CHAPTER III
Patriotism, even more than bunting-deep, is largely a matter of habit. Before August, nineteen-fourteen, Richard had rather taken his country for granted. Now he awoke to an England that in return for years of security and a lazy pleasure at the sight of so many red patches on the school-map, suddenly exacted service—fighting service. Richard cursed his age; welcomed any indication in the trend of things “out there” that seemed to prophesy a minimum of three years’ activities. “If only the war holds out till I can get to it!” He suffered from disturbing premonitions of a peace signed and ratified just one day before his eighteenth birthday.
War, as a pastime, a profession, an emotional outlet, fulfilled every unspoken need of his temperament. He was a born pugilist; he did not mind bodily discomfort; he was endowed with splendid physique; he kept cool in emergencies; he had an infinite preference for male society; he was under a firm impression that he was devoid of that cumbersome burden called imagination; he lacked graceful accomplishments. What did the future hold for a boy of such capacities and disqualifications? Nineteen-fourteen came like an answer to an obstinate riddle.
And—confound it!—he was not yet sixteen.
Winborough had its Cadet Corps, which was a slight compensation for the utter meaningless absurdity of Latin and Greek—dead studies in a time of live history. At least, one was preparing for a later share in the conflict. The ethics of war and peace did not bother him. War suited him, as a definite opportunity for concerted action; whereas peace appeared a condition infinitely more difficult, more scattered and involved and hesitant. Richard approved of the indubitable simplicity of a nation at war: every mind thinking alike; every effort directed towards the same end; loyalty accepted as a predominant emotion, without need to fuss overlesser problems of one’s personal age. He was animated as yet by no special rancour towards the Germans.... Poor old Grandfather was a German; rotten for him, these days! Pater was naturalized, so he was all right (the yellow press was not circulated at Winborough).... The natural conditions of war demanded an enemy, and the Germans would do as well as anyone else; better, in fact; for they were powerful and well-prepared, so that there was an excellent chance that hostilities would last till Richard was eighteen——
He always came back to that.
The Dunnes were both in the navy; Greville, just about to join the Grand Fleet on H.M.S. “Canada”; young Frank, still at Osborne. Richard spent this Christmas of Greville’s final leave at Mrs Dunne’s jolly, crowded cottage in Essex, on the outskirts of a little country town that was just about the same size as Dorzheim.... He amused the Dunnes exceedingly by his accounts of that place, and of his headlong scramble home with Deb. It was something of an exploit to have been caught in enemy territory on the eve of war: “If we had started for home two days later, we shouldn’t have started at all; they’d have kept us there for weeks, probably, and then goose-stepped us over the frontier under strict official supervision.”
“Deb, not you,” Greville corrected. “I knew a chap of our age who was at Dresden at the time, and they’ve interned him over there.”
“Lord, not really! That would have been a swizzle, missing all the fun, tucked away with a lot of rotten Germans——”
“They’d be English, you ass, in a German internment camp.”
“M’yes, so they would. Still, one would be horribly out of it all; not that Winborough’s much better”—reverting to the old grievance—“I wish I’d plumped for the navy when you did.”
Mrs Dunne smiled rather wistfully. “I wonder if your father shares that wish of yours, Richard.”
“Dunno. Shan’t see him till Easter, I expect. I was glad to be away these hols. out of all the fuss of moving. We’ve let our house, you know.”
“You must have cheered when you got your hoof in England again,” Greville remarked, reverting to the journey from Dorzheim.
But instead of the “You bet!” one might have expected, Richard was silent.... He was still shy of remembering the rush of sentiment which had attacked him on arrival at Folkestone that second of August, after three chaotic days and nights through a continent that was screaming mad with war.... God bless these stolid English porters—these English engines that knew reliably whither they were bearing the train—this decent Sunday evening quiet everywhere.... Richard dug his hands in his pockets and snapped his lips firmly as he strode up the gangway of the boat; he was neither lunatic nor poet, to shout aloud the pæan: “England, my England!” that was tightening his throat and thrumming in his heart ... but he had vowed, nevertheless, as he stepped on shore, that he would prove to the utmost stretch of his powers a good citizen, a loyal patriot. He was definitely grateful to his country at this moment for its mere existence.
The emotion had died to a vague shame at having made an exhibition of himself, even with himself as the only witness. Yet now, as he bent forward to turn the chestnuts roasting over the fire, and tossed a burnt one on to the lap of Molly Dunne, Greville’s flapper cousin, he experienced the kind of satisfaction with his surroundings which can best be translated into a heartfelt grunt. They were the conventionally right sort of people: Mrs Dunne, frail and pleasant; the two boys in their blue and gold uniforms; Molly, tanned brown as her own tangle of hair—an ugly kid, but good sport. A rough little terrier lay on the hearthrug; everybody’s skates, caked from recent use, sprawled all over the shabby chintz furniture; and the big holly-twined portrait of the late Commander Dunne domineered the room from above the mantelpiece. Jolly things strewn about, too; the model of a Chinese junk; bits of queer distorted coral and stone and shell; fantastic weapons slung on the walls; photographs of battleships and their crews—all these evidences of a sailor family, and far lands, without in the least influencing the typically English atmosphere of the room. If the Dunnes had settled in Japan or Bulawayo, their apartments would still have been as—Dunne-ish. These curios—they were just curios, neither more nor less; and as such, were given their proper place.
Queer, reflected Richard, that before the spasm of homesick misery which had thrust at him on a certain evening in the streets of Dorzheim, he had never been consciously aware,as at present, of a state of well-being. He supposed the contrast had for good or for evil awakened him; and questioned glumly whether it were altogether convenient to be at the mercy of perceptions as sharpened and sensitive.
If this were Dorzheim, then the chestnuts would be gingerbread; Greville and Molly would be “betrothed” by arrangement of their elders; and Richard would be proudly noting the fact that he was the one Jew with whom the Dunnes had “traffic....”
Thank goodness, in England you could be a Jew, and hardly even know it....
Jews ... but the Marcus children were yearly allowed to hunt for hidden Easter eggs in their garden. Dorothea, Ferdinand’s wife, had been the mildest of Protestants, as he was the most tolerant of Israelites; and there were times when bacon and matsas had appeared simultaneously upon their table, not from any unadjusted clash of orthodoxy, but merely that Ferdinand insisted on the British national breakfast, and Dorothea had an eccentric liking for unleavened bread when it was “in season.” Richard and Deb never learnt any Hebrew, till the approach of the boy’s “Barmitzfa” rendered necessary in his case a certain knowledge of the language, easily forgotten. The occasion itself struck him as mainly remarkable for the amount of presents he received. Deb considered it distinctly unfair that boys should be able to put in such a profitable extra birthday; she tried to get quits in hard value, by accepting as often as offered the post of bridesmaid, whether in church or in synagogue. Both religious ceremonies made an equally profound impression upon her—for an hour. The Marcuses did not keep up the Jewish feast-days and holidays, and consequently the younger generation were rather hazy as to their origin and significance. Ferdinand made a half-hearted effort to keep them reminded of the most important of these, so that they should not give offence to such of their friends and relatives as were strict in observance, by a blank stare of ignorance on receiving salutation: “Muzzeltoff!” They wished each other a Happy New Year quite impartially in the autumn and on the first ofJanuary; and Christmas was a jovial mingling of whatever customs were pleasantest of diverse creeds and countries.
Dorothea and Ferdinand had agreed that whatever children might be born to them, should make their own choice of religion, or no religion, when they were old enough. Themselves had endured much from despotic parents, and were eagerly and insistently broad-minded in their educational intentions.
Old Hermann Marcus had sent his son to England on business when the lad was barely twenty—a shy, plump, sweet-faced little fellow, with bright brown eyes round with admiration for England and England’s ways. Peremptorily recalled to Bavaria after two years of Paradise, he summoned all his courage, and—from a safe distance—defied the tyrant ... somewhat tempering the grand effect of his rebellion by a diplomatic postscript pointing out that in London he could be of more service to the firm than in Munich; was rapidly gathering custom; and hoped in a few years to be able to marry. His father replied tersely that he was a thickhead, had always been a thickhead, would always be a thickhead, and was therefore admirably adapted by nature to settle down in a nation of thickheads—“but in that case, you will at once sever connection with my business.” Ferdinand dutifully trotted back to Germany; spent several wretched months in vain longings for his adopted country; and finally, not being of that stuff of which heroes are made, sneaked back to his Hampstead boarding-house, his tennis, his Sunday river-parties, and mysterious November fogs, leaving his sister Stella to break the news to old Marcus. The latter promptly cut his son out of his will. Ferdinand perseveringly worked himself up to a sufficiently good position on the Stock Exchange to be able, at the age of twenty-seven, to rescue Dorothea Ladislov from an uncongenial home, and marry her romantically at the registrar’s. The pretty, black-haired girl was the daughter of an aristocratic Czech family, which had settled in England before she was born. She and Ferdinand had fallen in love over their compared experiences of early years heavy and burdensome with must-nots. Deb, directly she appeared on the scene, flitted like a will-o’-the-wisp through dream-acres of sunshiny freedom planned for her by her parents, entirely from contrast with their own rigidly enclosed childhood. Not all the present bliss in the world could quite compensate forthose best lost years. Deb should live carelessly radiant from the very beginning—“Not spoilt, Ferdie; that’s different and hateful. She must learn reasonable manners and control; obedience even. Only there needn’t be so very much to obey. And as soon as she can think for herself——”
“She shall dance to her own melodies. Ja, ja, it will be pleasant to have a happy little daughter, not checked, not afraid. And we must learn not to be shocked at her, as we grow older. She shall know that we trust her. Indeed, yes, it will be all right. When one is happy, one is also good. Our parents never understood that.”
“It will be all right,” echoed Dorothea, her dark eyes tender and luminous. “And we won’t grumble, or ask questions, will we? Papa was always grumbling, and Mama asked so many questions.... Ferdie, it would be terrible if we should forget, and wake up one morning to find we were only ordinary parents.”
She gave a little gasp of horror. Her husband took her face between his hands and kissed it....
They made quite a pretty hobby out of extraordinary parenthood.
Then, as if to remind them that the other species still existed, when Deb was a wilful little creature of seven, came an imperious summons from Ferdinand’s father, who most inopportunely had decided to forgive them. The old thraldom held; they had no option but meekly to submit to forgiveness. This necessitated a journey to Bavaria—a long stay in Munich. Stella was so glad of them, so glad of this young, laughing sister-in-law in the house. But Marcus defied all tradition of stern grandfathers by refusing to succumb instantly to the pretty fearless ways of his first grandchild; in fact, he disapproved so completely of Deb, her looks, her English education, her unrebuked chatter, her clothes, her nurse, her loose shower of black hair, of everything that was Deb’s, that she was kept as much as possible out of his way. Sweet-natured and subservient in all else, Ferdinand was implacable on the one point: the old autocrat should not interfere with the happiness of one more girl-child. Already he had doomed Stella to spinsterhood; he forbade young men inside the house, and forbade Stella outside the house. One conventional marriage arrangement he had made for her with the parents of a sufficiently wealthy suitor, who, however, turned from Stellato a larger dowry. No father could be expected to do more in the way of duty. An arrangement which Stella had the temerity to make for herself, he countered by the simple Teutonic method of locking her up, and shouting at her till she was tired....
For Ferdinand, he had gained a slight respect. The boy had at least managed to win some sort of commercial foothold. “What do you reckon to make per annum, wass?” “About six hundred to a thousand.” Marcus was distinctly impressed: “Ach! as little as that?” Ferdinand enquired after the old firm. “The profits are excellent, sir; increasing yearly. Bah, did you think we should go to pieces because you left us?” sarcastically.
The arrogant old merchant was lying. At Dorothea’s death he was thankful for an excuse to let Stella go to England and take over the charge of her brother’s household; thankful for an excuse to cut down expenses ... the business was rapidly running downhill. He warded off bankruptcy for another eleven years—then came the irrevocable crash. Ferdinand, who could not rid himself of the filial habit, immediately wrote and offered his father a home with them. So Hermann Marcus, at the age of seventy-seven, came to England, to “Daisybanks,” in Lansdowne Terrace. He found himself instantly relegated to a very comfortable back-seat among his children and grandchildren. Ferdie, though still timid in actual converse with his father, yet proved stubbornly master in his own house; and Stella had developed a brisk liveliness which was a true source of grief to her father. The two now treated his attempts to bully them, with a semi-humorous tolerance which the puzzled despot could only ascribe to his loss of income—“Of course, if I were swollen with money,”—with grim common-sense he resigned himself to dependence and rheumatism; it comforted him to suppose his loss of authority was due to material and not to moral causes.
As for the third generation, he continued to disapprove of Deb, but liked Richard infinitely better. “You’ve no eyes for anyone but the girl,” he would growl at Ferdinand. “To my two children I dispensed equal affection.” Ferdinand smiled.... When he smiled he more than ever resembled a cheerful little troll, his small ripe face a web of intersecting spidery wrinkles. It was true that Deb was his darling whocould do no wrong; it was for Deb that he and Dorothea had built up so many defiant immature plans—beautiful plans. Dorothea had died for Richard’s life ... she would have loved the boy best, if she had lived; Ferdie guessed it, and conscientiously tried to supply a double quantity of favouritism. But Richard was undemonstrative; had started the schoolboy attitude even while his nurse was hopefully striving against odds to turn him into a pretty dear, a Fauntleroy. At three years old, his voice was gruff, his knees scraped, his manner properly off-hand, his tastes independent; he called ladies and gentlemen by their surnames, without prefix, when they bent to caress “dear little Dickie.” It was disconcerting to Ferdie’s kindly-disposed partners, misled by the white suit and deep lace collar, to find heavy brows bent upon them, while they were boomingly hailed as “Nash” and “Rothenburg.” Aunt Stella, wisely accepting the inevitable, bought her nephew a couple of rough navy-blue jerseys, a pair of sturdy boots, and a Newmarket overcoat; Nurse lamented that this latter article was not in white bunny-fur—“Master Dickie looks such a darling in white.” “He looks something between a burglar and a prize-fighter in anything; for the future, Nurse, he had better be known only as Richard.” “Oh, Madam, he’s but a baby yet!” Richard overheard, and: “I’m but a baby yet,” he pleaded with dignity the next time his father attempted to administer mild but well-deserved chastisement. From sheer astonishment, Ferdie let him off.
And after that, he seemed to be always at school, or “knocking round with other chaps.” He fell into frequent scrapes, and usually managed to fall out of them again without extraneous assistance. He stolidly kept a place in class a little above half-way, without spurts or lapses. His philosophy was eminently suited to practical needs; he kept his ugliness well brushed and tubbed and free from eccentricity, and his slow white grin had a bewildering fascination.
“Our young Richard, my dear,” commented Aunt Stella to Deb, “reminds me of the best quality of almond rock; you take it home, and prepare for a treat, and then you find the sweetshop girl has forgotten to break it up for you.” She spoke English perfectly, but with foreign vivacity and a strong foreign accent. “Richard has never been broken up; he is unwieldy; he cannot be put in the mouth.”
“But heisof the best quality,” Deb quickly defended him; and was silent for a moment, thinking about Richard. She adored the boy; was content to know that she came first with him, though he rarely saw her, and still more rarely spoke to her except in the ordinary way of younger-brother teasing.
“Aunt Stella, Richard isn’t so stodgy as he likes to think he is,” she said suddenly. “Do you know, twice I’ve seen him nearly hysterical.”
“My child, you’re dreaming.”
“I’m not. Once was because a wasp was circling over his plate, and wouldn’t go away. And the other time was over a book.”
“Dear me, what book?”
But Deb was sorry now she had spoken so impulsively. Stella Marcus had a disconcerting way of making every subject seem as a hollow ball with a tinkle inside, to be lightly tossed, twice, thrice, and then let fall ... to roll away.
“What book?”
“‘A Tale of Two Cities.’”
“Oh, every little boy cries over that.”
Deb had lied. It was not “The Tale of Two Cities,” but an account of the Dreyfus case.
This first war Christmas of nineteen-fourteen, the Marcuses moved out of their house in Lansdowne Terrace. The Stock Exchange was one of the definite places where a man of German extraction could be made to feel uncomfortable; very uncomfortable. Ferdinand Marcus did not complain of the cold-shouldering he received. “It’s natural, Stella; every time I open my mouth they are bound to be reminded.” But then some arbitrary stockbroker accused him publicly of being a spy and a traitor ... and Marcus quickly resigned his partnership in the firm of Nash, Rothenburg and Marcus; and withdrew to live as best he might on his income. The little man was hurt and sorrowful; he loved England passionately—he had renounced Germany and chosen England from motives of pure love. Not all the sons of Germany are as violently attached to the Fatherland as the Fatherland would like to make out. Some among them have resented the prison-wall system, the prevalent aggressive despotism that crushes out their human ways and wishes. So they had come to England, and had found a difference, and had stayed.... “Especially we Jews find the difference,” Ferdinand explainedto his sister, when he told her what had occurred on the Exchange. “They don’t realize, over here, how the Jews are still treated in Germany. And so they won’t believe that our loyalty to a country adopted is not hypocrisy, and that we can be truly glad if England wins the war. Stella, I wish they would believe it; I wish they would.” His lips trembled with the pathos of a child who has received an unmerited snubbing. “What ho! who cares?” he cried jerkily. Ferdie took pride in his collection of English slang; a pride which dated back to his enforced return to Germany, thirty-two years ago, with a few typical samples of the period. Stella remembered how he had kept up his forlorn spirits by use of such defiant oddments as “By Jingo,” “Here we are again,” “It’s all my eye and Betty Martin,”—“What’s that?” thundered his father, overhearing. Ferdie, blushing crimson, tried to explain that Betty Martin was the name of a lady—and—and the rest was idiom. “You will hold your mouth,” came the irritable edict....
Now—“What ho! who cares?” But he was miserable at the necessity for leaving his home. He was at that ripe pippin stage of the late forties when comfort, sentiment, and beaming good-humour make a happy blend of man. His voice had loudened to a hearty geniality. When he sat in a chair, he expanded and filled it out. On the anniversaries of Dorothea’s death and of their wedding-day, he did not go to business, but put white flowers under her portrait, and sobbed tenderly and unashamedly over the memories aroused. He liked standing with his carving-knife at the head of his own table, with a well-roasted joint in front of him. He liked Christmas carols, and happy faces, and giving presents to his family, and surprises, and Deb’s arms round his neck while she pleaded for some special treat; and songs with a bloom of mellow sadness over them; and a tame landscape with a sort of chubby frolic to it—cottage-children or lambs in the sunshine; and well-worn slippers, and moonlight. If he had continued to live in South Germany, he would no doubt have liked Schumann and beer, and the Lorelei and charcoal-burners and Grimms’ Fairy-tales. Perhaps these tastes still lingered on, unsuspected, in his system, subservient to a solemn love for the river Thames; he had given his heart to the Thames while he was still a stripling, and no Rhine-memories could alter the preference. Richard certainly should go to Oxford;Ferdie looked forward to visiting him there; to some mysterious festivity entitled Commem.
Above all, perhaps, he loved the sight of lovers. Lovers such as he and Dorothea had been: compounded of joy without ecstasy; sadness without anguish; youthful, blushing lovers who held hands, and could be teased and blessed.... And later—“the bride was given away by her father.”... And later still: “—of a girl” ... who would soon learn to blow on his watch and crow when it flew open.
For of course he was thinking of Deb.
No parental coercion in her case; no prudent selection by her elders. To that he was pledged; had not he and Dorothea planned that Deb should seek out her own true mate in her own good time, and bring him home?
And bring him home.... But home was “Daisybanks,” Lansdowne Terrace. Ferdie’s pleasures were not of the scattered order, but had associated themselves very closely with just that click to the gate, announcing his home-coming every evening; just that virginia creeper, matting one side of the house in red; and just that half-acre of garden at the back, where the sweet-william and the canterbury bells repaid so gratefully his careful watering every summer evening, though the hose still leaked at that one faulty portion of rubber tubing.
“We shall have to tell them about that leak, Stella,” was all he found courage to say, when his sister informed him that she had already found a tenant to take over their expiring lease, and to buy the furniture.
Stella was the practical person of the family. Stella had beautiful white teeth, and a shrill excitable voice. Because she rattled on incessantly, she was regarded by her contemporaries as a wit; and her popular entrance into a room was usually hailed uproariously, as though the assembled company had been awaiting its jester. Her secret horror was to be regarded as the traditional narrow-minded and intolerant old maid; and to avert this she harped facetiously on the topic. She owned a unique collection of the sort of cayenne “good tale” which can always be relied upon to raise at least one blush and one protest; and so by repartee and impromptu, she managed to achieve anenfant terriblereputation, of which she was as vain as younger girls of their conquests. Men called her “a sport,” and would often drop into a chair byher side, with the latest chuckle fromTown Topicsor thePink ’Un—“Nothing shocks Stella Marcus, you know!” ... and certainly, as far as anything verbal was concerned, Stella fancied herself well in the van of the New Movement. But she did not realize that lip-service was no longer vassal to emancipation; and that: “Do shocking things, not say them all day long,” was the up-to-date rendering of Kingsley’s advice; did not realize, in fact, that for all her breathless determination, she was not quite able to catch up with Deb’s generation.
Deb! ... of necessity she could not stand for a cipher in Stella’s emotions; was bound to arouse love or hatred ... perhaps the conflict was not yet finally decided. For Deb was not only the daughter she might have borne—if Hermann Marcus had not interposed his bulky will between Stella and Stella’s destiny, but also the girl she might have been—again if Hermann had taken the same views of fatherhood as Ferdie. Out of the non-fulfilment of Stella’s existence had arisen Deb’s present Paradise of liberty; Stella herself perceived that: herself the ashes and Deb the gaily-plumaged phœnix. Ferdie, as a father, needed the tragic example afforded him by his elder sister unmarried—for marriage, when it is obviously a vocation squandered, is as true tragedy as the squandering of some great gift. Stella by nature had been just such a girl as Deb was now.... And she did not hate Deb, nor use her authority to baulk the girl where herself had been baulked. To her credit, she took instead a fierce, yet half-amused pride in flaunting Deb’s emancipation from control, before the grimly disapproving glare of Deb’s grandfather; it was revenge by proxy.... “You prevented me from acting thus—and thus—and thus—You have no power here. Look—and look again: this is what I should have been, this is what I should have done. But all the spilt joy has been gathered into another cup—and yours are no more the fingers at the handle!”... So Stella’s long-shaped greenish eyes danced their wordless triumph at her father; while Deb, innocent of interplay, was frankly and chummily telling Ferdie about some successful impertinence of girlhood.
She did not hate Deb. She did not love her either—at least, not in any tender lullaby ways. If she exulted in Deb’s happiness, promoted it wherever possible, defended her againstaggressive comment, nevertheless she was curiously aware all the time that the relations between herself and Deb had not reached completion; were hovering on the verge of something fundamental and savage of either love or hatred—she did not know. Meanwhile Deb, in her lordly childishness, was heartily fond of Aunt Stel; and people remarked how nice it was that Miss Marcus and her niece were almost like sisters together!
It was Stella who arranged that they should temporarily move into a boarding-house till Mr Marcus was able to ascertain more exactly what his very reduced income was likely to be. Some of his money was invested abroad, and nobody knew how long the war would last.... It was best not to enter upon a definite mode of living just now; and she did not care about house-keeping in apartments; their own house, or nothing.
Montagu Hall in South Kensington would do very well; she and Deb were each to have a small single room; Ferdinand shared a double bedroom with his father, who required a certain amount of attention and nursing. Richard was going to spend Christmas with the Dunnes, and therefore need not be considered till the Easter holidays; and perhaps by then....
Stella Marcus, for all her caustic, jesting shrewdness, was not aware that those who once acquire the boarding-house habit will continue to say from season to season, from anniversary to anniversary, from year to year: “Perhaps by then ...;” will never own that they have settled down to unsettlement.
They drew up with all their baggage at about five o’clock on the second of January. As the front door was opened to them, a voice from the hall rasped out into the foggy air:
“—I like a dog tobea dog, not—Shut that door, can’t you?... Oh, I see——”
Three men were standing about in the hall, smoking. The owner of the rasp also possessed a long domed head, crude pink where the hair had worn away on top, and a face of the same nursery pink, ploughed by implacable lines of opinion and ill-humour. He stopped his complaint, and stared with curiosity at the newcomers passing through the hall.