CHAPTER VII
But Cliffe Kennedy was indubitably to blame. No one could spend so much time with Cliffe as Deb had done of late, without echoing his tendency to achieve a climax at whatever cost. His sense of dramatic effect abhorred a vacuum. Deb had caught the trick, that was all. She was always impressionable. “I have treated you with the respect due to a good girl ...” and then the pause—and, spoken almost mechanically, her curtain line.
“Well—he asked for it!”
The drawback to these histrionic displays in ordinary life, however, is lack of the aforesaid curtain. Certainly it should have fallen at that juncture: “You see, I have not been good ...” and Act III a fortnight later.... Meanwhile, Deb and Samson remained looking at one another, in Mrs Phillips’ boudoir, her head proudly tilted, so that the little three-cornered face was fore-shortened to an upcurling of black eye-lashes, and mouth a mutinous half-crescent, the corners trembling to a smile sternly chidden back again—“This is serious!”—but the irrepressible desire persisted.... Samson’s expression was such a marvel of Pharisaic indignation and disgust.
“So much for the charity of a good man’s love! Why, supposing it had been true and I wanted him to forgive me?”
In Samson Phillips’ mind was no doubt of the statement which had shattered his rock-embedded belief in the immaculate chastity of a well brought up Jewish girl of his own set.... The argument: “Why should she say such a thing if it weren’t true?” was too obviously undeniable for admittance. And Deb could have explained to him neither the contagious peculiarity of Mr Cliffe Kennedy, nor the fact that the Phillips’ family and the thrice persistent proposal had rendered her hysterical.
Well—now at least she was free. Samson would never again desire her for his wife. Mrs Phillips would never again invite her to dinner. Although Deb had chosen a drastic method of dealing with undesirable invitations to dinner or to the altar—“do they have altars in a Synagogue? I forget ... but oh, I wish he would speak before I laugh!”
But Samson’s principles, against which in sheer despair she had flung her falsehood, stood rigid and undamaged, like so many spear-tipped railings. Henceforth, Deb was to him an outcast. He looked at her ... and then he went to the door and called his mother, and told her Deb was not feeling very well and wanted to return home at once.
Mrs Phillips gathered from his expression that “that girl” had flouted him again. Deb was sent home in a taximeter and an atmosphere of black disgrace. Samson’s one look had reminded her of a Roundhead soldier—Oliver Cromwell himself. What a fate to have escaped—Cromwell’s wife, Cromwell’s family. And a Jewish Cromwell into the bargain!
“But will he tell—anybody?”
“What does it matter!”
An impulse of sheer mischief—then swift contrition—intense relief—and the usual shoulder-shrug. This was the wheel of Deb’s psychology. Several days later she told Antonia of the debâcle. Antonia had meanwhile been out of town, driving her Major-General.
“Samson would never have done for you, of course. But you encouraged him, Deb. Why?”
“I didn’t,” sunnily; “I just wanted to try if I could make myself good enough. And I pulled it off—for a fortnight.”
“And then, in one well-chosen lie—Deb, I love you very dearly, but your creed is beyond all following. It seems to me to consist mainly of a lot of trouble for nothing.”
“I just wanted to try,” Deb repeated. “Imighthave been good enough, you know. And if the clock had struck while I was pulling that face, I’d have stopped like that. So Nurse used to say.”
“Meaning—if you had fallen in love with a good man at the psychological moment of trying to be good. You’re too accommodating altogether, my child. Suppose it were a bad man, and the clock struck while you were pullingthatface?”
Deb went to the mirror, and tried on the two faces, one after another. “Which becomes me best?” she demandedanxiously, “Puritan or rogue? Oh, Antonia, it was such fun busting the Phillips’ illusion. I shall never have such fun again.”
Samson was sent to the Front shortly afterwards. And Beatrice confided in her mother-in-law, Trudchen Redbury, her amazement that any girl could so far lose her reason as thrice to refuse a match like Samson Phillips: “She must have said something to upset him badly, that last time—but he won’t say what; he seemed heart-broken, poor fellow ... and going off like that, too, without any hope. Howcouldshe?”
Trudchen also wondered how Deb possiblycould... and discussed the matter with Otto, who was thus at last brought face to face with the failure of his cherished notion of a marriage between his little daughter Nell, and an officer in the British army: “He vanted Ferdinand’s Teporah? Ach wass! but I thought she and that yong Gennedy——” He remembered how the insolent pair had “called” on the Redburys one Sunday afternoon, for all the world as tho’ they were engaged. And then had followed Cliffe’s confidence in the train ... the name left chivalrously blank ... and not feeling at all friendly towards Deb, who had robbed him of an English son-in-law, Otto, by sudden malignant inspiration, inserted her name into the blank, and was instantly convinced of the correctness of his guess: “So! andzatvos vy she refused Villips!”
Otto sucked at his lips, very gravely ... genuinely shocked and buffeted by the revelation that a maiden of the same race and class and upbringing as his own daughter, could so step aside from virtue. But then he ceased sucking, blew out his cheeks ... and ruminated....
That poor Ferdinand: with all his eccentric notions of rearing a young girl, one must yet be sorry for him. His daughter was no better than a—than a—Otto hesitated between a rich selection of epithets in two languages.
One must be sorry for Ferdinand. But it was a pity that he should not know that there was a cause why one was sorry for him—(Ferdie had always been the successful partner in the days when Nash, Marcus and Rothenburg had still existed as afirm).... Bread and water and a locked room would do the minx good.
And in addition to all this, Otto was sufficiently akin in spirit to both Cliffe and Deb to relish the notion of dramatic tidings—himself as a sort of Messenger in Greek drama.
“If I do not tell Ferdinand Marcus, then zertainly another will do so——”
Which again would be a pity. Otto decided not to risk forestalment.
At the first shiver of Autumn, grandfather had a bad bronchial cold, which meant the luxury of a fire in his bedroom. During such a period all the Marcuses were usually to be found in enjoyment of this available private warmth, as a rest from the perpetual conviviality of the lounge or drawing-room fires. True, it meant that grandfather’s company was thrown in with the fire—but Stella and Ferdie were used to him, and Deb and Richard thought him rather funny.
Otto, when he paid his visit, was received by the three generations of male Marcus. He requested that Richard be ejected, with that lack of ceremony towards his juniors which was so deplorable in the old-fashioned relative.
“All right, Uncle Otto—I wasn’t going to stay, anyway. Where’s David?”
David was in a training-camp. And: “Has that boy of yours nossing to do but pite his head off all day long, Marcus?” when the door had slammed on Richard.
“As much to do as your son-in-law Fürth,” shouted Hermann with irascible emphasis. “Or perhaps you do not visit him often enough to ascertain his occupations? Herr Je! Rothenburg, he was a good enough Schiddach for your daughter Hedvig five years ago....”
Otto did not like being addressed as Rothenburg. Especially as a door behind the cupboard communicated with another bedroom. He glanced uneasily that way....
“There is no policeman there,” his host reassured him. “Our neighbour is a rabbit who calls himself a Special Constable, that is all. And I am convinced, lieber Rothenburg,that your naturalization papers are ready on your person and in complete order. Or—let me see—you are one of those that have changed their names ... Redbury, is it?” the old scoundrel chuckled hoarsely. “Redbury!—poor old Fritzie Rothenburg of Nuremburg—your late uncle and my friend—that would have amused him—Redbury! But you must correct me if I forget.”
And all this, in vengeance for the implied belittling of Richard.
The S.C. could be heard moving about among his furniture ... and Otto’s manner had not that repose which stamps the caste of Vere de Vere—he accompanied the old man’s loud discourse by an agonized hushing, which Hermann heeded no more than a drone of a bluebottle. From offensive English he lapsed into friendly—too friendly—German, enquiring affectionately after all Otto’s relatives in Berlin, Mainz, Köln and Frankfurt, mentioning each person by name and address. And when Otto affected ignorance of the existence of these, he laughed and coughed, and coughed so much that he was perforce reduced to gasping watery-eyed silence, which gave Otto his chance at last for a patriotic panegyric which he trusted would reach the “S.C.,” and so nullify any evil effects of Hermann’s malice. “—My son is in the drenches, and my pones will one day lie in English ground. My money I give for England, and England, I bray, may still find a use for an old man’s services, isn’t it?”
“Ach wass!” impatiently interrupting the peroration. “You have been learning by heart the recruiting posters. I would advise a little less noise about patriotism, lieber Freund. You look like an enemy spy who has yet to learn not to overdo his business. It may bring you into awkward situations.” Otto turned yellow and his fingers twitched. “Besides, a man who cannot be loyal to his own country——”
“England is my country!” cried Otto hysterically.
“Stuss!” and Hermann subsided contemptuously. While Ferdie broke in: “You have neither of you any sense at all. It is quite possible, papa, not only to be from prudence, but also in thought and from affection, loyal to an adopted country, where one has lived, and planted one’s hopes, and brought up one’s children. Would one bring up one’s children to serve England before even war was in sight—if still one cared about Germany? But to shout it about—that is tactless nowadays.They do not love the sound of our voices—unpleasant—yes, certainly—but natural. Let us then rather keep quiet, you and I, Redbury. Papa I respect for making no professions where he cannot honestly feel them—but he also should keep quiet. You are discourteous to a country of whom you are the guest. And also you make things very uncomfortable for us your family.”
“I have no fear,” snapped the old autocrat, sitting very upright.
“But I have then, for Stella and Deb and Richard. So when I feel pessimist, when my opinion is not likely to be a popular opinion, I keep it to myself. For the difference between us and the British-born is this: there is, alas, no bias on our judgments. That pleasant happy bias! ah, it must be reposeful to let one’s judgment roll with the bias; but the bias is lodged in the nature, and the nature springs from the soil, and the soil of England is not ours—we who belong to no country, and are therefore doomed to see things exactly as they are. I tell you, Redbury, I would give ten years of my life to possess that cheery confidence that stupidly, and oh, how splendidly, through the blackest reverses, through the silliest muddles and incompetence, still goes on with their eternal Britannia rules the waves and Britons never, never, never shall be slaves....”
“If you had a son in the drenches,” repeated Otto virtuously.
And Ferdie sighed and said no more. In spite of all the daily suspense and anxiety, how he envied the Redburys their possession of Con. He had not yet forgiven himself the mistake which resulted in Richard’s present mooching, slouching existence, not keen to go back to school—not worth while to enter a profession—waiting for his eighteenth birthday to bring him behind barbed wire.
“Ferdinand,” said Otto Redbury, interrupting the other man’s reverie, “I have gom on a very serious errand....”
When Stella and Deb came in to boil the kettle for tea, half-an-hour later, the Messenger was gone. Ferdie was staring into the fire, his fuzzy grey head bent down almost to his knees. And Hermann’s thin lips wore a cynical smile ... he hadwaited for these results of Deb’s upbringing, since a spoilt grandchild of eight years was first brought to Munich for his inspection.
“Deb—come here!”
Deb looked astonished. She could scarcely ever remember her father shouting at her. But to Stella the sound was familiar. The Teuton disciplinarian always begins by losing control of his voice. Ferdie, in supreme emotion, was reverting to type....
“Did you spend a night——” he choked—then started off again: “Did you spend a night with that man Kennedy at his cottage in the country?—Yes or no?”
“What’s the fuss about?” asked Deb, in Richard’s most casual manner. She thrust her hands deep into the pockets of her lilac jersey, tilted back her chin ... and wished devoutly she could run away.
“Yes or no?” roared her father.
“There was no harm in it.”
“Yes or no?”
“No....”
Sheer whimpering terror, this; not of the bellow which shook the very furniture, but of the blaze in Ferdie’s wontedly mild brown eyes.
“You did not?” the relief was so overwhelming, his instant trust in her word so pathetic, that Deb for very shame quickly revoked her lie.
“Not in the way you mean. Why are you so ready to believe ... girls and men in our set—the look of things doesn’t matter so tremendously any more ... doesn’t matter at all—No, do listen to me——” She was honestly fighting down an inclination to sulk—a defiant silence, she would have interpreted the attitude—“I do know what it looks like to you, that I stopped down there with Cliffe that night—but really and truly,” with an appealing little smile—“I’m still Daddy’s good girl?”
“Then why,” asked Ferdie, avoiding her smile—“why did you encourage and then refuse Captain Phillips?”
“Oh——” Deb stared mentally at these two bits of her—yes, her silliness, which entangled produced such a formidable appearance against her. Could she put herself right again? Not without help. She turned with quick confidence to her aunt.
“Auntie Stel——” and stopped as though at a shock.
“I suppose you had just enough decency left not to deceivean honest man!” Stella’s voice sounded as though it had been filed. She crossed from Deb’s side to her brother, the action clearly defining where her support was ranged.
“Ferdie,” she whispered, for he had sunk back to a despondent, shrunken heap in the arm-chair; and his knees shook as she laid her hand on them—“Ferdie, old boy....”
“Little Deb ...” he murmured. Well, Ferdie had always been a sentimentalist. And the girl, hearing, would have flung herself at him, even then, her arms tightly round his neck, to cajole and explain, explain by familiar hugs and kisses ... but Stella was between them. And grandfather, still with that wooden smile jerking up the ends of his moustache. One expected it from grandfather, but Auntie Stel, always so young and jolly—Not quite the words—“juvenile and vivacious” expressed it better, somehow: “Run along and enjoy yourselves, kiddies....” Why was Stella’s look at her now like the sting of a wasp? ... that came of treating a grown-up chummily, and as an equal. Never again. After all, shewasonly a maiden aunt ... couldn’t tell her so ... even in extremes one couldn’t say the beastliest thing of all—evidentlytheycould, though—no code of honour.... Grown ups!
Deb hunched her shoulders in moody exasperation. Even if shehad... done it, she never dreamt of this rasping encounter with authority. She, who had even honoured her immediate family by bragging about their tolerance and general amiability: “Dad’s an old darling and Auntie Stel a sport, and nobody minds grandfather....”
She said: “Samson Phillips was a prig.”
“You will not quickly find another man for husband, my dear Deborah,” Hermann Marcus rumbled menacingly. “You would have been wiser to strive to please Captain Phillips.”
Stella turned and sprang, buried her claws in his words. “Husband!—do you suppose she wants ahusband? She’s had what she wants. Look at her!”
This, then, was what had lain in waiting all these years between herself and Deb—what extreme of love or hatred. That Deb should have her good time—that was well enough; Stella did not grudge it her; Stella helped her to it. But that Deb should stand there, in triumphant insolent knowledge of—the thing itself—the older woman could not bear that. Her starved senses yapped their rage and envy. Into Deb’s very poise as she remained silent and aloof in the middle of the room,Stella thought to read pity of her, the virgin, virgin by fate and by tyranny, by cowardice even, not by desire.... Deb, little Deb the child, Ferdie’s baby daughter, had trodden strange ground, and by reason of this she was altered, baffling, mysterious, immune from scolding, forbearing to taunt because she could afford forbearance—what did she want with Aunt Stella’s partisanship? she had taken what Aunt Stella had not dared to take....
“Look at her!”
“Is there any reason,” grandfather demanded impatiently, “why I should sacrifice my tea to look at an extremely badly-brought-up, dishonourable and wicked young lady who ought to have been married and out of the way long ago if she had owned a father who could properly attend to her interests. You cannot reproach me, lieber Ferdinand, that I have not warned you, over and over again, what would be the result of your loose and wicked lack of discipline——”
“Well, you didn’t do so very much better with your daughter, did you?” cried Deb, resenting the attack on her father’s easy kindness, but forgetting that her defence of him involved a slur on Stella.
“I’ve kept my good name at least, thank you, Deb; you’ve disgraced yourself and us, running to lick the hand of any man who chose to call. I hope your father will put a stop to it for the future, anyhow.”
“He?” Hermann Marcus laughed, and Ferdinand, performing the proverbial action of shutting the stable door, went further and slammed it with all his force.
“You will attend to me, Deb, yes? I have made a mistake in trusting you. I let you do as you please, go where you please, without asking questions, without interfering. I hoped so to make you happy. For the future all that will be changed. You will not go out in the evenings, nor to stay with your friends. You will account for your time spent to me or to your Aunt Stella. I will see to it that you take lessons in something, to occupy you usefully. Less pocket-money and no latchkey—perhaps so we can bring you back to a sense of self-respect. Also I will ask to examine your correspondence. Be sure that it is not with pleasure that I give these orders——” He halted, hearing a poignantly mocking echo of his old prophecy to Dorothea: “It will be all right—When one is happy, one is also good——”
“I have made the worst mistake with you,” he concluded harshly.
“Then I won’t pay for it. I’ll run away—I’m not going to be spied on and treated like a baby now, after you’ve let me do just exactly as I like for years. Why weren’t you strict all along? I thought you were really broad-minded—that you really thought a girl had wants and claims ... that a girl is human ... and the marrying her off business is extinct, and that going wrong doesn’t matter so much, after all.” She was half-crying now, but gulped fiercely, and went on: “You let me suppose that you’d understand if I did—anything. But you’re just exactly the same when it comes to it—the old-fashioned parent, ready with the old-fashioned curse. Well, then, you should have looked after me in the old-fashioned way. You should have done before all that you say you’ll do now—examined my letters and disapproved of my friends and questioned my comings and goings. What do you suppose suddenly jerks a girl back, when she has read everything, discussed everything, seen everything——? Books and plays, jabber, and other people’s example—answerable to nobody. Why, they’re only preparation for—for ... the rest! It wasn’t as if I was answerable to anybody; you never bothered. I’d rather have been kept ignorant and innocent—much rather, dad. It isn’t fair to bring me up in the new way, and then expect me to be good in the old way.”
“And it is not fair to be for ever instructed by one’s children how one should rightly have behaved towards them!” Ferdinand was now at the end of his patience. “First Richard and then you: ‘Why didn’t you do this? Why didn’t you do that?’ God in Heaven, is the parent a beast of burden that all your troubles and wrongdoings should be piled on to his back? And supposing I had scolded and worried you and forbidden—then it would have been again: ‘You have ruined my life—a little more liberty, and I need not have been driven to—to—behave like a street-girl!’ Always the parent’s fault—you are shirkers, you who are so proud to call yourselves a New Generation—putting all responsibility on heredity, education, pre-natal influence—I know not what, so long as you safely escape self-reproach—so long as you safely escape the crying of your own conscience.”
“Conscience is religion. I’m not religious. If I were—but you never bothered about that either. I’m not Jewess norChristian—I’m nothing at all—nothing—you never bothered.”
“We did bother; yes indeed, but we were afraid of bothering too much. We wanted you to feel free.”
“Well then—why?—now?”—wavering to a softer mood. When her father spoke with just that fondness ... turning aside her head to blink back the tears, she caught sight of his old silk handkerchief, plum and navy-blue dabbed together, knotted round the bed-post in the same way as he was wont to knot it round his neck, as long as she could remember.... And suddenly Ferdie was dead—and she saw that loop with the dangling ends, and it struck her painfully that she would never again see it round Ferdie’s neck, plum and blue stem to that genial rubicund face with the kind eyes ... Dad was dead ... everybody dies....
Whether she had been vouchsafed a swift keyhole peep at an inevitable future, or if the vision were merely a childish drench of sentiment—whichever it was, it sent Deb straight past grandfather’s sarcastic smile and Aunt Stella’s antagonism, to her knees beside Ferdie’s chair—snuggled up against him—Thank God, he was not dead yet!
“Dad—mayn’tI explain?”
He just touched her black urchin head so near his hand, but said nothing.
“It’s ... men,” Deb began. Such a maze of by-ways and turnings, and no centre. Could she ever hope to drag his understanding in the wake of her intricate journeyings ... and with the others present? “It was the same in our old set before we gave up Daisybanks, before the war. There were always men about, then; when they took me on the river in the evenings, in a narrow punt, or in taxis—or behind screens on the landings at dances ... screens put there generally by the hostess—what are they put there for? ‘Enjoy yourselves, children!’—Dad, what did youthinkthen? You can’t possibly have imagined they all wanted to marry me, that they each wanted to marry every girl they took behind screens or up dark corridors—in the Empress Rooms or the Portman Rooms or the Grafton Galleries or Princes? But you must have thought something!”
But the trend of Ferdie’s ideas had always run on generalizations ... and generalizations would not suffice now tocontent this daughter of his, turning up to him such a glowing, inquisitive little face.
“I was pleased that you should have admirers——” slowly—“Flirtation is only natural to a young girl.”
“Admirers! flirtation!that, yes, but they—they used to kiss us—they said things—when they got excited.... They—Oh——” she rummaged desperately after words—“You—you grown-ups of to-day, you took away the chaperon and put up a screen on the landing instead.—It all means something—leads somewhere—and then you lose your tempers when you hear—when we.... And I didn’t! I didn’t do anything—this time.... But I must have something to go by; you must spell us out the rules once and for all. You’re broad-minded, you encourage us—expose us; and at the end of it all, last century’s row comes tumbling on our heads. If grandfatherwasa beast to Auntie Stel——” a darted sun-flash of mischief at the gathering storm on the opposite side of the fireplace—“at least he was a consistent beast; allowed her to know nothing and do nothing. You’ve stuck half-way—you let me know everything and do nothing. One day, I suppose, a girl will be allowed to know everything and do everything—lucky her!”
The storm on the opposite side of the mantelpiece broke into thunder: “Klatsch! klatsch! klatsch! talk! talk! talk!—Had it been Stella to be found out in shame——”
“Leave me out of it, papa. And you too, Deb,” Stella threw in curtly, without turning from the window where she stood looking out into the dripping dusk. “I’m not ambitious to figure as an edifying example.”
“Had it been Stella,” Hermann persisted, not in the least heeding her protest, “My first business, as her father, would be interview the young man and see to it that he is made aware of his immediate duty towards her. But that, of course, does not strike Ferdinand. He prefers to sit like an old maid at a tea-party and discuss the so happy occasion!”
Ferdie, rather dazed, passed a hand across his forehead, wet with perspiration. “True—yes—I must see him at once,” he muttered. For a few moments he had forgotten the indestructible fact of Deb’s dishonour.
“See—Cliffe? Ask him to marry me? Dad—dad, you can’t.... He’d laugh ... they’d all laugh. It—it isn’t done, in our set. We—I’ve told you—I thought you believedme—no earthly possible reason why he should marry me. That night at the cottage ... dad, I’vetoldyou—there was nothing. You mustn’t go to Cliffe,” in a sheer panic at the ridiculous situation thus threatened, she scrambled up from her knees, and confronted Ferdinand, also on his feet by now—“You shan’t go to Cliffe. There was nothing!” she repeated doggedly. “Don’t you believe me?”
“You did stop at his cottage that night—alone with him?” The Inquisition commenced anew.
“Yes.”
“Why—what for—if there was nothing?”
“I don’t know. No special reason. One does—nowadays.”
“‘Nowadays’ has as broad a back as the parent, it seems,” wearily. “‘Nowadays’ must shoulder everything. But only not human nature, Deb. I have had experience of human nature, that even ‘nowadays’ cannot alter.”
Thoroughly exasperated, Deb wrenched herself away from all hope of convincing them.... “I haven’t—I didn’t—but I might as well have, and I wish I had!” was her sobbed-out threshold defiance.
... “My tea,” grandfather reminded Stella, after a long silence.