CHAPTER II
The Redburys were at Saturday dinner. Their numbers indicated a party, but in reality no one but the intimate family was present. Mr and Mrs Redbury, their sons Hardy and David; Hardy’s wife Beatrice, and her brother Sampson Phillips; the two daughters of the house, Hedda and Nell; and Miss Swinley, the strictly English governess. Four members were missing from the company: Con, the eldest Redbury, since several months at the Front; Wilhelmina, the infant child of Hardy and Beatrice, who had annoyed her grandfather and been banished to the nursery; Hedda’s husband, Gustav Fürth, interned in England for being a German; and Max, the boy who came between Hardy and David, interned in Germany for being an Englishman.
The international situation round the table was one of extremest delicacy. Otto Rothenburg had settled in England for business purposes, and was naturalized directly after his marriage with Trudchen Wagner. But he made no secret of his dislike of the English, and his contempt of the semi-English; and had always petulantly insisted thathishousehold should be conducted on sound and hearty Teuton principles, of which the main points were a diet of rich sufficiency for the elders, and no nonsense and no discrimination for the tribe of children. Though the quantity of these—six alive and two dead—indicated that he did not confine his German ideas wholly to the table. Each of the six played a chosen musical instrument—chosen by Herr Rothenburg himself, be it remarked. The two girls had frequently been burdened by plaid frocks; German was the language spoken as a matter of course at meals; filial obedience and the good-night kiss were insisted upon; and there was a frequent coming and going of relatives scattered over Germany and Austria, with large gay packets of gingerbread tied up in silver paper; or of polite unknowns bearing letters of introduction from theRothenburg relatives abroad; and very eager to be invited to a meal.
When Hedvig, at eighteen, was wedded to a German, her father was delighted. Hedvig herself had never been consulted on the match. When Gerhardt, at twenty-four, had displayed unexpected initiative and engaged himself to Beatrice Phillips, Rothenburg fretted and objected and sulked, and locked himself in the bathroom, and came out again when it was least desirable that he should do so; and during a full six months rendered the lives of all about him wholly unbearable. He was finally only reconciled to the bride’s English birth and parentage by her large settlements. Max, two years younger than Gerhardt, was, however, immediately despatched out of danger to his Uncle Karl in Hanover, there to learn the business and eventually to marry his Uncle Karl’s daughter Klara. Konrad’s enthusiasm for territorial drill—well, with a stretch of the imagination, that could be ascribed to his German blood revealing itself in a wistful passion for the obligatory military service which could never be his; therefore, Konrad, who of all the brood was his mother’s darling, was grudgingly permitted to remain in London and read for the Bar. David, sent to a day-school, was destined later for Heidelberg University, as a corrective to any ultra-English notions which St Crispin’s may have put into his head.
And then had occurred this most inconvenient war.
Herr Otto Rothenburg did not wait to be subtle about his change of front. Immediately he scuttled for cover. He became in name, in sentiment and in habit what he already was by law—a fine old English gentleman. His household was revolutionized; he turned livid at the sound of a single German word spoken; he clung to such English acquaintances as were his, with a limpet-like fervour of affection which no coldness could disconcert. He forbade all communication with relatives abroad; and all mention of them. In short, Mr Otto Redbury was afraid. To their mother’s utter bewilderment, Hedvig, Lenchen, Konrad and Gerhardt were metamorphosed to Hedda, Nell, Con and Hardy. His fever reached its zenith when Gustav Fürth, an unnaturalized German of military age, was arrested and interned. And his daughter Hedda, penniless and unprotected, but in the highest spirits, returned to the parental roof, with the obvious and natural intention of remaining where she was for the duration of thewar. Once supremely her father’s good girl, Hedda was not at all popular in this crisis. It was difficult airily to disavow all enemy connection, with concerned enquiries emanating from all quarters as to Fürth’s whereabouts and treatment. Supposing, too, that when she came to the house, Beatrice should be offended at Hedda’s presence there ... Beatrice, that never-to-be-sufficiently appreciated link with solid British stock!
Beyond a little astonished realization at finding herself encircled by alien enemies—her attitude conveyed that she had never noticed before that the Rothenburgs were German—Beatrice had a nature too well-bred and womanly—gentle-womanly, David was wont to call it—to have expressed as yet any sort of resentment. She was very nice and tactful to Hedda about “poor Gustav.” It was a miracle that Hardy could have been sensible and far-seeing enough as to have married so successfully. Mr Redbury propitiated her with a determination and unction that—again to quote David—“fair gives one the sicks.” But then Mr Redbury was desperately afraid.
“Bodadoes, Beatty, mein Schatz?” enquired Mrs Redbury, dumpy and apple-cheeked and very harrassed by her husband’s perpetual amendment of her accent, and by the awful trinity of Briton’s representatives present in the dining-room.
And Beatrice blushed faintly and glanced apologetically at her brother Samson, who looked as wooden as though a toast of the King had just been proposed. Miss Swinley coughed, a delicate and pensive cough; something had annoyed Miss Swinley that morning, and she was ripe for revenge.
“I met a vellow in de Zity dis morning,” said Mr Redbury, glaring at his wife, “who vould by no means pelieve dat I vos bartly a voreigner. ‘Vot—you?—go on! all dese years I dake you for a bure-plooded Priton!’ He roared with laughter ven I told him my selige father was porn in Amsterdam. He vouldn’t pelieve me. ‘Your vife,’ he said, ‘she speaks wiz a slight aggsent. But you are von of us, Redbury, old man.’ Hevouldn’tpelieve me——” himself roaring with laughter, but still glaring at Trudchen.
“And when I told him how beautiful you were,” sang Hedda—David kicked her to shut up. He could not bear it when the old man made an ass of himself.
“He wouldn’t believe me ...” Hedda chirruppedirrepressibly. The world bereft of Gustav was so full of radiant possibilities that she could not refrain from bursting out. For her, at least, the war was not entirely an evil thing.
Mr Redbury spoke quite correct English, but his accent was not so irreproachable as to justify the complete good faith of the “vellow in the Zity.” And that “selige” had slipped in by mistake; and would prevent him from being quite so privately nasty to his wife about “mein Schatz” as he had anticipated.
A joint appeared on the table simultaneously with the post. One letter bearing the “opened by Censor” label, black letters on white pasted across the slit of the envelope, was handed by the servant to Mrs Redbury.
“Ach Gott! von der liebsten besten Anna!” as a second letter was revealed under cover of the first.
Mr Redbury hissed out a venomous “Put it away!” which his wife, fumbling and tearful over this communication from her beloved elder sister in Berlin, neither heard nor heeded. Mr Redbury dared not insist, in front of Rhoda, the parlour-maid—not to mention Beatrice, Samson Phillips and Miss Swinley. Besides, though his sway might be peevishly unpleasant, it never exacted the awed obedience yielded to a true despot. He quivered with horror at the present predicament, as it dawned upon him that his wife intended to read aloud the letter from Germany, in little bursts and snatches of joy. David was encouraging her by eager questions—that boy had no sense whatever. Mr Redbury began to talk very loud and fast.
“It makes me broud to see all the ghagi round my table”—he looked unutterable compliments at Samson Phillips’ captain’s uniform, then possessively at Hardy, who was short-sighted and had only been admitted to Home Service; and at David, a public-school cadet. “If only Con vere here, to gomblete our number; did I tell you, Captain Villips, zat my eldest boy has been mentioned in disbatches for botting four Huns wiz hisownrifle?”
“Glad to hear Con has a sense of property!” muttered David.
“Ei, die Arme!” cried Mrs Redbury, weeping. “Franz has been shot. You remember little Franz, Otto? Ach verzeihen Sie—forgive me, Captain Villips. Such a dear littleboy, my sister’s youngest. He stayed with us for a whole year, and learnt his lessons wiz Nell.”
Vindictively Mr Redbury carved all the gristle for Hedda, who had a German husband. It was a vent to his feelings. He showed a nice discrimination in reserving the juiciest bits for Beatrice; Miss Swinley, he judged correctly, was past all such caressing treatment; one could safely anticipate her month’s notice the very next morning. Not that she was really necessary any longer to superintend Nell’s studies. Nell was seventeen, and in the ordinary course of events, would have been “out” next year. But Miss Swinley would spread a report that her principles would not permit her to remain in a household so pronouncedly pro-German.... To Mr Redbury’s jaundiced fancy, the tread of the policeman sounded nearer. And he was never far away—that mythical policeman.
“Oh, Mother, is there anything about Max?” asked Nell, her dark liquid eyes wistful with anxiety for her favourite brother.
Mrs Redbury fluttered the thin foreign pages, crossed with pointed scribble. “But yes—Max is well as can be hoped, and his Uncle Karl makes enquiries that he is gomfortable. That good Karl! And—ach, unglaublich!—his own nephew, Otto Salinger, is in a gonfinement camp over here, and Karl asks if we, in return, vill find him out and be nice to him? But yes, indeed; perhaps ze poor young man vould like some of my Dampfnudeln; he vill surely be homesick. Otto, do you hear?”
Miss Swinley repeated her pensive cough. And Mr Redbury, wrathfully ignoring the question of his unfortunate namesake, addressed himself again to Captain Phillips.
“Ven do you think we shall knock them out definitely?” His loud tones drowning Trudchen’s agitated twitter. “I have had a tip to lay in yards and yards and yards of punting.”
Samson Phillips’ handsome, heavy features expressed bewilderment.
“Punting?”
“Rather overdone the bunting to-day, haven’t you, father?” David suggested impertinently. It was flag-day for one of the minor Balkan states, and Mr Redbury wore his expensive trophies duplicated and tripled, with the air of a General bespattered with honourable medals.
Mr Redbury told an anecdote of the titled lady who had decorated him. And then Beatrice asked:
“Do you really think we shall win the war so soon? It’s almost too good to be true, isn’t it?” her pleasant, well-bred English voice was a relief after so much duologue from her parents-in-law. “But I don’t think it’s very nice of the Germans to use liquid fire, do you?”
Hardy beamed at her fondly through his glasses. “Not very nice of them, no. Not drawing-room manners, is it, darling?” He was a man of quaint appearance, a startlingly fair replica of Nell and David, who had the dark melancholy eyes, aquiline cast of feature, and sensitive lips that stamped them true Hebrew. But Hardy, with his light eyes, light hair, light skin, and enormous nose, gave somewhat the impression of a Jew who had been well bleached. Hedda’s colouring lay between the two extremes. Con enjoyed the good looks of the family; blue eyes always afire with mirth; tall, athletic figure; incarnate good-nature and high spirits, he was adored by his men, and well-liked by his superior officers. As for his mother—not Max nor Hardy nor David, nor Hedda nor Nell, could in sum equal her love for this miracle of an eldest-born, now in the trenches.
“Are you laughing at me?” Beatrice remained quite serene. “Yes, please; I will have some cream.”
“Die Anna writes zat zere is only a wee-little milk for each child in Berlin; not enough to keep zem alive, she say.”
“Let zem die!” cried Mr Redbury, with a ferocity that was really foreign to his nature—only he was afraid. “All the better. Let zem all die. Zey only grow up to be Cherman soldiers fighting against humanity.”
Nell flashed out: “Oh, father, how can you?—little soft babies——” and suddenly plunged back into silence, marvelling at her own temerity.
David as usual supported her in rebellion. “Not all German babies grow up to be German soldiers. Some grow up to be English soldiers” ... his ironic downward glance at his own uniform emphasized the remark.
“If Con were here, young ’un, he’d lick you for that,” and Hardy sent a message of strong disapproval over his glasses at his cadet brother.
“Con’s different. However keen he may be on his regimentand England and all that, he never talks fatuous drivel about wanting all the German babies to die.”
“Vatuous trivel ...” shouted Mr Redbury.
“Dear me,” murmured Miss Swinley.
“I’m sure David doesn’t mean to be rude, father,” Beatrice put in mildly. “We none of us want babies to die, but of course it’s nicer if it isn’t English babies.”
David laughed. And his father ordered him from the table. Nell immediately slipped from her seat and joined him at the door.
“Ach Lenchen!” sobbed Mrs Redbury. “And you haf not touched the pie on your blate!”
“Gom back!” roared Mr Redbury. For there was always a possibility that she might find favour in the eyes of Samson Phillips. He had noticed with pleasure that a secret understanding seemed to exist between them; frequently they whispered together.... “My son-in-law a Captain in ze Zappers!”... Another link with safety. One might almost defy the policeman then.
The parlour-maid accosted David at the foot of the stairs. “Young Mr Marcus is in the schoolroom, sir. He said he would wait for you there.”
“Oh—thanks, Rhoda.”
“Hullo, Marcus. Not end of the term yet, is it? Scarlet fever again?”
“No. I’ve chucked Winborough.” Richard was lounging on the shabby fender-seat, drumming with one heel against the side of the fireplace. He was not looking well; dark marks under his eyes and a rather drawn expression round the mouth caused David, who was observant, to scrutinize him with some attention. He was rather surprised at this visit. On the whole Richard was not wont to seek out his society with overmuch enthusiasm. Richard’s friends were mostly sturdy athletes of the Greville Dunne order, who summed up David as “sloppy” because he played the cello, and hated games.
“Chucked Winborough? That’s pretty casual. What does your guv’nor say?”
“Said I could do as I liked about it.”
“Good Lord! mine would bellow the house down. He’s just slung me out of the dining-room over some nonsense about German and English babies.”
David threw himself disconsolately in the battered old armchair. The other boy glanced up with sudden interest.
“What’s your family’s attitude towards the war?”
“We’re all at sixes and sevens. Father’s more English than the English; and mother sits and worries in alternate layers over Con and her own people in Germany. Does not mention them, of course. Hardy is a genuine patriot, I believe, without making much row about it. Of course being married to Beatrice has influenced him. We hang the fact of Beatrice out in the front garden like the clean washing.... Sickening. And all the while there’s Max interned over there—and Gustave interned over here—also unmentionable ... not that Hedda minds much. But father.... You should see his face when visitors enquire after ‘poor Mr Fürth’—and they do it as if they were treading on egg-shells. The etiquette of internment is as yet very precarious. One isn’t at all sure if Gustave is to be exalted as a martyr or mysteriously hushed up as though he were a convict—I say, what’s the matter?”
“Nothing. I’m in for it too, that’s all.”
“Internment? You, Marcus? I—I’m sorry. I’d no idea....”
“All right. You needn’t do the egg-shell trick. I was born in Germany, and father didn’t have me naturalized, that’s all.”
David was silent a moment, thoughtfully staring at his boots. “Has he appealed?”
“Yes. No good. The Government has condoned too many cases, and the Anti-German section are beginning to protest. So they’ve had to tighten up again. We’ve got a let-off from deportation for grandfather and Aunt Stella. Can’t expect more, with all these spy cases about.”
He went on in a very matter-of-fact voice: “I couldn’t stick Winborough this term. Just knowing.—It’s absurd—I was as keen to lick the Germans as ever—but how couldIjoin in when the fellows jawed about Huns and wiping ’em off the face of the earth.... I felt crimson inside—beastly—as though I were there on false pretences. And all the chaps of my age were preparing to join up next year ... last term I was still one of them. They couldn’t understand why....It had to come out at last—the Head knew all along, naturally. But we were playing the Meltonians in their own field, twelve miles away—and I had to register and get permission, show my photograph—all that mush. Like a ticket-of-leave man. The fellows were awfully decent. They didn’t even cut me. Harrison, speaking for the majority, went so far as to say it was rough luck, and they knew I couldn’t help it”—Richard’s underlip twisted sardonically. “But they weren’t quite sure, after that, what ought to be said in front of me ... dead pauses when I strolled up to one group or another.... I came home at half-term, last Monday, and I’m not going back.”
“So you’re out of it,” whispered David, still staring as though fascinated at his boots. “Out of the fighting, and the need of fighting, and the need to choose ... you lucky beggar. Oh, you lucky beggar....”
“I realize the fact that I’m out of it, thanks. But I don’t quite follow your congratulations.”
“It’s that ... I’ve been in Germany, two or three times, once for six months, and—Oh, Richard, what hashappenedto the old Germany, the Germany we knew, to change it so? I simplycan’trealize that they commit atrocities in Belgium and sink hospital ships and mutilate children, and are bragging and swaggering and blood-letting all over Europe.... I can only remember the little things—the silly, comfortable little things.... You follow the stream, and in a clearing in the heart of the great blue pinewood you come bang on the sturdy old forest-house, with antlers branching over the wooden doorway, and the coat-of-arms of some royalty ... perhaps you may catch a glimpse of him in his green hunting-coat ... tables with check blue and red cloths, and saucers of wood-strawberries like tiny drops of blood—do you know the smell and flavour of wood-strawberries?—and a flaxen peasant child who watches you with enormous solemn eyes while you eat, and curtseys by clockwork for hours after you’ve left her.... And all over the country the ridiculous wooden signposts that say on one arm ‘Zum Biergarten,’ and on the other ‘Zum Aussichtspunkt,’ and never get tired of it—and you never get tired of it either. Or of leaning out of your window in the early morning to hear them play the Chorale, slow and pure and stately—and the ground is a mist of blue bilberries—and the Rhine legends jostle each other on your excursion, and yousend off postcards on which everybody signs their names—and everyone says good-day—and everyone is musical.”
“Good God, how awful,” was Richard’ssotto vocecomment on this list of blisses.
David heard, and said rather impatiently: “You’ve been to Germany, haven’t you? Can’t you understand what I mean?”
Richard ransacked his memory for a single incident or aspect of Dorzheim which had found tender home in his heart, and discovered not one.
“All the little things ...” David murmured again, hands clasped behind his head, and eyes mournfully brooding on the past. “Oh, I know I’m a sentimental idiot, but I can’t shake it all off to command. Not at once.”
“If you feel like that, I don’t honestly see why you need join up. ’Tisn’t compulsory.”
“I’ve got to ... there’d be such a fuss with father—and he would never forgive me. Max can’t, and Hardy’s married.... There’s only Con and me. Con—well, you know him—he rings British wherever you sound him.... I’ve seen mother look at him as though wondering how he could ever have happened to be her son. I don’t want Con to despise me—he’s always been ripping to us younger ones. And then—oh, just because there’s a doubt about us all, we can’t afford, as a family, to have a slacker about. If our name had always been Redbury”—again that melancholy smile and shrug of the shoulders, so typically Jewish.
“Have you changed it?”
“Dear old man, you didn’t commit the horrible error of asking our parlour-maid for Mr David Rothenburg?”
“Yes, I did. Sorry. I believe Deb warned me, but I forgot. Does it matter?”
“She may give notice to-morrow ... we live uncomfortably on a tight-rope nowadays, and some of us haven’t learnt how to walk it yet. Poor mother, for instance—she’s always side-slipping. Rhoda is fairly new, and father deludes himself that she doesn’t know our guilty secret. I say, you remember Miss Swinley?” The mischievous school-boy was uppermost in David now—“and how proud she was of being descended from the Hereford Swinleys? Well, now it’s got round to her how someone said publicly that of course she’s really a German and everybody knows her real name is Schweinthal!”
Richard threw back his head and filled the room with his guffaws.
“Schweinthal—Swine-valley ... Swinley! Oh, that’s top-hole! She was always so jolly full of swank and backbone. But all the same, Redbury, I’m all at sea with these swarms of English county people that have magically cropped up in our set during the last few weeks. No offence meant to you, but who the deuce are the Lanes and the Silvertons and the Mounts and the Gordons and the Meadowes?”
“All old familiar faces really. And I can tell you who the Mounts and the Meadowes are, anyhow ... they’re each one-half of my cousins, the Wiesenbergs. The elder and younger branch of the family have long been at daggers drawn, and they’ve hailed the opportunity to split into two. And the Mounts know nothing of the Meadowes, nor shall the Meadowes ever go to meet the Mounts. My other cousin, whose father changed his name about forty years ago, swears that he’ll change it back again from Holmes to Hohenheim by way of protest to all the funk and flurry.”
“Quite a pleasing moment at our boarding-house last week, when two Scandinavian ladies were introduced to each other and neither knew the language.”
“But both broke into floods of delighted German? That’s what happens these days when Swede meets Swede.”
“Aunt Stella says speaking German nowadays is as good a thrill as the invention of a new sin, and far superior to secret drinking or smoking or swearing.... You do it in a dark room, under your breath, looking over your shoulder.”
“And in public you carefully mispronounce German towns and Generals, in case it should be suspected that you pronounce them not wisely but too well. Father’s getting quite a dab at throwing off his little jokes about the Kayzer. Comic birthplaces are the fashion as well; two of the Ladenbach girls, when the question crops up, have been instructed to say they were born in a wagon-lit; and the boy Julius, on the steps of the Venezuelan Consulate....”
“Looks as if Frau Ladenbach had dropped ’em about rather carelessly,” chuckled Richard. He was glad he had come this afternoon. It was years since he had been at all intimate with David Rothenburg, and the impulse to seek him out had been the result of a strange weariness of all his other friends whocould not be taken for granted as understanding, without elaborate foreword and explanation, all these present chaotic conditions of Germans and semi-Germans....
“Come out,” David suggested. “It’s stuffy in here, and I want to take a parcel of books round to—to some people quite near.... You can help me carry ’em.”
In the hall Nell and Samson Phillips were talking in an earnest whisper. Nell wore heavy golden furs flopping over her thick brown outdoor coat, and a wide-brimmed golden hat. She was a very decorative figure in all shades from sallow through ivory to rich umber; her thick skin, the cream-dusky colour of honeysuckle, could certainly never flush to any shade of pink; only when she was moved, her eyes glowed deeper. They glowed now, at the sight of the two boys descending the staircase.
“Oh, Richard, where is Deb this afternoon? She said something about coming here?”
“Did she? I believe she’s gone to that Russian singing woman, La llorraine. Anyway, you’re going out, aren’t you?”
“Yes. Oh yes. Antonia Verity has invited me to a picture-show. I’m waiting for her to call for me. But I thought if Deb came ... but it doesn’t matter——” She glanced swiftly corner-wise at Samson Phillips, and her look said plainly “I’m sorry.”... Then Mr Redbury came out of the smoking-room into the hall.
“Vell, yong beople”—he beamed approval on Nell and Phillips—“I like to see yong beople enchoying zemselves togezzer. How is your fazer, Marcus? Vun doesn’t see much of him lately.” But he quickly changed the subject, for Ferdinand Marcus was hardly more English than Mr Otto Redbury himself, and therefore at present socially useless as an asset. “Ven are you going to put on ghagi, hein? You’re ze same age as David, aren’t you?”
“Nearly,” said Richard.
“David vos so keen—ah, vell, we can’t all be as keen.... Vish I vos a poy, and could choin up. Hey, Phillips, vill you take me as a regruit in your rechiment? Vere are you two off to, Nell?”
“Pictures, father.”
“To ze bictures? Good. Enchoy yourselves. Look vell after her, Phillips. She’s my only girl left, you see.”
“Your eldest daughter is living with you for the present, isn’t she, Mr Redbury?” enquired the hoped-for son-in-law.
The prospectively bereaved father did not look grateful for the proffered consolation of Hedda. “Run away to ze bictures, yong beople,” and prepared to re-enter the smoking-room.
“Pictures, father, notthepictures,” Nell, explained, speaking as she always did, like a shy but rapid cascade, perpetually dammed. “Miss Verity has invited me—she is fetching me. Not——” She dared not let him continue in the belief that she was to be escorted by Samson.
“Two girls vun vay and two boys anuzzer, and leave an old fogey like me to entertain the Gaptain? No, no, that’s a foolish arranchment. Vait for your friend, Nell, and all go to the bictures togezzer.”
“Pictures, father. Notthepictures. And I’m not sure if Antonia——”
“All be cholly togezzer,” her father commanded her, peevish at her second attempt at protest.
“Gom in veneffer you get leave, Phillips. Always velcome. Good-pye, yong Marcus. I hope to see you in ghaki next time;” and went into the smoking-room, irascibly slamming the door after him.
“I’m hanged if I’ll be convivial to order,” said David. “’Bye, Nell!” he nodded carelessly to Phillips. “Come along, Marcus.” On the steps they passed Antonia Verity on her way to fetch Nell.
“Are you waiting for me, Nell? good child!” She rested her calm lingering regard on Samson Phillips, who, stolidly planted against the umbrella-stand, did not budge.
Nell wished she could run away, wished she were dead; anything to be drastically removed from this awful predicament between two people who did not know each other, of one of whom she was still deadly shy, the other commanded by her father to be their escort.... What was she to do? How long could they all stand like this glaring at one another? The simple expedient of introducing Samson to Antonia never occurred to Nell, who was very childish for her seventeen years. She just stood with interlocked fingers, suffering.... “Perhaps if we wait long enough, Captain Phillips will go away.... Is that how things, dreadful things, come to an end?”
“Wonder he didn’t give me a white feather?” growled Richard, as they walked up the street.
David’s eyes were blazing in his thin brown face.
“Hanging on to anything, anybody, English: Beatrice—Con at the Front ... old Con.—And now he wants Samson Phillips; wants to shove Nell into the fellow’s arms.... It’s so cursedly undignified, this crawling round the feet of a country that stands about with folded arms, not wanting you.”
Richard was about to agree, when a peculiar thing happened to him. He was made aware of the Soul of Otto Redbury.... He saw it very clearly, small twitching pink nose of a rabbit—not at all unlike the Soul of Gottlieb Schnabel, the little baker. Alongside of these two, his own soul was an instant laid, then snatched away again ... queer company for the soul of Richard Marcus; he found Redbury objectionable, and despised Schnabel, but—he understood. Funny that David, who was supposed to be an imaginative womanish creature, thrilling quickly to response, a nature artistic and intuitive and all that sort of thing, should reveal himself in certain cases so hard and blunt.
Richard said slowly: “It’s such a beastly position for all of them—all of us,” he amended; but it still seemed a grotesque nightmare that he should be one of the band whom he was unwillingly compelled to understand and defend.
“It’s all very well to be down on your pater, Redbury, and of course one rags about the change of names, and Swiss waiters and so on—but it’s so utterly unnatural to have no country when your country is the one thing in all the world that matters. As good patriots as any are drifting about loose with nowhere to dump their load of patriotism. Oh, I know the stock argument—they should have stuck to the place where they were born. Well, a few thousands, a few tens of thousands haven’t done so; it’s no good pretending that it was as important before nineteen-fourteen as now.”
“I suppose the English didn’t overflow and get stranded on No Man’s Land in such numbers, because they could always colonize,” David conjectured.
“And now this war; we scramble for cover. And the safe people who have settled for generations in one place, of one country, of unmixed blood, laugh at us for scuttling. Do theyever think how easy it is—no merit, but, God! how easy, to be born in England, wholly English, when they say of the half and half brigade: ‘Let ’em get back to their own country—we don’t want ’em!’? But they might have said that before 1914, to have given them a chance to get back. They can’t get back now. Their own so-called country doesn’t want ’em either.... Won’t have them; calls them renegades, who have severed all ties, all obligations. And there they are, absolutely helpless between the two. Belonging to both—no—belonging to neither. Can claim protection from neither. They’re frightened, I tell you, David. All this frantic jabber of the Hidden Hand—why, there have been practically no cases where the naturalized German has been proved guilty of plotting against England in the interests of the Hun. One or two, perhaps, among thousands. But rejected by Germany, rejected by England, dashed from one to the other—how can they help all those little acts that revolt you as being ridiculous or—what do you call it? undignified—ostentatiously planking down their names on subscription lists, kow-towing to the English servants, change of name, and pretending to be Dutch, and pitiful swanking of their English friends; even grabbing at Samson Phillips to get him in the family at all costs.—All that isn’t treachery, but ordinary childish human funk.”
“Why, at the worst, what can be done to them?”
“Nothing very bad. Nothing at all compared with what the men at the Front have to go through; think I don’t know that?” Richard questioned fiercely. “And yet they wouldn’t be funking if they belonged to a country, and had a united cause to fight for. It’s not being able to shout with the rest. It’s the bitter desolation, nowadays, of fighting for one’s own hand....”
He became aware of David’s slow quizzical smile.
“The miracle of the Sleeping Beauty awakened,” he commented softly. “If nothing else, the Great War has at least done this for one Richard Marcus. Rather a drastic kiss, but astoundingly effective.”
“Shut up!” Richard kicked at a stone in the roadway. Head bent, hands clenched in his pockets—as if hewantedto think. As if he welcomed this disconcerting upheaval of his imagination ... to be able to understand Otto Redbury—what next? To stick up for a lot of rotten Germans—Marcus of Winborough, champion half-back of the footer team—GrevilleDunne’s pal—average at his work, but a decent ordinary all-round fellow, and no end keen on a commission in the R.F.C. Never again, for him. Never again. Something had happened.... Richard walked along savagely mourning for the self that had once fitted him so easily.... Never again!
David noticed his dejection—and amusement softened into something resembling tenderness for this strong bull-necked fellow, helpless in the grip of his first individual problem. It must have been a bad shock so to have galvanized him from matter-of-course unthinking acceptance of a scheme of life which had been hitherto fair enough and good enough ... tread of many feet all marching in the same direction ... and now—No Man’s Land.
There was little for David himself to learn about the by-ways and customs of this nebulous territory—from his earliest childhood he had wandered there. And he realized that it was not to the habitual thinkers that the war and what it involved had made such a shattering difference—but to those who had never thought before.... Poor old Richard ... all those tumbled we’s and they’s of his utterance ... he hardly knew yet where he belonged—too doggedly proud to include himself with the nation who did not want him—yet jibbing at classification with the despised alien enemy. Poor old Richard, it was rather a shame.
“At any rate, we’re both in the same boat,” David exclaimed, carried away by a quick impulse to solace. Immediately his companion, in a manner of speaking, toppled him out of the boat.
“No, we’re not. You’re born over here. You’re all right. You’d be English if you weren’t a pro-German.”
“Damn it! I’mnota pro-German. I’m a Jew.”
“What the——” Richard in his astonishment stopped dead on the pavement.
“Well?”
“What has being a Jew got to do with it? It’s a question of nationality, not religion.”
“The Jewsarea nation. If it were only a theological difference, why should that have affected such a very marked distinction of feature and temperament? Going to Synagogue instead of to Church doesn’t alter the curve of a nose. Of course we’re a nation apart, apart and scattered—but raciallythe most united in the world. And that’s another of my private reasons for wearing khaki—because the English have been good to the Jews, have given them sanctuary and treated them as equals. They have a claim on our services. While Germany has always behaved like a swine to Judea.... I’mnota pro-German, Marcus, but there’s a kinship between English Jews and German Jews and Russian Jews and Italian and American and Polish and Roumanian and Austrian Jews, that no war ever waged can entirely destroy. I don’t want to see a Jew hurt—and, oh God! I don’t want to hurt another Jew. We’re a race of artists and financiers and wanderers—not of fighters.”
“I don’t know about that. Jehovah was a God of din and battle, wasn’t He? I’m a bit foggy about the Old Testament, but I seem to remember that they were always at it, hammer and tongs. And pater says that Jews are ardent patriots by temperament.”
“Yes—with nowhere to put it. All countries, and no countries, and the countries from which we’ve been driven, and the countries where we hope to go back.... I’m sorry we can’t change over, you and I, Richard. The feeling of persecution isn’t new to me.... I’ve got the sense of it in my very bones.... I’ve been hounded with my ancestors from the East through Russia ... through Central Europe....”
“Good Lord,” Richard broke in; “I believe youenjoyfeeling like that.”
And David laughed: “I believe I do. It’s our heritage—this succulent style of melancholy, like seaweed swelling richly under water, compared with which all other sorrow is like seaweed, hard and stale and crackly, on the dry sand.”
“Can’t say that either is my style. I just get damned sick about things. I’m damned sick at not being able to join up in the Flying Corps.”
“You’re only a semi-Jew, Marcus, in spite of the rich promise of your face.”
“Iamonly a semi-Jew; my mother was a Christian. And what’s wrong with my face?” Richard demanded truculently. “I say—where are you taking me?” as David swerved into a narrow street of tall dingy-looking buildings.
“It’s all right. I just want to bring them these books.” He ran up some steps of a house with the “To Let” board forlornly plastering the windows; and as the bell dangled brokenfrom its socket, and no knocker was in evidence, banged with his fist on the panels of the front door.
“Rum,” thought Richard.
A tall, heavy-featured girl opened the door, and in silence led them to an unfurnished room littered with books and packing-cases and piles of tinned food. A babble of tongues struck harshly upon the ear.... For a second’s space of time Richard was walking up the wide twilit streets of Dorzheim—a dado of pines lowering blackly on the horizon—crowds brushing past, chattering—noisy guttural chatter from the pavements and cafés.... “You will see how many take off their hats to me....”
“This is my pal,” Redbury explained carelessly to the room at large. “He’s one of us——”
All Richard’s being uprose in a growl of contradiction. “One of us?” Why, these people were Germans—talking German, the whole gang of them—about eight or nine.... If he had been a tom-cat, he would have stiffened his fur and spat. As it was, he responded churlishly to salutations, and retired to a window-seat in the corner, from there to watch from beneath humped eyebrows the mysterious proceedings of these friends of David.
The atmosphere oppressed him with memory of all the rumours circulated about German spies ... German Secret Service.... England honeycombed with treachery.... What were they doing, in this empty house, talking German with the passionate zest of tongues let loose from hours of irksome restraint?... What was in those tins and cases?... How had they got hold of the German newspapers and pamphlets lying about?... One of the group was reading aloud a German letter now, and all listened tensely, some still kneeling on the dusty boards with their arms full of books—all except David and the heavy-looking girl and a boy with a flowing tie and thick lips and incredibly close shaven head, who were engrossed in some private discussion.... The girl produced a pile of music and their heads bent closer over the score.
Confounded insolence this, in the very heart of London! Richard’s mood wavered from indignation to a queer sort of panic at being thus associated. He wondered if he ought to give information? No, he could hardly do that, brought here in all good faith by David. But even supposing that these people were bent on no actual harm—and commonsenseasserted that they were merely packing hampers for the German prisoners, and at the same time enjoying a little licence of their native speech—even then, how dared David suppose that he was “One of us” among these—these Huns. Not a fibre of kinship in him stretched to meet them. He was as utterly an alien here as....
As he had been at Winborough, this last term.
A sudden ache asserted itself for Greville Dunne’s grey eyes looking straight from under the rim of his midshipman’s cap; for Greville’s English voice, and divine lack of understanding for all things save what was usual and fitting a young Britisher of eighteen should understand; ache for Mrs Dunne and for the Dunnes’ cottage home in Kent—for Molly’s tom-boy exuberance, and young Frank dashing into the chintz sitting-room with his toboggan.
Only of course they would be blank to the badgering perplexities which David Rothenburg——
In an effort to escape from the linked chain of thought, Richard took up a journal lying on the ground near his feet. It was a month-old copy of theTageblatt. In little separate squares outlined in black were the names of those who had fallen in action: “Thomas Spalding—Gefallen, 14ten Juni 1915.”... What was this palpable English name doing among the list of German officers? Thomas Spalding? Richard speculated idly on the anomaly, till fancy quickened to realization that this Thomas Spalding was his own equivalent on the other side—over there a boy of English parentage brought up in Germany, enlisted in the German army, with his sympathies ... where? Over here, Richard Marcus, of German parentage, brought up in England—Ah well, Thomas Spalding had more luck than he. They had taken him in the army and he had been killed in action. Nevertheless, who knows what he may have had to endure first, from taunts and coldness and suspicion, outcast emotions pushed this way and that. Inevitably the lot of those who are not entirely sons of the soil on which they fight ... die ... “Thomas Spalding, Gefallen.”... Richard stared at the brief announcement till a sting of tears rushed to his eyes. He wished he could have had just one talk, one grip of the hand with his unknown comrade, suddenly nearer and more vivid to him than either Greville or David.
You and I, Thomas Spalding....