CHAPTER III
“I’ve come to say good-bye,” David Redbury explained jubilantly to La llorraine; “the Jewish regiment sails to-morrow, and I’ve dragged this fellow out to see me through my farewell visits,” indicating Richard, who leant in the doorway of the drawing-room with “buck-up-and-get-it-over” expressed in every reluctant line of his figure.
“He’s steadier than I am, you know, and one is liable to make such wild strange promises on these occasions. Supposing, for instance, Madame, that I were to send for you the minute the war is over, and I pitch my tent by the shores of Jordan ... would you come?”
“I say to you, my dee-urr,” and the prima-donna, in an incongruously correct sports-shirt, collar and tie, smiled whimsically over her owlish spectacles at his gallantry; “I say to you vot I zay to zat ozzer little fellow I see last night at the Tube corner—ah, he was a beauty, that one, with the skin of a peach ... and he watch me a little, I, in my black gown and my black hat, very tall, veryfemme du monde—you see it? And he say to himself—‘It is for the first time I adventure—perhaps one wiz experience?—I learn somsing—Better so. Vot should I with a pretty flapper, and she so innocent and I so ignorant—Awful! A desperate affair.’ So I watch him makethatreflection. And presently he move closer sideways, and he make his little proposition.... And I put my two hands on his shoulders, surprising him. And I say: ‘My boy—you are moch too young—and I am moch too old ... is it not so?’”
Her deep, hearty laugh rang infectiously. Even Richard joined in, and Manon, albeit not quite sure whether the mother of Mrs Dolph Carew ought not to recoil with more dignity from these trifling incidentals of dusk and Tube corners. As for David, he vowed she was adorable.
“Ah, but the Comtesse—there is one! Vonderful! Youvait and see her? Yes? She lonch with me to-day—her birthday.... I tell you, a great affair. We all lunch together? And you, who lof that Continent of ours, you shall eat——” She whispered to David, her arm encircling his khaki; his thin face vivid with appreciative reminiscence, as she reeled off the names of what Richard emphatically, but in silence, registered as “foreign muck.”
The Comtesse arrived, and La llorraine, shedding all bourgeoise preoccupation with the menu, welcomed her as an exiled ambassadress welcomes exiled royalty.
The two ladies kissed a great many times, with rapid interchange of cheeks, and uttering short staccato exclamations; and then held each other a short way off for mutual and admiring survey.
The Comtesse was large, and wore a black picture hat on her crude vermilion chevelure; a mustard-coloured coat and skirt, and a pink ninon blouse crossed by a spray of limp cotton poppies that looked as though they had passed their lives pressed close to a stiff shirt-front. She exhausted so much space in her vicinity, magnetically as well as materially, that her fellow-beings were wont to move some distance away to avoid being absorbed by suction.
“My dee-urr,” said La llorraine solemnly. “Never—never—never haf I seen you looking so well as inthatblouse....”
She introduced David and Richard with a great deal of ceremonial; and the Comtesse put her hand to her heart and gasped that they both reminded her of Antoine,mon fils. “That one, in particular,” indicating David, “is his living image. I vow, he might be his brother.”
“I rejoice that is not the case, Madame, since it would deny the possibility of any more gallant relationship between you and me.”
“Mon Dieu—quel garçon!” the Comtesse delightedly flicked him across the cheek. And Richard marvelled at his friend’s fluent impudence. But this was the atmosphere in which David revelled.
The company sat down to lunch, and La llorraine apologized with sad dignity for her so humble apartment and for inadequacy of service. Generously the Comtesse reassured her that where loyalty and ancient friendship existed, the third footman might quite well be lacking. Then reverting to the question of the blouse—
“I am broken-heart,” the Comtesse announced dramatically; “I can wear it not. It is over—done—finish. Behold! I throw it away!”
“Tell me,” La llorraine spoke in deep sympathy, but restraining the outflung hand from more positive operation in the direction of the ninon blouse—“what is it, then, has happened?”
“It shows the camisole—you see—it show it everywhere. Elsewhere but in this country what do I care? But my durrling, I have a lowndress”—and the Comtesse dropped her voice to a curdling whisper—“a lowndress?—No.She is avipère....”
“Ha!” The other prima donna sprang to her feet, galvanized into opposition melodrama by the word “laundress”—“You say lowndress?—Look hee-urr!”—Oblivious of Manon, David, and Richard, she wrenched open her blouse, as Cleopatra might have done to reveal the bite of the asp. The Comtesse leant forward: “And look!” She was holding out her blouse tautly from her bosom, leaving a gap, down which La llorraine peered.... “Ah-h-h ... yes, it is so ... they are in a conspiracy—I say it! ... they destroy—they have no reverence for lace—for embroidery—for the terruly artistic lingerie!—to zem it is all calico wiz—what is it thejeune fillewear in this England?—calico wizedging—advertised ‘durable!’” Scorn quivered to a climax, and slowly subdued; La llorraine and the Comtesse sank back into their separate chairs, and looked about them, gently smiling.
“This sauce is of an excellence,” said the Comtesse.
“Oh, my dee-urr,” La llorraine deprecated.
“My pauvre Antoine desires in his last letter to be remembered to you and to Mademoiselle votre fille,” the Comtesse recollected, sinking into melancholy over the message to Manon; Antoine, it might be gleaned by the exchange of looks between the two elder ladies, cherished a hopeless but entirely respectful passion for the erstwhileingénue. He was nineteen, decadent and penniless ... nevertheless, La llorraine had long regarded him as a factor in her “plans” for the safe bestowal of her daughter into matrimony; plans only relegated into hasty obscurity by Dolph’s sudden accession to his uncle’s wealth.
“I have brought his letter.” His mother read aloud a few sentences that breathed such fervent affection for herself, and such rapt adoration forla patrie, that Richard turned crimson at the young Frenchman’s lack of churlish restraint,and David, catching sight of his agony, chuckled evilly.... “What’s the matter, Marcus?”
Manon subtly gave the mother of Antoine to understand that she would not object at any opportunity that offered, to renew her acquaintance with the young man, from a purely matronly standpoint ... “perhaps I may be of use to him....”
The mother of Antoine, with equal subtlety, gave Manon to understand that the young man realized he would find her more accessible—and of more use to him—now than as a strictly chaperonedingénue; and would therefore pay his respects to her on his very first leave, if, of course, agreeable to Monsieur Dolph Carew....
And La llorraine twinklingly sanctioned this appointment. Had not Manon skilfully piloted herself into a marriage, at an early age? thereby proving herself far more discreet and competent than any of these English girls, sailing chartless through their late twenties. Manon could be trusted to handle such agreeable little interludes in matrimony as Antoine might provide. “It is only natural zat my child should now vantthatgood time,” reflected La llorraine, in exact reversal of the argument of Ferdinand Marcus—but virtue before marriage, and a good time after, was Continental fashion.
A small joint of veal appeared on the table. Veal was scarce at this time, and the hostess received as no more than her due the anticipatory smiles of the Comtesse. “But what success,” she murmured. The first slice was carved ... and tragedy fell like a dark mantle upon the scene.
“It is almost raw,” exclaimed Manon, shaping prevalent conviction at last into speech.
“I know it,” said her mother in a tone ominously quiet.
“But what matter!” cried the Comtesse hectically.
La llorraine stood looking down upon the pink flesh among the gravy. She held the carvers in her hands, which suddenly she upraised in denunciation towards the ceiling.
“That woman!That char-r-r! I swear it—we part, she and I—but at once. In this house she shall not eat again. Heart-breaking; unthinkable. I have been good to her.... Ven her fourth durrty baby had ze pebbles—Bah, one does not speak of these trifles! I ask her in return: Prepare me this little loin of veal with care. Let it be just brown ... with stuffing—so!—the stuffing I made with my own hands. My dee-urr, should I be ashamed of it! I who thought to makeyou pleasure.... You who spoke to me of how difficult to buy veal.... Ah! I remember—and I bring it home zis morning, I smile, I am a little triumphant—why not? it is after all an occasion, that you come to eat here in my poor apartments—I desire to do you honour—Andthat woman—she spoil it all. She shall fly. Raw meat! My dee-urr, it is an insult to you, my guest....”
The Comtesse strove to calm her, to rally her from ferocious gloom.
“Durr-ling, see—eet is not so bad. I eat some ... wiz pleasure. True that I cannot bear the meat underdone, I shudder at it—but your thought of me was everything. It brings the tears. See, I eat some more of it.... We haf had to put up with moch, by this c-r-ruel war. Sit down then, chère llorraine, and to-day in a week you shall déjeuner with me in my little flat—my chef, Ludovici, shall be specially instructed—he fails me never, Ludovici—so devoted is he.Chérie, you should keep men, rather than these char-rr-women. I say it to you. It is shame to spoil good veal.... But,” after a pause, and with forced sprightly enthusiasm, “how excellent are the potatoes!”
“It is from your noble heart that you speak,” cried La llorraine. And embraced her friend.
“Aren’t they luscious?” David chuckled, as he and Richard walked down Edgware Road.
“’Um. You like these rum people, don’t you? It struck me the two old women kicked up a lot of silly fuss about the veal, that’s all.”
“And what sort of people does your Unappreciative Highness consider an improvement on La llorraine and the Comtesse?”
“The sensible sort—like the Dunnes. I’m going to stay with ’em next week. Grev’s home, training for the R.N.A.S. And young Frank’s just out of Osborne.”
“Here—get on this Oxford Circus bus—I want to buy presents for everybody this afternoon, to love me by when I’m gone. You can help me choose—you have such taste and originality, dear Richard!”
“Feeling lively, aren’t you?” grunted Richard, as theyclimbed to the top of the bus. A shower of rain had washed the two rows of seats empty for them.
“So would you be, if you’d got rid of a nightmare like mine....”
“’M yes—I know something about getting rid of nightmares.” This was the black September of his eighteenth birthday, but Deb had saved him.... At any moment now, he might expect to hear from Samson that he was exempt from internment, and eligible to enlist. So Richard was in high spirits as well, though they did not leap and exult and fling themselves about and glitter into speech as uncontrollably as did David’s. David was in quicksilver mood on the eve of his embarkation for Palestine.
“Just not to be ordered to kill Jews. Men with faces like mine, and exquisitely humorous noses like mine.... I used to lie awake and think of it ... the rush into the opposite trench, and my rifle in the stomach of another Jew, tugging at it to get it out—get it out ... while he looked at me—with my own eyes.... Well, thank God, I shall be spared that, at least!”
“I don’t suppose they’d have massed all the German Jews there are, in the bit of trench opposite yours,” Richard argued.
“One would have been enough, thanks,” grimly. “I wouldn’t have minded laying in among those swaggering Prussian crop-heads who have always shoved the Jews off the pavement ... but it does make a difference in warwhomone fights.”
“Don’t see it.”
David laughed: “I might have known that even Richard the Second has his limitations!” and indeed Richard’s later-born understanding of things below the surface had thickened somewhat again during his past year of reprieve.
The Conductor came round; and David said, “I’ll stand the ice-cream if you’ll stand the fares.”
“Right. Lend me some coppers then, till I change a quid.”
David had only half-a-crown, and the conductor handed Richard back two and fourpence. David eyed the coins mournfully.... “And’edidn’t pay for ze tr-ram fares,” he sang, in imitation of a music-hall Hebrew comedian. “I foresee much trouble hereafter over these reckonings. Look!” with a sudden wild lurch to starboard—“No—not there, you ass! Chalked on the pavement!”
“‘British troops across the Jordan’—that’s good going!”
“And he says ‘that’s good going!’ He says it stolidly, as though it were British troops across the Regent’s Canal—Man, man, where’s your imagination? The names—the ancient names—don’t they fire you at all? Jerusalem! Beersheba! Gaza! Mount Sinai! The Red Sea!... Why they’re our history—ours. They call like trumpets. And to think I shall be out there among it all in a few weeks. Dealing blows for my own land! Richard, it—it drives me crazy....”
David’s eyes were a blaze of bright brown; his mouth trembled—“Doesn’t it excite you that the Jews are going to win back the Holy Land for the Jews?—itmustexcite you,” he pleaded.
“I didn’t know you were a Zionist.”
“I am—and this war ought to have made you a Zionist as well.—Come along, we get off at this corner.—Hasn’t it proved incontestably that you’ve got to have some place to be patriotic about, if you’re to be patriotic at all? The English have had one spasm of illumination by which they saw that; and so the Jewish regiment was formed, and so they’re going to give us back Palestine, after the war.... Israel for the Israelites—and our gratitude to England....” David leapt on to the pavement, walked along for a few moments in silence, and then said in his most matter-of-fact voice—“They shall learn that the Jew can give his pound of flesh as well as claim it.”
“They want to get rid of you—and that’s the whole spasm,” Richard chaffed the enthusiastic young Zionist—“Fed up with the Chosen Race—too clever by half.”
But David was in too radiant a humour to be baited. He merely declaimed in answer to the taunt:
“A Prince without a sword,A Ruler without a Throne;Israel follows her quest.In every land a guest,Of many lands a lord,In no land King is he.But the fifth Great River keepsThe secret of her deepsFor Israel alone,As it was ordered to be....”
“A Prince without a sword,A Ruler without a Throne;Israel follows her quest.In every land a guest,Of many lands a lord,In no land King is he.But the fifth Great River keepsThe secret of her deepsFor Israel alone,As it was ordered to be....”
“A Prince without a sword,A Ruler without a Throne;Israel follows her quest.In every land a guest,Of many lands a lord,In no land King is he.But the fifth Great River keepsThe secret of her deepsFor Israel alone,As it was ordered to be....”
“A Prince without a sword,
A Ruler without a Throne;
Israel follows her quest.
In every land a guest,
Of many lands a lord,
In no land King is he.
But the fifth Great River keeps
The secret of her deeps
For Israel alone,
As it was ordered to be....”
“Not a gleam of response? Not one?” staring at his companion’s impassive features. “That’s Kipling, you know.You ought to be chockful of him—Shall we have ice-cream sodas at Fuller’s now, or shop first?”
“Fuller’s now,” briefly emphatic. And they marched in.
“Yes, Kipling ought to be the god of your budding manliness: burly and brutal and blustering, and hit-the-bloody-nail-on-its-blasted head ... all that. I expect you’ve got ‘If’ pinned up over your washstand, haven’t you?”
“Not keen. (Raspberry, please....) Some poetry’s not bad. I like Rupert Brooke.”
“Not never you don’t? Youarea little bundle of surprises....
“Here am I, sweating, sick and hot,And there the shadowed waters freshLean up to embrace the naked flesh.Temperamentvoll German Jews—Drink beer around.”—
“Here am I, sweating, sick and hot,And there the shadowed waters freshLean up to embrace the naked flesh.Temperamentvoll German Jews—Drink beer around.”—
“Here am I, sweating, sick and hot,And there the shadowed waters freshLean up to embrace the naked flesh.Temperamentvoll German Jews—Drink beer around.”—
“Here am I, sweating, sick and hot,
And there the shadowed waters fresh
Lean up to embrace the naked flesh.
Temperamentvoll German Jews—
Drink beer around.”—
Yes, he’s a poet right enough. How he makes one feel all his ache for the cool glimmer of an English stream—his loathing of fat bodies, and the wheezy moist voices and the sun flashing on the curve of their beaks?”
“Canyouunderstand that bit? Good Lord, how funny! Should have thought——”
“What?” David’s eyes, brimful of suppressed amusement, met Richard’s over the rim of his glass.
“Should have thought it would have offended you. What the deuce are you laughing at now, Redbury? I’m glad you don’t sail for Palestine every to-morrow.... You’re all over the place; like Deb used to be before a party. Here—no—” as the bill was laid beside them; “I want change for a pound to pay you back for the ’bus. You can square with me over this afterwards.”
The change was brought; eighteen shillings. Richard gave the waitress fourpence in coppers.... “Come along.”
“That wasmyfourpence,” said David. “You had no coppers in your pocket. It was over from the half-crown I lent you on the ’bus to stand me my fare. This is going to be a serious business in settling up, Marcus. It ought to be attended to at once.”
“Quite simple; if I borrowed half-a-crown, as you say——”
“If? You did.”
“And I pay your penny fare as well as my own, then I owe you two and fourpence——”
“No, you don’t. You owe me two and six. No, two and eight. My own original half-crown and twopence for the fares.”
“Why should I pay you twopence for the fares—you’re not the bus conductor? Two-and-four I owe you. I can’t give you the fourpence—I’ve just given it away, and I’ve no more small change. Here’s two bob and I owe you fourpence.”
“You’reallwrong, my lad. Think you can teach a Jew? I’ll argue my rights to the last halfpenny, if I have to take you along to Palestine to do it.”
“Argue away,” grinned Richard.
“You were to pay the bus fares, and I the ice-cream sodas. That was the bond. A confoundedly generous bond, considering you wolfed two, and they’re eightpence now.”
“The quantity was not nominated in the bond. Go on.”
“If you pay the bus twopence, mine and yours, out of yourownmoney, then it’s palpably unjust to deduct it from the half-crown I lent you, and only pay me back two shillings and owe the fourpence. See that?”
“But you lent it to me to pay with.” Richard did mistily perceive the point David was belabouring, but could not bother to focus it sharply.
“Only till you got some change of your own. You’ve got it now.”
“Well, but ... thenyouowemefor the ice-cream sodas, they were to be your affair.”
“Granted. Two shillings, and subtract the twopence and the half-crown and fourpence for the waitress that you owe me—leaves——”
“Hi—hold on! We halve the waitress. Might as well do things properly now we’re at it.”
“Twopence for your share of the waitress; add that tomyfourpence you gave her....”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“That makes sixpence. We didn’t give her sixpence. You’re trying to swindle me, Redbury, because my wits are slower than yours....”
“When are the wits of the Gentile not slower than ours?” laughed David. “The Gentile must pay.”
“Don’t forget that this is only half a Gentile. Where were we? Let’s begin all over again. You owe me two and twopence for ice-cream sodas and a bit of waitress: that clear?”
“Hang on to it. Then you owe me half-a-crown, and twopence for fares, and twopence for a bit of waitress, and fourpence more.”
“It’s that fourpence always cropping up. I don’t see where it comes from.”
“You took it from my half-crown to pay the waitress.”
Richard looked so worried that David burst out laughing.
“‘Shylock, shall we have moneys?’ Come on, don’t give in; this is rather sport.”
“Sport!... Look here, let’s leave it all where it is, we’re neither of us much out of pocket.”
“Leave it all where it is!” scornfully. “Small wonder the Hebrew wearieth of the slack and foolish stranger, and desires greatly a nation of his own kith and blood.”
“You’ll get jolly well fed up with your own kith and blood, when you can’t cheat ’em like the slack and foolish stranger.”
“We’ll have to import a few of you for the express purpose.”
It struck Richard that though David in this wrangle was calling attention to his own racial characteristic only to buffoon it, yet there was a sub-stratum of seriousness too, in his laughing persistence.
“I suggest,” said David, “that as we are sadly incapable of adjusting the matter in our head—after eight years’ public school instruction in higher mathematics—that we reconstruct as we go along, passing the money to and fro till we get it right. Now ... we’re on the bus again. You pay!”
“Lend me half-a-crown,” said Richard obediently.
“Give me back my half-crown to lend you, then.”
“Thatdidn’t come in, on the ’bus.”
“It’s coming in now!” David made a grab for Richard’s pocket and extracted the coin. “There you are,” giving it to him; while Piccadilly looked on astonished, at the two youths absorbedly passing money to and fro as they strolled along the pavement. “Now you give it back to me unbroken and twopence for the fares ... that’s right, isn’t it? Youagreedto pay the fares. And then we settle up my little debt.”
Slowly Richard passed back the half-crown; and two coppers.... Thought hard for a moment—then, with a yell, pounced on his companion, wrenched his fingers open, and extracted the pence....
“Got it!” he gasped. “Sothat’swhere you were cheating me, was it? Well, I’m damned! I pay for your fares, yes,but I don’t pay themtoyou, no. Or I’d be paying ’em twice over.Gotyou, David Redbury!”
“Trustful little lad, aren’t you?” David mocked him delightedly. “How long did it take your homely wits? Twenty minutes. And we’re miles past the shop I wanted. Here’s the two and twopence I owe you. ‘La commedia è finita!’” he sang lustily in his beautiful tenor.
“Shut up! Don’t you see the sandwichmen are shying.”
“I’ve got to get farewell presents for everybody, you included, Marcus. What would you like? An Old Testament to revive your slothful patriotism for the tribes of Israel?—Burst of gratitude! In here, then.” He dragged Richard into Hatchard’s; bought the Old Testament, and forthwith presented it to him; chose also a richly-embossed W.B. Yeats for Nell; and was with difficulty dissuaded from a selection of Carlyle’s “Frederick the Great” as a tactful gift for his father. Then, in a different shop, he bought a rich piece of Chinese embroidery to form a window curtain for one of Beatrice’s rooms, and a scarf for Hedda. Richard was amazed at his certainty of choice among the vivid colours and luxurious sheeny textures; as well as his delight in them. His personality was as surely at home among the rich Oriental fabrics, as were Richard and the vendor obviously incidental.
“‘Not Solomon in all his glory was arrayed like unto these,’” murmured David, as the shopman departed with the bill and a five-pound note. “Ever heard the story of the kid in a Jewish school? They read him that chapter, and then asked him: ‘What did Solomon say when the Queen of Sheba tumbled down her treasures before him?’ ‘Pleath, teacher’—he thed: ‘Vot do you vant for de lot?’”
No one could tell a Jewish story with such perfect inflexion and gesture and look, as David; and Richard’s appreciation echoed through the department.
“Do you think I might offer the Comtesse a little tribute in vermilion, to match her hair? She had glorious hair, that woman. In two long plaits and a pitcher balanced on her head.... I shall probably send for her when I’m established out there—the time will come when I shall long for the relief of a snub profile to gaze at, as Rupert Brooke longed for Grantchester. She shall be a wife to me——”
“A wife?”
“Thewife shall be Rachel, and her hair will be dusky, notvermilion; and her throat golden-brown. And she shall walk on the gold-brown sand so that the pitcher of water be not spilt of a single drop. You know, Richard, most of our lady friends in Hampstead and Maida Vale and Bayswater have grown waddlesome with generations of menials to attend them, so that they’ll have to practise an awful lot with a sort of wire-frame arrangement on their heads, before they can balance their pitchers properly.”
“Don’t believe they’ll come at all. A lot of Zionists I’ve heard of are in a blue funk that they’ll be grabbed against their will and carried kicking aboard the Good Ship Jerusalem.”
“Set upon by a press-gang, and made to fag for us; for me, David, King of Zion——”
“King, eh? You’re going it!”
“You shall come and be my Grand Vizier, O Richard.”
“That’s the Arabian Nights. Getting mixed, aren’t you?”
“The deadly habit of accuracy is notably confined to the unimaginative.”
Richard grunted.
“With you beside me is like taking a stroll with a portable farmyard.”
“You haven’t bought anything for your mother yet.”
“I must get some large-sized silver frames. I was photographed to surprise her about a month ago—they’ve turned out rather well. Beastly nuisance—but she fretted so, having none of Con. He neverwouldlet himself be taken.... So she shall have me in half a dozen different positions, bless her, just in case—not that she’ll care about the whole lot like the one rotten little snapshot of Con that she’s always poring over ... but still....”
His exuberance was for a moment dulled.
“She’s having such a rotten time. The Guv’nor has put his foot down over any more correspondence with Aunt Anna, this last year—just as if it would affect nations if two sisters wrote their pathetic loving little letters to tell each other of their sons killed and the hardship of getting good servants nowadays.... But the black curtain is down between Hampstead and Berlin now—and Mum’s wondering always what is going on behind it.” He was silent a moment, then burst out indignantly, “What harm can he possibly suppose it would do——” and left the sentence unfinished. But Richard, under “he” was flasheda complete picture of Otto, very bilious, very Jingo, in the art of disciplining Trudchen....
“People are queer nowadays ...” was all he found to say.
“Queer the other way round, too,” David said thoughtfully. “Would any country in all the world but England ensure that her prisoners of war be fed on the fat of the land, while her own people want? It’s a sort of splendid crack-brained chivalry—The German fellows don’t understand it; makes ’em laugh. Itishighly comic when you come to think of it.... ‘For Allah created the English mad, the maddest of all mankind!’”
“It’s the old-established tradition of chivalry still upheld by officialdom. I doubt if it’s in the blood of the people any more; they grumble about it—call it treachery, not chivalry.”
“Those are only the people left over, not the fighters. One learns bad habits if one is left over.... I’m glad we’re both for the thick of it now, Richard.”
“Yes....”
“Is it all right for you? I mean, you’re sure——”
“Phillips promised. I haven’t heard yet....” But he was so sure that he said quickly: “Of course I may be let down any moment, in fact, I suppose I’ve no earthly chance——”
David smiled at the unconsciously Jewish trait revealed in the semi-Jew: the instinct that is afraid to trust its own luck—aloud; instinct that has learnt to fear the duration of good luck, and thinks to propitiate Jehovah by an affectation of incredulity. David himself had behaved in this fashion since his earliest babyhood. Victims of persecution—was it persecution or justice now meted out to Richard and his like?—children of No Man’s Land.... “Persecution is forbeingsomething wrong; justice fordoingsomething wrong,” came to David in a flash of insight. Nobody could helpbeing—all down the ages ... Jews—niggers,—slaves—Huguenots—early Christians—Saxon serfs....
“I’m going to take a taxi home; these parcels are too much for me. You go quite a different way, don’t you?”
“Yes. G’bye.”
Richard turned quickly and walked away in the direction of Hyde Park Corner. He was suddenly aware of David as a very complete element in his life; and David was now withdrawn, perhaps for ever, in all his lithe embodiments of radiance and melancholy, of profound thought and mischievous ragging; David suffering in front of the camera because heunderstood how his mother fretted for a likeness of Con; David reeling out names off the map of Palestine in drunken ecstasy at their associations; David savagely ironic over his father’s Jingo attitude; David playing the fool over twopence in the middle of Piccadilly.... Richard wished he could have been called up at the same time as David, and thus have slurred over the present acute sense of loneliness.... “I’m glad we’re both for the thick of it now, Richard”—and David would understand why he had not lingered over leave-taking. David could be relied upon to understand—always.
He found a letter from his brother-in-law, Samson Phillips, awaiting him at Montagu Hall. It related briefly that Sir Ephraim Phillips had done his utmost in the matter of exemption from internment in Richard’s case; but in view of the fact that he was German-born, with father not at that period naturalized, could do no more than procure the alternative that he should be called up to serve in the Labour Battalion——
“No, by God!”
Richard crumpled up the sheet in his hands, and flung it violently against the wall. The Labour Battalion! Soldiers who were not allowed to carry weapons? Soldiers who were sent to the Front and not permitted to fight? The compromise was ignominious.... And David had said: “I’m glad we’re both for the thick of it, now, Richard....”
It was all right for David, wholly a Jew. “I’m not going to be half a soldier,” muttered Richard. Rather internment than be tantalized by the wear of khaki, maddened by audible gun-thunder. Rather internment than that—and in a fortnight he would be eighteen.