CHAPTER V
Deb, before Richard came to her, was afflicted with the hump. A sort of diffused hump. The hump of all the world. The hump that says: “What’s the good?” and “It isn’t fair!” and “I wish——” and “Everything’s so hateful!” It arose from a blurred medley of causes: the dry heat which seemed to spring from the pavements and sap all vitality. Then Con’s death; Con had been her first love, and his death stabbed her with a quick and poignant memory of eight years ago when they had nuzzled each other like two affectionate and sportive young foals—“dearlittle Deb.” “Con—Idolove you, Con!” “For always, Deb?” “Yes, for—I say, look how the conkers are bumping down in this wind ... let’s collect them and have a battle, shall we?” “Rather!” and the headlong scamper of boy and girl up the hill towards the group of tattered, wind-buffeted chestnuts. Such glorious fun, collecting into your own separate pile the vivid russet pebbles that every fresh gust thudded and bounced on to the grass; or even, while you knelt and scrambled, on to the flat of your back. Such fun, sweeping aside the drifts of mottled yellow leaves to discover where they hid. Such fun, to shout aloud to Con a find of the embedded conker, red and plump and shining in its dull white pillow and prickly burr. Such fun, the after battle, swooping to gather fresh handfuls from your accumulated store of ammunition. She could be quite sure, always, that Con would never direct his bullets to hit her anywhere except in places that didn’t hurt. Con was a dear ... and never such a dear as on that wind-rushed, sun-flashing afternoon in October, when the Battle of the Conkers having been decided in her favour, they flung themselves down on the dry protesting rustle of the dead-leaf carpet, flushed and tingling and ever so pleased with themselves; the clouds swirling apart over their heads to show such vivid rollicking patches of blue. “Deb,darling—will—willyou let me kiss you just once?” “No, Con—please—I don’t think you ought....”
Well, Con was dead. But that memory was more excellent to look back upon, than the long, slow-moving hours spent with Blair Stevenson in his rooms....
It was not Blair’s fault. She recognized that. He was always charming, always interesting, even whimsically fond of his demi-maid. He was a great deal better than she deserved, really. Only—only——
“I’m sick of it!” with a spurt of impetuous dissatisfaction. Sick of it, and did not know how to wriggle clear of it. Perhaps the Foreign Office would soon send him abroad again. Deb was prone to hang about, hoping for some lucky mechanical chance to terminate her mistakes, rather than herself make abrupt severance. Stevenson was indeed sent on an important mission to America that July of 1916. And Deb did not altogether like that either. She missed him. He was, at least, aware of her. The old dejected sensation of waste enveloped her again.
The endless processions of khaki spectres through the great dim stations, on their way to the Front, wound like a drab caterpillar through her days and nights. She had loved being on duty at the canteen when the leave trains came in; but this new job was different—it was horrible. They were sucked back to the Front where Con had been killed. And the world was left full of women—women and girls and old women. The world was rather like that great dim station, with hollow sounds clanging and echoing far up in the roof, and trains that came in and trains that went out, nobody quite knew when; and waiting, drearily, up and down the platform; and an old, old time-table that offered no guidance in this later chaos, flapping from the walls....
What guidance was there, moral or religious or traditional? Women took their cues and rules from one another, propped one another up by new and hastily-made standards; pointed out solitary examples—solitary pioneers. Dimly-lit melancholy world of women, invertebrate at first, learning how to walk and run, learning how to do without their men. Bits of a new code, and bits of an old tradition. A great deal of talk ... women’s voices....
Women, and women, and women. One got nauseated by one’s own sex. They did their best—they did splendidly—butoh, the man’s deeper, calmer note, and more logical authority, and firm hand outstretched!
The home with La llorraine and Manon was hardly as satisfactory as it had seemed. Theingénueengaged, required kicking—not from jealousy, but because of her demeanour which implied that everything good comes to the good girl. And Dolph Carew, whom Deb hated, was always in the flat. Wedding preparations were in full swing. And La llorraine, the sails of her content wide and voluptuously full with a fair wind, treated Deb in the confidential manner of one battered oldrouetteto another—inviting her perpetually to look and rejoice at the spectacle of the two innocent young things so happy. “You and I, my dee-urr, have long since outgrown such milk and roses.”... It galled Deb, not unreasonably, to be identified with La llorraine as arouetteof fifty years ago. Manon was to marry Dolph Carew ... inevitably Deb’s thoughts drifted back to Jenny—lingered there ... all that wish and desire and beat for life wasted ... and that charming little face, mournful or roguish as a monkey’s. “But Bobby’s left; Bobby with the same crinkle in his eyes and mouth and heart.... If I were to die, wanting things like Jenny did, there would not even be Bobby to remind people....”
Yes—she had the hump. The hump of all the world. And then Richard came.
At once life lost its sullen taste; and was sharp with the savour of brine. Something to do—and that not too easy. Something to be won—and that not for herself, but for Richard. Something to sacrifice—and that was contemplation of the future; fatal to brood upon a future inhabited principally by Phillipses. Something here which demanded subtle manipulation, probably histrionics ... but this was Deb’s talent. She set out to re-conquer Samson Phillips in a spirit which was brewed in equal parts of roguery and swagger and trepidation. Could she or could she not obliterate her senseless fib of last autumn? It all depended, really, on how much Samson cared for her, and of what enduring fibre was his passion. And here Deb had confidence; she could not forget that he had asked her to marry him—so few men had asked her that, down all that long, dusty highway speckled with men....
“If it can be wangled, it shall be wangled,” she promisedRichard in her heart. She was not very considerate of Samson in the matter; but you cannot be too scrupulous of one man when you wish supremely to serve another.
From Nell Redbury she obtained Captain Phillips’ temporary address, and also the exact ailment from which he was suffering. It would not do to make a mistake in that. Then she composed a letter that in its simple idiocy and clear grasp of Samson’s psychology, was quite a little masterpiece of guile:
“Dear Captain Phillips,“I hear that you are back again and in hospital, with trench-feet. I’m so very sorry. Though I’m afraid you won’t care much if I’m sorry or not. And yet—this letter is really to ask if you’ll let me come and see you, just once? Of course, I know it’s my fault that we’re not good friends. But please, please don’t snub me. It does hurt so to be snubbed. Is there anything special you would like me to bring you, in case you say I may come? Flowers I know you love best, but flowers are nicest when they are wild in the fields, aren’t they? I wish you could have seen our little brook near Market St Bryan last month; its banks were a blue heaven of forget-me-nots. Do you ever think about it, I wonder?“Yours very sincerely,“Deb Marcus.”
“Dear Captain Phillips,
“I hear that you are back again and in hospital, with trench-feet. I’m so very sorry. Though I’m afraid you won’t care much if I’m sorry or not. And yet—this letter is really to ask if you’ll let me come and see you, just once? Of course, I know it’s my fault that we’re not good friends. But please, please don’t snub me. It does hurt so to be snubbed. Is there anything special you would like me to bring you, in case you say I may come? Flowers I know you love best, but flowers are nicest when they are wild in the fields, aren’t they? I wish you could have seen our little brook near Market St Bryan last month; its banks were a blue heaven of forget-me-nots. Do you ever think about it, I wonder?
“Yours very sincerely,
“Deb Marcus.”
She re-read this epistle, and crossed out the last sentence. “It won’t do to frighten him; I wish I could work in a little old-world touch of dignity.” She mused; then unable to supply this, sent it off as it was.
She had not miscalculated the durance of Samson’s affection. He was a stubborn man, and he had deliberately selected Deb. Deb had dealt his sense of righteousness a hard buffet; but he had not succeeded in forgetting her. Her letter struck exactly the right note—diffident yet impetuous; just the same dear, warm-hearted, half-shy, half-wild little girl ... surely she must have been led astray by some scoundrel. After all, she had been honest at the time; honest enough to forfeit his regard and all it entailed, by that confession of her sin. The sin could not be minimized—but here she was,obviously penitent—he could not resist the delicious act of magnanimity.
So he replied stiffly, saying he would be delighted if she were to pay him a visit at the hospital between three and four on the following Wednesday. He had made arrangements with his sister-in-law, Nell Redbury, to be present....
This last, with that insistence on a rigorous and formal respect necessary in such painful cases where respect could not any more be taken for granted as the lady’s due.
Deb smiled when she received it. “Nell can easily be shunted. Is white muslin too obvious? I s’pose so. It had better be my spotted pink, which is a bad fit. And the Leghorn hat with the spray of Alexandra roses that doesn’t match the dress. Surely no girl would wear two mouldy shades of pink unless she were a reformed character. Good Lord! my hair! How am I to account for it?”
She fingered a temptation to dare the risk of winning him back by means he most disapproved of—peacock and gold jumper of the wickedest cut; conversation to match, all a-flicker with brilliant unconventionality; the siren method? It would be infinitely more fun; and a personal triumph if she succeeded.
But no. Richard’s peace of mind hung on the issue; she must take the safest way.
Ten days later, Samson for the fourth time proposed to her. She accepted him.
After the first interview, it was easy. She had only to be passive; or to smooth down any little creases in her texture that she perceived could still cause him uneasiness. That first interview was her greatest performance. She blended timid womanly solicitude with that type of earnest frankness in big and little things, which was to be interpreted—by him—as the outcome of an inner consciousness of once having failed greatly in moral steadfastness and the resolve never again to be betrayed into so doing. She thought his intelligence could be trusted to perceive that much subtlety, unaided. He did perceive it. And approved. He approved also of her confusion at his jocular reference to the forget-me-not stream.“Don’t tell me you went down there alone to pick forget-me-nots?” “Oh, but I did. I wouldn’t——” she stopped. And hastily asked him how he liked his tea. “Wouldn’t go with any other man.”... Samson smiled under his moustache. So that special glide of silver beneath the plank bridge, had associations for her, too. Good! he liked sentiment in girls. He was a sentimental chap himself, but in his case it was sheathed in sternness. He was a soldier—and she was a sinner.... Never let him forget that.
She never let him forget it. Not once in the prescribed hour. Intuition pointed out that it was labour lost to try and make him forget. Therefore he must be brought to forgive.
“So Delilah has been shorn instead of Samson? That’s poetic justice, isn’t it?” Then, chaffing no more: “What made you cut your hair, Deb? I don’t like it. It’s like those artist-model girls you see about. I hoped you’d go on arranging it the way Beattie did it for you, once. It suited you.”
“But it took so long,” Deb explained. And further, in an outburst of confidence: “It was stupid of me—I’m sorry now. But—it was just a mood—one evening, when I had to dash off to the canteen—and itwouldkeep on flopping down after I’d pinned it up ... and it seemed to me there was so much to do in the world just now, beside one’s hair—so much to do and so little time to do it in—And ... Oh, I lost my temper with it and just sheared it off. Does it look hideous?”
He studied her in silence. And his face turned red and his eyes slowly kindled....
“Not that it matters. Vanity is rather futile since the war, isn’t it? But one can’t help minding being a fright....”
“You’re not a fright, little girl,” said Samson Phillips.
And then Nell slipped back inconspicuously into the room, and said it was time to go.
Otto Redbury had rubbed his hands with pleasure when Samson, via Beatrice, had made known his wish for Nell’s attendance at the hospital between three and four on Wednesday afternoon.
“So! it gomes to something, then!” and he inspected Nell before her departure, and gave her five shillings for a taxi, that she might arrive unheated and unruffled. The taxi had stopped at La llorraine’s, to pick up Deb, but this Otto did not know. Deb was very glad to arrive at the hospital unheated and unruffled. And Nell was very glad to spend the strayhalf-hour walking beside Timothy, whom Deb had notified to be accidentally outside the gates at that hour of the day. This Otto did not know either. Not that he could have gained much by prying on their dialogue, for the pair were still in that stage of dreamy ecstasy which prefers not to speak, in addition to their handicap of excessive shyness.
“Soon, zere vill be a vedding at the Synagogue,” Otto prophesied to Trudchen. But Trudchen, who had lost one of her boys, had no happiness for the moment in either of her girls.
Otto was right in form but not in detail. A wedding did indeed take place on October the 12th, and Nell was bridesmaid; and the bride was given away by her father; and Otto for the look of things had to be coaxed out of the bathroom by his united family, and coaxed into a frock-coat, and coaxed into attendance as a guest. Otto’s soul was very bilious, and he objected to paying for a present, and made several quite snappy and spiteful remarks concerning the folly of men who married a girl whose certificate of chastity bore a black mark and the scrawled name of Mr Cliffe Kennedy....
“Ach, Otto!”
Samson was aware of the enormity of such a choice. Aware, too, that he would have great difficulty with his family, who were still huffy with Deb for having dared to refuse Samson on three previous occasions. So he did an unprecedented thing—he proposed first, and consulted his family afterwards. Perhaps “proposed” is not the term which exactly sets forth his proceedings. He announced to Deb that he was willing to make her his wife—nay, that he considered it his duty to draw her from the gutter back to the pavement. Deb—who in spite of some deep inner scoldings that she was again behaving disgracefully towards Samson, and this time worse even than before—Deb stood before him with eyes downcast and folded hands, meek and wan—and wildly exhilarated by her success. She had, to quote La llorraine: “Made a muff from her chances” so often and so disastrously that a great deal of previous anxiety was inevitable. Anxiety was now allayed. She stood before her master, meek and wan, and exceedingly desirable: Israelite maiden in the slave-market.... Samson kissed her very carefully to show that his respect had suffered no diminishment. (He was so continually showing her this in all sorts of unobtrusive ways that Deb only now realized towhat extent her lie of last year had earned his undying censure.) Samson kissed her carefully—and said, “My family will be pleased about this, Deb.”
For which she rather liked him.
The family, of course, reminded him in an appalled chorus that Deb was—somewhat disreputable. Had she not run away from home, to live with that opera-woman? Samson replied inflexibly that they, by their contempt and reproach, might be responsible for driving a poor little girl to worse things.
“What worse things are there?” his grandmother demanded, for the rest of them.
Samson merely shrugged; and opposition perceived that the eldest son of the house of Phillips had chosen, and would not be swerved from his choice. His glucose fidelity was impressive. Samson was the Phillips’ fetish, and Samson’s wish the Phillips’ law. Moreover, there remained still the Phillips’ illusion that Deb had always loved Samson, had loved him all through his three proposals last Autumn, and must—poor child—have suffered terribly, refusing him. Certainly she deserved to suffer. But by this chance of making Samson happy, she might expiate her foolishness, and expiate it still more in giving Samson a fine healthy son.... So the many counsels in the dining-room of Mrs Phillips resolved at last on a programme of bounteous welcome, forgive and forget.
Deb, foreseeing complications, made more than one faltering attempt to explain privately to her fiancé exactly how the quaint mistake about her premature initiation had occurred.... But it was an impossible task. At each successive essay, Samson interrupted at the very start and in his well-known style: “I don’t want to hear a word about it, Deb. It’s all over and it’s all forgotten. Let’s turn over a fresh leaf and agree never to mention it again. I love you, and you know it, and nothing makes any difference, and I simply don’t want to hear another word about it.”
So she gave in. She was the flame, he was the extinguisher that stands beside the candle. However ardent her whim to burn, he could always put her out.
Ferdie Marcus was enraptured at the betrothal. It was what he had always desired for his little daughter—everyone was prefixing Deb with “little” just now—a good protector; a Jew; a husband in a solid position, both financially and—nowadays this was important—in point of nationality. Hewould never be quite healed of the unlooked-for wound dealt him by this same little daughter, last year; and he was rather puzzled as to how that affair had been glossed over where Samson was concerned. Did Samson know? But he hid both the scar and the perplexity; and without any formal reconciliation, it was understood that she had slipped into re-occupation of her old place in the home—home in the abstract and not literal sense; for she did not return to live at Montagu Hall. Neither Grandfather nor Aunt Stella were sufficiently cordial at the prospect; and Samson did not care either about the boarding-house. For the present he made special arrangement that she should stay with the Redburys—Beattie and Hardy. She should be married from his mother’s house, and as he was to be discharged from hospital in a month’s time, the wedding could quite well be arranged for October. In fact (“I’m a sentimental chap!”) he asked Deb, with a twinkle of meaning in his eye, whether October the 12th would suit her? Just in time to prevent her features from slipping into utter blankness, she remembered that this might be the anniversary of the silvery-stream business, and replied with a pretty smile, that she thought October the 12th would be ... nice.
“Will there be time to let your hair grow before then?” he teased her. “We can’t have a bride with short hair....”
The whole Phillips family had pounced, jabbering and shrieking and with white teeth all aflash in their olive faces, on the discovery that Delilah and not Samson had been shorn. Deb was prepared for this, and constant repetition of the joke did not afflict her in the measure of last year. The Phillips were themselves a joke, and her engagement, and Samson, and Otto Redbury sulking in the bathroom on the occasion of her formal visit on the arm of her fiancé; and the fact that she must ostentatiously refuse ever to meet Cliffe Kennedy again ... all a joke! That was her mood, and it was not once interpierced. She saw very little of her old set during her engagement—very little of Gillian and Antonia and Zoe. All that had dropped away like a whirl of sparks in the forgotten night.
The sense of a hilarious joke followed her to the very porch of the Synagogue, pursued her through the ceremony, with its gabble of Hebrew and wonderful song. It prodded her midway in the fatherly old Rabbi’s personal benediction, when he solemnly addressed Samson in these terms: “You are bearingaway to a typically Jewish home a typically Jewish treasure....” Deb felt irresistibly impelled to drop her eyelids and murmur deprecatingly: “Oh, no ...” and Samson patted her arm reassuringly....
And then the joke faded ... for the old man spoke directly to her, and made her feel suddenly that at last she belonged; that this was her faith, and these her people; and that standing here under the white canopy, she was really fulfilling her destiny at last—the destiny for which Deb Marcus had been primarily shaped and intended. After all, she had not been able to achieve free adventure—and compromise was a poor substitute. It was kind of Jehovah to have guided her from debatable ground to safety.
And she would cease from baffling and bamboozling Samson, who was high-principled and faithful. What had she made out of her loose-jointed set of values, to enable her to scoff at his? Deb was now full to the brim of her being with contrition and clear sweetness and gratitude.... A few yards away Ferdie was beaming happily—Dear old dad—and she had been such a beast, blaming him for all her own freakish behaviour. And there was Richard, scowling a little self-consciously in his endeavour to appear absolutely at ease—all Samson’s brothers were already married and ineligible for the office of best man, which devolved therefore upon Richard ... brows hunched over eyes that were wonderfully at peace. Six weeks ago, he had looked like a man of thirty; now he looked what he was—a sturdy well-blocked-out pugnacious youngster of seventeen. It was all right—Deb had spoken to Samson about him, and Samson had spoken to his cousin Sir Ephraim Phillips, who had promised when the time of internment drew actually near, to interest himself, not only to the extent of (certainly) getting Richard off, but furthermore to get him (perhaps) into the fighting line somewhere. So Richard’s state was that of a parched creature who had sighted water to slake his thirst....
All the same, it was no joke being responsible for the ring and the fees—and the carriages and—and half-a-dozen other things. It rendered a properly nonchalant bearing impossible. And he had made a bad beginning by the reverent removal of a sleek silk hat from a sleek bullet head, directly on entrance ... five bearded gentlemen draped in black had made a rush at him and besought him to replace his hat upon his head.
His eyes met his sister’s in a swift comprehending glance. “Sure it’s all right, Deb—for you, I mean?” “Quite, quite sure, old boy!” the unspoken question and answer between them.
The glass was set in the neighbourhood of Samson’s foot, and he ground it vindictively into powder. His mother at the reception afterwards, called all her friends and relatives to bear witness with what spirit he had performed this part of the ritual. It was fortunate that she did not overhear David Redbury’s remark to the effect that Samson had not only used all the energy which his great prototype had expended on the pillars of the temple, to crush one small wine-glass; but had then further deviated from Biblical history by inviting the Philistines home with him to champagne and iced cake....
“Oh, hush, David!” from Nell.
“Well—look at us!” Israel was indeed enormously represented. The rooms glimmered and glittered with the clan Phillips. Already they owned Deb (“little Deb”); swarmed about her in heavy, jocular proprietorship; bore her triumphantly away to be robed for the honeymoon journey.
Mr and Mrs Samson Phillips left at 4.30,en routefor Torquay.
“Why did you ever tell me that falsehood?”
“I—I don’t know, Samson. What falsehood?”
“You do know, Deb.”
“I don’t know why I told it, Samson.”
“You’ve always been a good girl.” It was a statement, not a query. A statement weighted with perplexity.
And: “Yes ...” she assented, “I’ve always been a good girl.”
He was not so joyfully illuminated as might have been expected. Indeed, he was conscious of being defrauded of an essential occupation. He had married Deb, forgiving her. He had meant to go on forgiving her. He would never stop forgiving her. Now, in place of these anticipations, was a vacuum....