CHAPTER VI
Richard found his Easter holidays dull. Montagu Hall was not a satisfactory substitute for Daisybanks, where he had owned his own carpentering shed in the garden, in which he might rampage as he pleased. Ferdie had been an understanding father in supplying Richard and Deb with full facilities to rag and to rampage. Now Richard passed most of his time reading books that dealt with the practical side of the war, and keeping fit in preparation for when he was eighteen. Perhaps he could squeeze himself in next year already by mis-stating his age ... there was always the dreadful possibility that the war might suddenly come to an end, and leave him what it had found him, a Winborough fifth form boy.
He was glad when the last week of the holidays came round; Deb was always about with some girl—Antonia Verity; and most of his chums being older than himself, were scattered about the country in training, or else in the trenches. David Rothenburg, of course, was about the same age; but Rothenburg was a moony sort of chap, especially lately. More from boredom than affection, Richard spent an afternoon at Bertie Fraser’s home in the south-west of London. The news of the torpedoing of the Lusitania had come through a couple of days before; and the two boys vented some of their hot indignation by experiments with a model submarine which should “damn well teach the blackguards not to mess about with our passenger liners!”
“I’ll put you on your way,” Fraser volunteered, when Richard had to go.
They turned from the quiet street of houses into a mews; then through a slum displaying barrows with highly-coloured wares, gaudy with small shops gustily illuminated, raucous with slatternly women calling from the upper windows to their offspring in the gutters.
“Short cut to the trams,” explained Fraser. “Hullo, what’s the row?”
A woman was huddled on a doorstep, wailing loudly, openly, without any pretence of hiding her stark grief. Her wisps of grey hair were blown by the wind flat across her distorted face, which she neither burrowed in her arms nor covered with a handkerchief. For she had just received tidings that her daughter had gone down in the steerage of the Lusitania, and she wanted God and man to know it.
A knot of sympathizers, neighbours and casual passers-by, stood dumbly around her, listening to the saga of Ethel Ann’s childhood, and Ethel Ann’s adolescence, and Ethel Ann envisioned powerfully but crudely as a human livid face, struggling, gulping, pleading for help ... help refused.... “They pushed ’em back into the water!” screamed the old crone. “My little ’un. Curse the Germans!—Curse ’em! They watched ’er drowning, and they laughed. A-a-aaah ...” articulation trailed away into a long-drawn-out cry of rage and mourning and hate. She strained her skinny arms in a tight line upward, as though in one gesture could be uttered all that her tongue had failed to say.
Richard felt it was impossible just to stand still and look on at this. He glowered about him in a spirit of desperate truculence. The others of the group were in exactly the same case, their eyes roaming stupidly up and down the narrow street, as though in search of some immediate measures. A carter leaning against his dray drawn up to the kerb opposite, spoke out fiercely:
“Ay. ’Uns. That’s the sort they are. Wish I ’ad one or two under my fist now. I’d show ’em what for.”
“Youhavegot ’em under your fist now—plenty—if you know where to look!” A lantern-jawed man with the hollow eyes of a fanatic, sprang onto the tail-board of the dray. At once he formed a vortex for all the loose and aimless emotions adrift in that street. Richard and Fraser found themselves in a wedge of men and women, women predominating, swaying with that sort of concerted drunken rhythm peculiar to all crowds. Even the mother of the drowned girl stopped her wails, and stared fixedly at the demagogue.
“Germans everywhere in this country—millions of ’em, laughing up their sleeves because we’re such ruddy softs asnot to chuck’em out. Laughing now, I expect, over our women and children pushed back into the icy water;Englishwomen and children. Yes, it’s a good joke, ain’t it? First-class!... I ’ad a pal on the Lusitania—well, never mind that—there’s some ’ere as ’ad more than pals. Are we going to stand it—that’s what I want to know? Are we going on trading with murderers and cowards, living cheek by jowl with ’em, buying our very bread from ’em ...poisonedbread! I tell you, there are Germans in the next street, in this street, and in a thousand other streets in England, with their dirty names over the shop-windows. Ask the Government!—ah! the Government’ll do something about it, per’aps, by and by. Ask ’em—they’ll say they’ve took the proper measures of precaution. We don’t want precaution, thank yer all the same. We want revenge on the foul scum what sank the Lusitania! We want revenge—not by and by, butnow! We want revenge—and by the dying agonies of our children, and for the sake of those they’ve left, we’ll have it!”
His hearers had been like empty bottles offering no resistance to the fiery liquid he poured into them. Yes—they wanted instant revenge; that was what they had sought by their vacant stares. With a scattered howl, from which the human element seemed long since to have been drained, they swirled up the street. Richard was borne along by the impetus of their fury. He had lost sight of Fraser, who, missing him, had probably returned home; it did not matter; this was rather a lark—one of the Lusitania riots; they had been breaking out all over London since the news had come through. No—not exactly a lark ... it swelled into something more formidable and animated by a spirit of deeper satisfaction than warranted by the schoolboy description: this was action; this was war; he was in direct contact with it at last. A gang of men in an ugly temper, running in a set direction ... he could feel purpose behind the lurching, staggering passage of the mob.... They were on their way to punish the Germans—coarse hulking giants who could laugh at Ethel Ann’s drenched face helpless in a green tumble of breakers.... Brutes! damned brutes! we’ll show them!...
This was all the jerky elated comment his brain could register during the headlong stampede up the cramped alley; that—and a confused impression of the women’s faces here and there patching the rest: streaming hair, with the iron pins stillclumsily caught in it; mouths open and awry; damp red skins. Mob-women—they were hideous....
The lantern-jawed man, still leader, halted abruptly in front of a small baker’s shop. “What about that?” denunciatory forefinger thrown out to indicate the name painted over the window: Gottlieb Schnabel. The crowd replied by another exultant howl ... it was beginning to merge its separate identities into the Demos-beast, at once frightful yet silly; incapable alike of retreat or initiative; a beast that uttered meaningless sounds; could be deflected hither and thither; a beast without logic or coherence; but a beast that was out, very obstinately, to maul somebody ... the Germans....
“What about that?”
Those in the van swerved so sharply into the little doorway of the shop, that their comrades immediately behind them could not restrain themselves from reeling past it by weight of impetus; then turned, and pressed back, with a violent impact jamming the rearmost in the narrow aperture; so that it seemed that dark menacing figures were springing out of the shadows from all sides and directions, into the pallid flare of the gas-jets singing forlornly over the counter.
The shop was deserted. Violent hands ripped down the curtains that divided off the back-parlour, and about a dozen roughs hurled themselves up the stairs, chanting: “Schnabel: Schnabel!” in hideous sing-song. Their feet could be heard trampling the upper premises in search of the owner: “Come aht of it, yer bloody funk! Wot abaht the Lusitania?”... The shop-door swung backwards and forwards in the draughts of wind which blew down the street; and at each oscillation, a little bell tinkled the warning of customers—an innocent tinkle, like a distant sheep-bell ... inadequate tinkle that recurred thinly through all the chaos of heavier sound: Crash of splintered glass, as the scales and weights were sent flying through the front window of the shop. The majority of avengers were working off their blood-lust by hullabaloo and wreckage; tossing about the buns and cakes; swinging and smashing the rows of big sweet-bottles; sending a hurricane of piled-up bread-baskets over the floor. It had been a neat little interior, three minutes before...!
But Richard was impatient of all this mere monkey destruction; his imagination was a-sweat to vent itself upon Germans, not upon rolls and doughnuts. He raced up the back stairs—and down again; no Germans there; and the rioters engaged in the same stupid business of destruction. But the Germans ... pointed steel helmets, puffed-out cheeks, and thick sensual lips—where had they contrived to stow themselves away? The notion had got started that they were here ... somewhere ... the excited boy did not stop to reason it out. He wanted to batter with his fists against a fat resisting carcase. Here?—of course they were; somebody had said so. Dodging the volley of loaves, he bolted out of the shop, and round the corner to the tiny yard at the back, unheeding whether he were alone or followed. The bakehouse!—must be one under the shop. Yes—beneath this wooden flap. Guided by the hot good smell of bread in the oven, he wrenched at the hinges; and rashly taking the ladder for granted, plunged into the gaping black space. Fragments of tales relating to the Lusitania horrors were flying loosely about in his mind, like the loaves in the shop: sickening details gasped out by the dazed survivors, and written up for the public in lurid journalese. Fighting—was that the Hun idea of fighting?—swine! cheats! butchers!—his turn to show them now....
Richard bumped his feet on level ground; he blinked an instant in the red dimness of his surroundings ... then, gradually, a face swam into his consciousness—a face over there, by the barrels—a face smeared in flour, and channelled by the drip of perspiration—a face that would have been ludicrous, were it not for its expression of deadly shivering fear ...trappedfear....
With knowledge of utter helplessness in his fascinated gaze, he confronted Richard. Beside him, a plump woman and two or three children crouched in a shadowy lump.
No army of Germans here. Only the little baker, Gottlieb Schnabel, and his family.
He stared at Richard. Richard stared back. And then his swollen illusion was pricked and shrivelled. So this was the reality of what he had been vengefully hounding down, he and the bawlers overhead? this one peaked, unhappy little face, white with dabs of flour, white in the last dumb extremity of panic.
Schnabel’s dry lips moved convulsively.... “Ach, bitte,” he babbled; then, with an effort: “Can—I—help—for—it?”...
Richard just caught the words. He recoiled; turned and stumbled up the ladder.... One must get away from that face.... Not so easy—some of the crowd had followed him after all, were swarming round the entrance to the bakehouse. “There’s no-one there,” muttered Richard; “no-one there” ... his voice was choked as though in a thick fog. “No-one there——” But the main thing was to get out, into the street, before they began to do things—no, that did not matter,—but before he couldhearthem doing things. They were pressing him back again, down again.... “There’s no one there, I tell you!” Blindly he buffeted right and left the heads which blocked his passage. Some of them, believing him, gave way ... melted out of reach from his hard fists and powerful driving shoulders. Others went shuffling and clattering past him, down the wooden rungs. “Schnabel! Schnabel!”—and a sharp scream. One must get away, quickly....
A great surge of bodies in the yard. Thrusting forward, with his head low down, through a rank smell of boots and corduroys and rusty skirts, Richard got clear at last. Round the corner—into the street—a number of people running in his direction—three or four policemen. “There’s no-one there!”—half-sobbing, he dodged through a mews into a wider street; again that loud trample of feet beating towards him—would they never let him escape? he wanted to be free of mobs. What did this mob want? Schnabel? ... No, it was only a helter-skelter of gnome-like urchins, shrieking hoarsely their late editions. He paused to draw breath; leant up against an adjacent wall; his cap had gone long ago, and the wind blew in hard, fresh gusts through his hair.
Presently he walked on again, slowly. Hysteria had evaporated, and was replaced by the usual shame. Now he came to think over the matter coolly, what had so upset him? The little rat of a baker had been in a funk, certainly; probably justified; probably the rabble had handled him fairly roughly. What of that? Ethel Ann, equally innocent, equally helpless, had met with an infinitely worse fate.
Oh, he was not going to take part in the baiting himself. No sport in it. The wisest course to pursue had been to departfrom the scene, as he had done. Had he “departed from the scene” or made an exit—rather less dignified than that inferred? Well, he could hardly be expected to stay and look on. Nor could he have protected Schnabel—hang it! the manwasa German. Not “the Germans”—but still a German. Richard, impatiently, classified the whole experience as “quite a decent scrum”; and as such, stuck it up on a shelf in his memory, like a book with several pages safely gummed together. He proved to be in a completely strange neighbourhood; and devoted all his present faculties in discovering the whereabouts of Montagu Hall.
“Richard, is that you?”
“Yes, Pater; I’ve just come in.”
“I want to speak to you, my boy.”
“Right-o!” Richard turned on the stairs, interrogatively.
“Not here. In my room.”
Old Hermann Marcus looked up with a queer gleam in his eyes, as Richard and Ferdie entered. Almost as though he were sorry for the boy—and yet secretly and maliciously triumphant.
“How are you getting on at Winborough?” Ferdinand asked jerkily, after a pause.
“Same as usual: excellent all-round ability, but no outstanding merit, as old Skeffington says. I say, dad, would you have any objection if I joined up next year already?” since his father had seemingly nothing of any importance to impart, Richard thought he might as well use the formal interview for his own purpose.
“Joined up what?”
“The army, of course. Royal Flying Corps, for choice; I’m fit enough to stand the medical test. And lots of fellows are passing themselves off as older than their age. Only I’m not very tall ...” his tone implied reproach for his father’s lack of inches. There was silence for a moment; he felt the two men were not attending to his request as they should; so he went on in further explanation: “It’s so rotten to be just under age for enlisting. Different if you’re a kid, and out of it altogether. Rogers—you remember him? he was headboy at Winborough—Rogers is only eighteen months older than I am, and he’s in the thick of it. And to-day more than ever——” he stopped dead.
“Why to-day more than ever?” Ferdinand enquired, very gently.
Richard was not quite sure why: except that to-day he had expended a lot of heat and energy on a cause which had repaid him neither in vigorous defence nor in ultimate satisfaction; and he wanted an experience of real, substantial war and real, substantial Germans to make up for the futile civilian imitation. But he was unwilling to explain all this about Germans in front of his grandfather, or even to his father, who might be subject to occasional sensitive twinges on that score. So he swerved from the direct question:
“Quite frankly, dad, I mean to enlist next year, with or without permission. But I thought I’d like to hear if you have any special objection; good of me, isn’t it?” laughing.
“Certainly I should be proud and glad if you could fight for England, but——” Ferdie evidently found an increasing difficulty in going on. He took up an evening paper from the table: “Have you seen the late editions, Richard?”
“No. Any news? Not—not a defeat?”
“The Prime Minister has made certain promises ... there have been more anti-German riots over this Lusitania business——”
“Conceited fools, who haven’t the brains to win a victory at the Front, think themselves patriots if they break a few shop-windows,” growled Marcus from his corner.
Richard flushed darkly, and his hands clenched in his pockets: “They’d be doing the same, and much worse, to us in Germany, if we’d established ourselves all over the place there, as they have here. And the sinking of the Lusitania was a foul, cowardly affair; no wonder we’ve lost control of our tempers, hearing about it.”
“We?” echoed the old Bavarian, with a sarcastic inflexion; “and you as German as I, my boy! You won’t be allowed to forget it as easily, in the future.”
“Rubbish!” said Richard shortly. He had no desire to quarrel with his grandfather, who, as a lonely but unyielding unit in enemy country, demanded a certain chivalry of treatment.—But no fellow was going to stand being called a German, nowadays! “Have you done with me, dad? I’msorry about the fuss in the papers, but it will all blow off presently. I don’t think they’ll do anything to the naturalized Germans, anyway; not to those who have been settled in England as long as you.” He sauntered towards the door; then halted to add in a sudden inspiration of diplomacy: “The sooner I’m fighting, dad, the better for you, all of you. A son in the army makes a huge difference to public feeling.”
“That depends on which army ...” threw in Hermann Marcus. And Ferdie said, with a stupendous effort: “You can’t fight for England in this war, Richard. I’m sorry, as you are so dead nuts on it,” carefully negotiating the idiom. “But they will not take you. You are a German.”
Richard burst into a great shout of laughter. “What rot, dad! How can I be a German? I’m as English as they make ’em.”
“You were born in Germany. And I was not naturalized at that date.”
“Born—in—Germany?”
“You see,” Ferdie apologized, miserably avoiding his son’s eyes, “your grandfather invited us to pay him a long visit to Munich. I and Deb—and your dear mother, of course. He had never seen little Deb ... she was seven years old——”
“A quite abominable pest of a child!” from the depths of the armchair in the corner.
“And so we all went over. And you were born there. Your poor mother died of it ...” he cleared his throat, and blew his nose. “That, perhaps, is why it was never mentioned to you.”
Ferdie was right. He had felt the loss of Dorothea so keenly that sentiment demanded of the household that her death should never be alluded to. Whence followed that Richard’s birth was likewise hushed up, being intimately linked with the bereavement and all its tragic circumstances. He had never bothered about the matter, taking it for granted that, like Deb, he was born at Daisybanks.
“But, father, I can’t be a German. I—I don’tlikeGermans. I can’t stick them at any price.” His tone was sharp with the first agonized belief that some truth might lurk in the altogether staggering accusation that these two were bringing against him. “I don’t like Germans. And we’re fighting them. I’m English—like other chaps. You can’t make a fellow German by saying he is,” relieved commonsense assertingitself over a frame of mind which was almost babyish in its reliance on the repetition: “I don’tlikeGermans!”
And then, a criminal before the sternest of judges, Ferdinand Marcus made his confession:
“You see—when I was naturalized afterwards, you—you were not naturalized at the same time. I wanted you to choose for yourself when you came of age; to be free to make your own choice for one country or another—for any country. I, as a boy, had never been consulted what were my private wishes——” His father here gave utterance to a grunt pregnant with rich opinions of the unimportance of Ferdie’s wishes, whatever they might have been. “—It should be different for you, I said. Who knows if you would want to find yourself a British subject, in twenty-one years? Time enough then. So I left it till you should be old enough——”
“It didn’t strike you, I suppose, that a war might break out in the meantime?”
“It did not strike a great many other people, Richard.”
“Doch! everyone but an idiot; an idiot and a bungler ... with your prate of ‘my children’s rights,’ and ‘my children’s opinions’ and ‘my children’s liberty.’... A bungler with your children, like with everything else, you are bringing one of them to an internment camp; we will see to what fine end you bring the other.”
Richard faced round sharply: “Is that what it means for me?”
“We cannot tell for certain; I will make an appeal on your behalf——”
“Damn! I don’t want any appeals. It’s not a felony to be born in one place instead of another. What’s the law?”
“By pre-war law, you took your father’s nationality while you were a minor—but all that has been altered——” Ferdinand took up the paper: “They’ve been lenient so far; but all this agitation—the Home Secretary has had to make concessions to the public. They are rounding up enemy aliens of military age; that does not concern you at present. You will have to register under the Five-Mile Act until—until——”
“Until I’m old enough to have enlisted,” muttered the boy. “And Deb?”
“Deb is all right; she was born in England. At least—I must see: there is still some confusion under these new conditionsas to whether you are what your father is, or where you were born. And they alter the law every five minutes. But I think she is all right.”
“Good,” with a breath of relief. “And you, dad?”
“They are not persecuting the naturalized, so far. There is an outcry from the extreme party, but——” Ferdie shrugged his shoulders, “I am a British subject.”
“And grandfather? And Aunt Stella?”
“They are repatriating the old people and the women and children. But exemptions are to be made in special cases; Stella has been a resident here for so many years——”
“And I, being a cripple of nearly eighty, your English may have the kindness to allow me to die under a flag which I have certainly no wish to live under.”
“Cut all that!” his grandson silenced him roughly. “It’s rank pro-German——”
“German,” Hermann methodically corrected him. “Iat least know what I am.”
“And Richard and I also know what we are, too,” Ferdie shouted warmly, clapping his hand on Richard’s broad, and at that moment exceedingly forbidding shoulder; “our sentiments for this country of ours are loyal as any Britishers’; we cheer their victories. We continue to salute the Union Jack with pride in our hearts——”
“Whatever such foolishness you may commit, liebe Ferdinand, you remain only half an Englishman.”
Ferdie’s resolute bellow gained strength with every caustic interruption from his parent. “We will cheerfully give help where we are permitted——”
Richard broke in: “—And cheerfully let ourselves be hoofed out where we’re not? No, I’m not going to hang round the edges of patriotism like a beggar. Why wasn’t I told of all this till now?”
It struck Ferdie that Richard was at times disconcertingly like his grandfather. “Why should you have been made worried and uncomfortable at school, while there was still no need? And before the war, what did it matter where you were born?”
“And now, what else matters in all the world?” the first numbness of shock had passed, and Richard’s innermost being was plunging in every direction like a tortured bull caught inside the ring-fence. “You’ve robbed me of my nationality—professingto be so keen on my happiness. Born in Germany, and lugged over to England; educated in England, and allowed to take it for granted I was English, and all the while a German subject—in God’s name, where do I belong? what am I? who can claim me? Oh yes, you’ve been jolly good to me, I don’t deny that; you’ve spoilt me; you’ve given me everything—except a country. But to shove a fellow in a position where an outbreak of war leaves him with his sentiments in one place, and his birth-certificate in another, is rather overdoing the freedom-of-choice stunt. You might have known all along I’d care to be rooted somewhere. Citizenship doesn’t go for nothing, even in peace——”
“Nonsense, Richard; be honest; how much did you trouble your head about citizenship, before nineteen-fourteen?”
“I thought I was English,” Richard said. And repeated, with a sort of dazed pugnacious idiocy: “I thought I was English.” Then he flared out again: “Youdidn’t think at all. You were just careless. Why on earth did you want to take me to Germany to be born?”
“I have told you; your grandfather sent for us.”
“It wouldn’t have hurt him to wait a year or two. Much he cared if he never saw any of you again. You were all afraid to say no to him. I thought myself so lucky to be born in these times. What’s the good of the war now?”
His father could not forbear from a smile at the savage young egoism. The boy saw it, and raged on: “It would have been better if I’d died when my mother died——”
“Hush, hush, my son.”
... Richard crashed his weight on to a chair, head butted down on his arms along the back rail. And the two men watched him in silence; one of them thinking with a slow, grudging, resentment how good a moment it might have been for him to have seen this youngster in an officer’s light-blue uniform, come clanging and jangling into a certain house in Munich, to bid good-bye before his departure to win glory for the Vaterland. And the other was vainly groping round for what comfort he could give his only son in trouble; Dorothea would have so known what little tender thing to do or say ... his eyes filled with tears, and in his over-anxious endeavour to play mother at this juncture, he blundered dismally:
“Come, come, my boy—buck up! You who are usually so sensible. It isn’t such a tragedy, even if it should end,at the worst, by internment. You will be safe, and with friends——”
Richard slowly lifted his head. He looked rather old for sixteen, and his voice dragged like tired footsteps on a heavy road:
“Sorry if I was rude, dad. Yes, of course I’ll be safe. Much safer than in the Flying Corps. I didn’t think of that. I’m going to bed now. Good-night.”
Half-way across the room, he came back for the evening paper. Then he went out.
... Strange that his brain should have shot right away from the main catastrophe on to this tangent question of reprisals! There, out in mid-ocean, a liner sunk; here, in a London slum, a baker’s shop raided. Where was the connection? A Gottlieb for an Ethel Ann.... “Yes, but is it quite fair—revenge by proxy? it wasn’t Schnabel who drowned Ethel Ann; it was another German; Schnabel was all the while harmlessly selling loaves. Why should he have to pay?” Were they thinking of that, the mad herd who had rushed up the street, brandishing their crowbars and axes and pokers? “Was I thinking of it? To relieve one’s feelings ... biting on the tooth—yes, but it’s got to be that especial nervous tooth—and you should want to hit thesameGerman, not any old German, or the next-best German. If Ethel Ann’s mother could have got in on one of the torpedo crew ... I suppose one can’t expect a crowd to reason that way. But I might have saved him.... Damn it, why should I? he’s a German!”
And so am I—and so am I—knocked the meaningless hammer refrain from the walls and ceiling of his room, from every corner and cranny; in the wind that fitfully rattled the blind; in the creak of the chair; and from the rumble of traffic far below.... So am I—so am I—everywhere but inside his brain, where the mere statement might have been quickened to torturing realization—but it seemed unable to force an entrance, pushed out by a fantastic jumble of oddments he had never thought out before, never bothered to think out.
—Naturalized ... what exactly did that stand for? A paper which was given in payment of some small sum, stating that you were no more of one nationality, but of another.... But surely nationality was no surface matter, to be dealt with in this arbitrary fashion? it went deeper: your own country, your own soil. “‘Breathes there a man with soul so dead!’ how Fraser ranted that, last term when they were doing Scott. Beastly showing-off!... What will they say at Winborough when I tell them?—No, hang! that wasn’t it.... Nationality—the place where you were born——”
A dead halt in the onrush of thought. Richard stared blankly around him.... Then it began again, mental machinery that whirled ever faster, grinding, minutely grinding, at all that stray lumpy stuff....
“Nothing to do with where you were born. I can swear to that. That’s accidental. And your father’s nationality—accidental too, as far as you’re concerned; can’t be tacked on to it as a matter of course.
“What is it, then? The land that holds a meaning for you; it might be a question of habitation, or tradition, or convenience—herd instinct with the people you live among. Or—or imagination.
“No—it digs further down than that even.
“It ought to be the sum of where you were born, and where your father was born as well, and his father; where you have always lived, and always hope to live.”
But people move about. Cross over. Get mixed. You cannot actually fasten down humanity as neatly as on a map; a line here, and a line there, and this side is English, and this side German. During all these years of peace, little separate individuals busily and happily intermarrying and begetting children; becoming entangled in trade and in friendship; by a million amenities of commerce and art and amusement and family, semi-obliterating the sharp boundary outlines——
“People drift about. And then a war happens. Like a ripping of canvas. No—like two lines of trenches.... A scramble apart to either trench—lucky beggars who know quite distinctly where they belong. And No Man’s Land between. And some stranded in No Man’s Land....
“To be officially of No Man’s Land—that’s one thing; can’t be helped; penalty of carelessness beforehand. But isit possible, I wonder, tofeelyourself not for one country nor another? neither mattering? neither victory mattering?
“Socialism—international socialism. But then one must care principally for all humanity—in a lump. And that’s patriotism too, on the largest scale of all. Just like a man crazy only on his own duck-pond is a patriot—a local patriot. All Man’s Land ... One Man’s Land....
“Not for me, thanks. If I had been twenty-one before all this shindy, I’d have been naturalized English!”
Naturalized! Was that only an official cover again? And under the covers, what were those people actually thinking? The Rothenburgs? thousands like them—the half-and-half people....
“I like a German tobea German!”... “Naturalized or unnaturalized, it’s all the same to me!”... “Can a leopard change his spots?”...
Memory offered him these stray phrases perpetually uttered and repeated in a penetrating rasp—where?... in the hall downstairs, and at—at breakfast, surely? (memory struggled)—Oh yes! old Gryce. Behind the voice a crude pink face materialized, with an ugly sag of line at the corners of the mouth and a wisp of white beard wagging from the chin. Old Gryce was always ejecting that type of remark.
“Intern them all!... We didn’t ask them to settle over here. We don’t want them....”
The boy paced up and down the room, head bent, hands locked behind him, brows heavily knit, thinking it out:
Naturalization was, after all, a promise—well, a bargain then; what was a bargain but a mutual promise? A whole community had learnt to rely securely on such a promise; had confidently forfeited the protection and advantages of their native land, in favour of an adopted country. And now if their security were repudiated on excuse of war——
“Is there any stipulating clause in the naturalization contract, making it void in the event of war, I wonder? Because if not——
“But we can’t leave enemy blood loose about the country during war-time. It isn’t safe. They might all be spies. Some of themare. And spying is the worst thing of all—abuse of hospitality. No wonder the thought of it drives people to a sort of madness——”
He took up the evening edition—flung it down again; toodark to read anything but the headlines: “More Anti-German Riots”——
... Someone crouching low in the corner by the cupboard. A patch of white. A face—mad-frightened.... “Ach, bitte——”... The little German baker.—Or ... no—the face had changed—it was Richard himself, staring panic-stricken, yet reproachfully, at that other Richard who was leading against him a hostile mob:
“He’s a German!”
“And so am I—and so am I——”
It had stabbed through to the brain at last.
“I’m not a German. It’s a lie. I’m not. Ihatethe Germans. They have drowned Ethel Ann ... Ethel Ann....”
How had she looked? had she brown or fair hair?—but all hair is the same in the water ... dank seaweed round a discoloured pulp....
“Swine! Swine!”—he was pacing again with rapid, demented step. “That’s not the game as it should be played, as it was arranged to be played. It’s a breach of the rules. Women and children and non-combatants excluded, and every man with a chance of self-defence. The conventions of war——”
And suddenly Richard stood still and began to laugh. And what chance of defence had a man standing beside a bursting bomb thrown by an unseen hand from fifty yards away? Little silly, fretful rules—with death and destruction and decay streaming wide over one country after another; whirring in the very air above God’s churches; throbbing in the sea under the millionaire’s pleasure-ship; each individual helplessly involved with their bodies or with their goods or with their hearts. Then, what the devil is the use of some abstract gabble about the conventions of a game? ... All that was for five hundred years ago, when one soldier had it out with another soldier according to the laws of chivalry. But inthiswholesale welter.... All that fuss about two or three isolated lives sacrificed against the rules, as compared to the thousands according to rule; agony outside the rules, and agony according to rule. When it comes to it, what’s the difference? Ludicrous to reason in the old way—the ravings of an idiot; we have ramped so far round in the circle of civilization that we are miles behind again....
Richard did not attempt to turn his feverish, dishevelled reflections into coherence; but he could not force his mind from fastening with this queer new tenacity on aspects to which, until now, it had been muffled to a remote indifference. The war and all its immense and tendril complexities—how could he ever have viewed it just as a matter of dealing blows?
“It’s because I was to have had an active part in it. I was going to join up. The only way to avoid war-horror is to take part in it. What will it look like from the internment camp?——”
Imagination pierced—and recoiled from the threatened nausea of stagnation. Internment ... why, he and Deb had joked about it (“Yes, Deb’s all right; I’m glad Deb’s all right!”)—Concentration camps; potted Germans—“Did you know, Richard, Gustav Fürth was potted yesterday?” ... Jokes!—What were they like, these camps? the prisoners were well-treated, he had heard; but what did youdo? ... Vision of two fattish young Teutons sleepy over their game of dominoes. This for him, while out there, out there, was the scrum and the sacrifice. This for Richard, who was a fighter ... “Oh God! let the war be over before I’m eighteen!”