterance of their habitual code of protest and renewed hospitality: “But certainly you must not dream of leaving us yet—we shall not allow it—you have been with us so little time—it is such a pleasure. No, no, indeed you must not go....”
The next day, most of the workmen in the factories went on strike. Those who refused were attacked as blacklegs. The quaint, sunshiny streets were hideous with brawling. And Deb could no longer with safety be allowed to take her solitary walks, which were the only relief from the strain of Marianna’s perpetual smiling hatred.
By degrees, her feverish mood of excitement evaporated entirely. She began to dread stumbling over the traces of her own joyous misdemeanour. Was there no careless youth in this tight, compressed little city of envious wranglings and complicated feuds and bitter snobbery? It struck her with a shock that Dorzheim seemed to contain no element between subdued childhood and ambitious or self-satisfied matrimony.
Something ominous was afoot; she was no longer the centre of interest; men came and went on short journeys; men held whispered conferences, excluding their womenfolk. Deb felt ever more urgently the need for departure. But she was waiting for a letter from her family to say when they intended leaving Switzerland; and if she and Richard were to rejointhem at Montreux, or at home in England. The letter was delayed; morning after morning she expected it, and it did not come. It ought to have contained money for the journey....
Dorzheim was no longer a funny little German town, inhabited mainly by caricatures. It was a place of horror.... She was wakeful at nights; and musing at her window, she saw, or thought she saw, long phantom trains glide without shriek or rumble over the railway-lines some half-mile distant. Black shapes of trains, no single window lit ... all night they were creeping past in the darkness ... and the next night ... and the next ... every time she rose from her bed to look again....
“Deb, you know Austria declared war on Servia the other day?”
“Yes. Well?”
“Seen the papers lately?”
“German papers!” scornfully; good enough for Germans, of course, but——
“Russia has joined Servia, and Germany has declared war on Russia, and—we’reinGermany. They say that France will have to join up with Russia, and perhaps England with France. Then there’s Holland and Belgium ... doubtful if they can keep out....”
With a sound like the rush of bursting waters, Deb’s nightmare ceased to be her private affair.... Bursting waters ... yes, a piece of music—Ravel, was it? She had heard it before she left London—the Sorcerer’s ignorant apprentice left alone with the magic broom ... trickle of water that he summoned up ... torrents of water ... multiplying devouring water ... it swamped the room and the corners of the room and the street outside and the world beyond ... gleeful swirls of water, unrelenting, irresistible, that pursued and flooded every inch of dry ... every inch of dry ... the music roared deafeningly in her head, drowning coherent thought.... Somebody had touched the broom....
She told Richard about the fantastic procession of trains.
“Troops, of course. Being hurried to the frontier. Theymust have quenched all the lights. Didn’t want us to know they were prepared.”
“Us? You and me?”
“England, you ass!” Richard grinned at the idea of a nation plunged in darkness for the benefit of himself and Deb. Deb—umph! he hunched his shoulders, and stared at her moodily. He was responsible for Deb’s safety.
“You wouldn’t care to marry somebody here and settle down, I suppose? It might come cheaper than hauling you along to England. It would be sport getting through if I were alone....”
“I’m sorry. No, I’d rather not settle in Dorzheim for good. But we could go home by two separate routes.”
“Job enough to find one route, I should say. Stop ragging, Deb; this isn’t a joke.”
“I’m sorry,” she murmured again, all womanhood abject before the gruff commonsense of all manhood.
“That idiot Koch ought to have warned us. He must have known something. We should have left here a week ago, when I suggested it.... If it’s going to be a general flare-up, then one jolly well wants to be in one’s own country, and not in somebody else’s!”