CHILDREN OF NO MAN’S LAND

CHILDREN
OF NO MAN’S LAND

BY
G. B. STERN
AUTHOR OF
‘PANTOMIME,’ ‘SEE-SAW,’ ‘TWOS AND THREES,’
‘GRAND CHAIN,’ ‘A MARRYING MAN’

LONDON: DUCKWORTH & CO
3 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN

All Rights Reserved

First published 1919

Printed in Great Britain
by Turnbull & Spears, Edinburgh

TO
GEOFFREY HOLDSWORTH

“What is love of one’s land?...

I don’t know very well.

It is something that sleeps for a year, for a day,

For a month, something that keeps

Very hidden and quiet and still,

And then takes

The quiet heart like a wave,

The quiet brain like a spell,

The quiet will

Like a tornado, and that shakes

The whole being and soul ...

Aye, the whole of the soul.”

Ford Madox Hueffer

CHILDREN
OF NO MAN’S LAND

PART I

CHAPTER I

I

“Let her go,” said Ferdinand Marcus. “I want my daughter to have a good time.”

Aunt Stella assented. “Why shouldn’t she go? Anything for a change, when one is twenty-three. Anything for excitement. And she can come to no harm. Besides, Richard is invited too.”

“No harm,” chirruped her brother. “Liberty for the young! We have missed enough, Stella, you and I, through old-fashioned prejudices.”

Old Hermann Marcus did not join in the conversation. He sat heavy and immovable; his faded blue eyes, under their fierce ridges, travelling contemptuously from his son to his daughter. Weaklings! short-sighted weaklings, with their foolish chatter of “liberty for the young.” Was this the way to bring up one’s children, with authority trailing like a slack rope along the floor? What was to become of the old, if the young were allowed to live for their own pleasure? Where would he be now, he, Hermann Marcus, crippled with rheumatism, financially insolvent, approaching his eightieth birthday, if Ferdinand and Stella had not been trained, very carefully trained, to unquestioning obedience and duty?

He was impotent where Ferdinand’s children were concerned. His day of authority was over. But—“a good time,” he muttered. “They will see....” He called loudly to Stella to bring him at once the English papers, which would not arrive at the Swiss hotel for fully an hour yet. Hermann Marcus was perfectly aware of this.

II

“But everyone knows for a positive fact that Shakespeare is the greatest writer of all. Why, who has ever heard of your Goethe, outside Germany?”

“And who has ever read your Shakespeare, inside England?” Lothar retorted, with the horrid glee of a person who has made a remark with an unpleasant amount of truth in it. His spectacles gleamed, two round, triumphant dazzles in the sunset which streamed through the closed windows of his study.

Richard repeated stubbornly, but without conviction: “Everyone knows Shakespeare is the greatest writer.” His defence of Shakespeare was strictly impersonal; he had no vehement sentiments on the subject; the whole argument bored him. But on principle, when a German boy asserts that Goethe is greater than Shakespeare, the English boy can have no option but to make reply that Shakespeare is greater than Goethe.

“It shall be decided one day,” Lothar grimaced ominously.

And Richard had an inspiration. “Shakespeare has been translated into German, because you jolly well couldn’t get on without him. I’ve never seen Goethe properly put into English. That about proves I’m right.”

“There was no Englander great enough to translate a man so great. I do not say,” Lothar explained conscientiously, “that I have not of the works of your Shakespeare also with much benefit an exhaustive study made. Let us converse on them. Do you then prefer Macbess or Otello?”

“Macbeth,” Richard muttered at a venture, and walked restlessly to the window; fidgeted with the beaded blind-cord, to signify that he expected better entertainment from his host than this irritating controversy. He wished his sister had not been so quick to accept Mrs Koch’s invitation to visit her at Dorzheim. To be dragged away in the middle of the extra July of summer holiday which an epidemic of scarlet fever at school had procured him; dragged away from a jolly hotel in Switzerland, to this stupid, little, dead-and-alive German town; finally, to be expected to chum up with Lothar von Relling, merely because they were “of the same age”—it was a bit thick!

Deb could quite well have come alone, if this was her idea of enjoyment.

He wondered why Lothar was crossing and uncrossing his legs in their bright striped stockings, and breathing heavily as though about to unburden himself of a confidence.

“Have you a heart’s dearest, you?”

Richard Marcus was fifteen. A normal boy, muscular, pugnacious, taciturn. The question drew from him a shout of laughter.

“What should I do with one, if I had it?”

“You English boys are babies all,” Lothar said, unexpectedly scornful. “You play always your stupid games, rather than write verses to the loved one. Ach, but she ...” he whirled his hearer along an incoherent tide of description: “a wonder, a dream, a night of scented dusk,” that mysterious goddess who seemed but recently to have emerged from the nebulous glamour which encircles all womanhood for the Teuton yet in his teens.

“Are you engaged to her?” yawned Richard, who by the merest fraction preferred these confidences to the Goethe-Shakespeare debate.

“Betrothed? But not possible. I am already betrothed to Frieda-Marie. Our peoples betrothed us a great many years ago. It is wearisome, but——” Lothar shrugged his plump shoulders—“it is suitable. We are of one faith. Her father, the Herr Sanitäts-Rath Hauffe, will withdraw his sanction if he outfinds anything of my faithlessness.”

Richard swung round and surveyed with disfavour Lothar’s vague features under their bush of upstanding tow. “Do you mean there’s really anything for him to find out about you and the other girl, or are you swanking?”

“Only that I schwärm—I swarm with love for her. I watch in the streets, and once I drop at her feet a fair rose costing fifty pfennig. She knows nothing of my passion. But what goes me that on? It is more beautiful, more ideal, so.” Suddenly he slid from lofty altitudes. “One has also one’s emotions away from these. One is flesh. One is not altogether air....” He spattered a few inky hints regarding the demands of his adolescence. From a pink, chubby face his spectacles glittered knowingly, inviting his companion to betrayal of like perplexities. But Richard preserved that admirable stolidity for which his looks were so well adapted: powerful jaw, big nose, dark head well thrust forward from the short neck and broad shoulders; and, rather obscured by all these pugnacities, a pair of pleasant, humorous light-grey eyes, from which now, however, he had chased all expression save of blank idiocy. Not likely he would give himself away to Master Lothar! Richard wondered if there were a German boy good form enough to know that Lothar was bad form, and to ostracize him as such. Unlikely; the fellow would hardly be as cocksure if he had once been put in his place. All this blither about Goethe and girls.... “Do you mean to marry this person?” interrupting the other’s critical appraisement of a lady professionally well-known in Dorzheim, appraisement to which Lothar had essayed to impart the personal note.

“I have explained,” patiently, “I am plighted to Frieda-Marie. She is a good Christian maiden. She learns cooking. She has a respectable gift-along. Why do you smile?”

“Your English is so funny.”

“I have not yet had the pleasure of hearing your German,” politely sarcastic. For Richard had felt in honour bound not to reveal to Dorzheim that his knowledge of their tongue, though faulty, was fluent enough, as was natural in a grandson of Hermann Marcus of Munich.

“I will take me a wife when I am twenty-seven. First must I be through with my examinations. Then do I perform my military service. You also? No?”

“Oh, we don’t have to fag with that sort of thing in England.”

“It is for the Fatherland. Also one is attractive in uniform. One dashes. One lives. Me, I must betray a several of maidens before I can afford one to keep.”

Richard scowled discouragement. “You’re not sixteen yet, are you?”

“At sixteen one is no longer a child. One cannot go mad....” To Richard’s horror, Lothar suddenly buried has head in his arms, shuddering violently.... “That I were dead! that I were dead!” he moaned.

The English boy stared at him. These outbursts of confidence, alternately sentimental and morbid, seemed to emphasize his growing sense of having been brought into a world completely alien. He sent a swift thought to his chum, Greville Dunne, now on board a training-ship; wished old Greville were here. Foreign kids were unbalanced, hysterical; they read too much; brooded too much; talked too much.... Lothar had no right to unburden himself to a stranger, of different nationality and hostile outlook. Richard began to be afraid he had given an impression of too ready sympathy.

Lothar raised his head and announced solemnly: “Swine-hound that I am, believe that I preserve a reverence supreme for my Loved One!” His eyes were swamped in facile tears. “I have no father,” he added, after an uncomfortable pause; “and you, you have no mother, I hear.”

“Oh, that’s all right, thanks,” Richard’s shoulders were expressive of sullen embarrassment. “Got a stamp collection?”

“I will show you my botany-box.” And Lothar littered the blue and red check table-cloth with his specimens of pressed leaves and flowers, neatly labelled. Presently he reverted to the subject of Frieda-Marie. It appeared as though he were trying unsuccessfully to tell Richard something....

“Pity that she should be so blonde. The Ideal One is a brunette. She is a witch; a black velvet pansy. Hark, I will describe her to you.”

A full five minutes elapsed, however, before Richard awoke to the fact that the concrete sum of Lothar’s lyrical ecstasies made up a personality closely resembling that of his sister.

“Good Lord! Deb!”

“But at last! Since an hour have I tried to reach your understanding.”

“Couldn’t you say straight out that you meant Deb, instead of making an inventory of her?”

This was too great a strain on Lothar’s English. “She was mine from the first moment I saw her feet on the pavement my window outside press,” he breathed.

“Look here—do you want to marry Deb?”

“You come me always with that!” peevishly. “I tell you I am betrothed to Frieda-Marie. I cannot marry your sister. She is only a Jewess.”

“I like your cheek! Then what’s the good of you?”

“I can worship her.”

“Umph!”

“You also, you admire her?”

“She’s not so dusty.”

Again Lothar had to confess himself vanquished. He lugged down an English-German dictionary from the shelf, and conscientiously looked up ‘dusty.’

“Nicht so staubig—ach!... Hark, there is Mama who calls us. Doubtless you are fetched to go home.”

They ran down the polished stairs, Richard grinning at the notion of being “fetched.”

In the drawing-room Felix Koch was apologizing profusely for his wife’s absence, while Frau von Relling plied him with coffee and cream cakes and delicatessen sandwiches.

“You will be welcome whenever you come again to play with my Lothar,” she condescended to Richard. Then sighed heavily: “My big boy!” and took Lothar’s hand and fondled it. Lothar received the caress with an expression which was decorously demure. “Smug little humbug!” reflected Richard.

“Indeed, Herr Koch, it is well that the dear Marianna did not call to-day, as it is possible that your honoured Frau Mama might be drinking coffee with me presently.”

“So?” Koch nodded gloomily. His wife and his mother were not on speaking terms; and all the town knew why. He had committed an unprecedented folly in marrying the pretty daughter of a shopkeeper in Bingen.

Frau von Relling continued: “Doubtless the dear Marianna is busy with the entertainment of the little English Miss.” Then eagerly: “Has she received any offers yet?”

“She has only been with us three days,” Koch replied. And added with a mysterious inflection, “But Salzmann has sent to Frankfurt for his brother.”

“And how many bouquets?”

“Eleven. And two chocolate-boxes.”

“Has Herr Sigismund Koch shown her a little attention?”

The man bent upon his questioner a look of displeasure. “Sigismund knows well he has no concern with any young Miss who is my guest!”

For, though partners in the same bank, he and his younger brother were not on speaking terms. They had quarrelled violently a little while before the death of their father, Emil Koch, founder of the bank, who, with more sense of humour than can usually be accredited to his nation, had left it to them as a joint and firmly-knit inheritance.

Frau von Relling hastened to cover up her intentional piece of malice. “Of course not, of course not. And the dear Marianna will be arranging a Klatsch to introduce the beautiful Miss to Dorzheim?”

“Next Thursday; you will honour us——?”

“Will Wanda be present?” Frau von Relling played nervously with her son’s fingers, which she still retained.

“I believe your Fräulein sister-in-law has been invited, but——”

“In that case——” Frau von Relling rose with dignity. She was not on speaking terms with her sister-in-law: a question of a funeral-wreath.... Amid such complications did the society of Dorzheim walk precariously.

Felix gave a murmur which placed his sympathies definitely on the side of Frau von Relling, and at the same time deplored these needless feuds in an otherwise attached family. Then with Richard he took formal leave.

“We are the only Jews in Dorzheim with whom the von Rellings have traffic,” he remarked, as they walked home through the little manufacturing town. “But you will count now how many hats are raised to me. The Kochs have ever been deeply respected even among the Christians who bank with us.” He beamed with naïve pleasure at each salutation; and looked sharply at Richard to see if the latter were indeed taking note.

Twilight in the streets; and the sky was a dark, thick blue. Crowds of men were already jostling out of the workshops where the cutting, polishing and setting of precious stones formed the principal industry of Dorzheim. Swarthy giants from some legend of forest and charcoal and red-glowing cavern, they did not immediately disperse, but stood about muttering on the pavements, with a scowl for the passer-by who brushed their group too closely. Somewhere a great brazen bell was clanging. It was all rather unreal....

“We shall shortly have trouble with these fellows,” remarked the banker to Richard. “Those infernal socialists with their talk——”

Richard was again attacked by a melancholy sense of complete isolation from his surroundings. What was he doing here? He, Marcus, of the Winborough fifth—in this gabled, German burgher town, grotesque to him as an old steel-engraving in a musty folio. Ring of sombre fir-shaggy hills tipped against the sky; ornamental bridges like toys across the river, which ran alongside the one broad street; warm aroma of coffee from the shops, blending with a mournful resinous fragrance that drifted down with the wind from the woods; clusters of people round the small iron tables dotted outside the restaurants; and behind the large open windows of these, dim groups sprawling through a dense smoke-heavy atmosphere; chatter and bellow and screech; gibberish which was yet disconcertingly comprehensive to Richard. He revolted against his very understanding of their language. They were not his people; Lothar, with his flaxen hair and his botany-box and his repellant morbidity; this trotting little man, counting the hats that were raised—ah, there was another! ... and another! ... like clockwork, up went the hand to the brim.... Three elongated boys in capes, whistling “Die Wacht am Rhein”—

“Lieb Vaterland, kannst ruhig sein,

Still steht und treu—”

No, these were not his people; this was not his land. Richard stiffened himself against any insidious process of adaptation to circumstances. Daisybanks, Lansdowne Terrace, London, England—that was his address, when he was not at Winborough. Good enough for him. Switzerland was all right, of course ... the hotel was under English management, and one just went about with one’s own set, and behaved much as usual, except that there were mountains. His spirit approved of a Continent moulded on sternly British lines.

And then Deb had dragged him into—this!

A question stirred in his mind! Nationality—was it a fact of any importance, then, to make so much difference when put to the test?... He shoved the question away again. Why fuss? This sort of misery—for it was misery—would not pursue him further than across the map of Germany. Let him get back to his own folk; he was homesick, that was all. England became above all desirable as a place where you were jolly and ordinary; took things for granted; no need to think;—there was a quality of purposeful concentration about these German people that oppressed Richard uneasily; why were they so absorbed and ponderous over the minutest detail?

Again Herr Koch jerked off his hat. “Did you see who saluted me? No other than Sanitäts-Rath Maximilian Hauffe. He could quite well have pretended not to see me; there was no lamp where he passed us. But I tell you the Kochs are esteemed in Dorzheim. That was his daughter Frieda-Marie along with him.”

Richard looked back, interested to catch a glimpse of Lothar’s betrothed. She looked back at the same time.... A plump rosy face; swing and dangle of two golden plaits.

Outside the door of their house they were joined by Mrs Koch and Deborah. Felix inserted his latchkey and preceded them into the hall.

“Na, was Frau Ladenberg amiable? Did you like her?” he inquired of Deb.

“Not—not very much.”

“Not? But she is English; she is your countrywoman.”

With infinite pains and pride had this sole Englishwoman in Dorzheim been excavated for the girl’s benefit. Deb felt acutely the reproach in his tones. The meeting ought to have been at least as momentous as that of Stanley and Livingstone in the desert. Deb herself, after only three days spent in thickly Teutonic company, had been quite excited at the prospect of drinking coffee with Herr Ladenberg’s wife from Manchester. She recognized now how unreasonable she had been to have expected instant affinity merely on the negative grounds that neither she nor Elly Ladenberg happened to be German.

At the same moment, Marianna was enquiring of Richard: “Well, and have you made a great friendship with Lothar von Relling?”

“No,” said Richard, who invariably curtailed speech to its utmost brevity.

“No? But you are almost of the same age!”

Richard grunted, and escaped to his room to dress for that meal which, neither dinner, tea, nor supper, mingled the richness and biliousness of all three.

Felix went into the sitting-room and flung himself on the sofa. Deb and his wife followed him in. The girl went straight to the window, and with some difficulty succeeded in opening it; the decent German window protesting loudly, as it had every right to do. She leant out, cooling her hot cheeks. She had behaved disgracefully that afternoon....

Marianna Koch glanced at her. Then at Felix. An elusive meanness flickered from her narrow light-brown eyes; at the comers of her pretty, fretful mouth. She was very unlike the accepted Saxon type of large blonde beauty. There had been a scandalous babble of tongues in Dorzheim when Felix Koch had first brought her back from a brief holiday he had spent in Bingen. Little worldling that she was, she had yet contrived to trap him in manner incongruously reminiscent of a Grimm’s fairy-tale. The broad window above the ironmonger’s shop; the wistful maiden, youngest of three sisters, who daily stationed herself there, hairbrush held in her hand, a light-brown, feathery cloud surrounding her pale face.... He was cured of his infatuation now, after two years’ subjection, but could still recall it with painful vividness at a thought flung backwards to that window and the magic it had framed for him. Marianna! ... but she was common and petty, and snobbish and quarrelsome; she had married him solely because he was a banker, a fine gentleman. He had a suspicion lately that she would like to be rid of him; yes, now, when he had barely placated a bitterly offended mother; when, with his reputation for sobriety and prudence, he had made a fool of himself in sight of all Dorzheim. If it had been Sigismund!... It was a constant smart to the vanity of Felix that Sigismund was still highly eligible, whereas he——

He was not even sure that his wife was not deceiving him.

In which case Sigismund would laugh. And Herr Sanitäts-Rath Hauffe would perhaps omit to raise his hat as punctiliously.

Koch’s eyes wandered to Deb, in her bluish lilac crêpe dress; harem skirt that clung as though in well-cut adoration ... the nape of her neck showed astoundingly bare; in Dorzheim it was considered smart to wear something called a jabot, and to prop the chin and ears with a high erection of lace and whalebone; in Dorzheim the dressmakers were commissioned to destroy line, not create it—as in the case of a harem skirt. She was obviously not quite “good class” this girl; probably some sort of an artist, though he had gathered her people were wealthy. “These English!”—one could account for everything by that contemptuous phrase.... And Deb had immensely gratified him that morning at breakfast by remarking: “One might easily mistake you for an Englishman, Herr Koch!”... Yes, he liked the girl; was quite glad that Marianna had taken a fancy to her recently in Switzerland, and had insisted on bringing her back for a visit. It relieved the tension of their constant bickering; and it gave him a hearer on whom to impress his status in Dorzheim. Then, too, one acquired importance in the little town, when one had guests from England. Relations from Frankfurt, yes—but guests from England were almost unheard of.

And nobody need know that Marianna had practically run away from him to Montreux. She was anæmic, needed a holiday; that sufficed for public explanation. He had recalled her with a promise of a fur coat. He had not yet given her the fur coat.

“I can smell Rindbraten,” remarked Felix appreciatively, from the sofa. “Do we have it for evening-eating? Stuffed? There was some left over from mid-day, was there not? I trust, Marianchen, that you made it clear to Emma it was not for her?”

He was smitten with gloom at the thought of the servant browsing over his Rindbraten. His wife reassured him. And she added, with slow emphasis: “I tried on some sable coats at Elly Ladenberg’s. Her husband had sent for sample styles from Köln. There was one—four thousand marks. It hung well on me. The Ladenberg has already chosen another with a fox collar. Mine has a brocade lining.”

“Yours?” Felix chaffed her. “Ei, ei, how quickly we go. It is now summer.”

“That is the time for a good bargain in fur.”

“Four thousand marks is too much.”

“Not for the best.”

“My mother says——”

“Your mother hates me. She would like to see me wear cotton in a snowstorm. She would die of spite if she saw the Frau Sanitäts-Rath Maximilian Hauffe envying me my beautiful sables.”

She paused to see if her last artful thrust at his besetting weakness had at all moved her husband. He thundered, to hide his uneasiness: “I tell you, four thousand marks is too much. You are beggaring me. You!”

The woman’s eyes grew larger and brighter. She smiled at Deb, who was trying to slip from the room unperceived. “But where are you going? Felix, the child is running away because she thinks we are quarrelling.”

Felix laughed uproariously at the notion.

“I was going to lie down before supper,” Deb explained quickly. “I’m rather tired.”

“There is no couch in your room. Here, you had better to rest beside my husband. Make room for her then, clumsy bear!” She laughed a sharp little trill. “How shocked she is! Heavens, what have I asked her to do? Surely with a respectable old married man.... Come, Felix, be a little gallant. Our English Miss is afraid of you. Na, she was bold enough this afternoon, having a fine flirt with Meester von Sittart.”

“She thinks you are another jealous Huldah von Sittart, Marianna. Did that old woman make ugly grimaces at you, Fräulein Deb? We must be careful where there are handsome husbands from America. But with old Felix Koch—Come, I will be asleep, that will put you at your ease.” He rolled over with his face to the wall, and affected to snore loudly.

Marianna applauded the performance. Her teasing eyes informed Deb that she was a stiff little fool, putting a wholly idiotic construction on what was mere playful friendliness on the part of her host and hostess. So Deb lay down beside Felix.... It struck her suddenly that the wife has the supreme advantage over the girl in almost any conjunction of circumstances.

Frau Koch moved to the door. “Sleep well, dear children!” It was uttered in the mock-solemn spirit of a benison. But Deb was aware of malice in the woman’s stealthy little smile; more than malice—enmity. To her or to Felix?—She would have sprung upright again, save for the feeling that in lying down she had committed herself ... to what, she did not know. But she did know very definitely, as the door closed gently behind Marianna, that she had made a mistake, and that it was useless to try and repair it. Deb was to suffer all her life from an illusion that one step backward would not avail her after one step forward had already been taken.

... Felix had his back still turned to her. But he had abandoned the farcical pretence of snoring. They could not lie much longer in this absurd silence, back to back, solemn, motionless.... Deb began to laugh softly. It was really rather ridiculous, except—except that Marianna’s face had frightened her.

Should she jump up now—and run? No, that would give alarming point to the situation. Probably Felix had no intentions——

He turned sharply, pulled her round towards him, kissed her and kissed her. And he was thinking: “If this was what Marianna wanted, then there and there—and there——” The girl did not matter. She was not like a German Mädchen who has been nicely brought up and carefully guarded for matrimony. Her people had let her come here, to complete strangers. And she wore collarless blouses and had flirted conspicuously with von Sittart.

... Her throat—how long and thick and dusky white ... what a firm column for that three-cornered, weary little face.

Marianna was, he felt sure, just outside the closed door. What was her motive in all this? That when it came to it, when he found her out, she should also have an accusing finger to point?—“Can you wonder, my friends? First he does not give me a fur coat, and then he makes shameless love to the guest under my roof....”

Felix Koch was pale with anger and humiliation. While he had joined his wife in chaffing Deb, he had been inclined to shout aloud: “Who is the man? Who is he? What do you think I am made of, forcing this upon me?—After you have been six weeks in Switzerland away from me—and yesterday you were tired after the journey—too tired! ... and I—and I.... Now, this insult!”

He had controlled himself, curious to see what she would do next. He was not going to control himself any more. Let Marianna, if indeed she stood poised on tiptoe, just outside, her light eyes flickering spitefully, let Marianna realize how little he cared for her rebuffs, last night, and the night before.... Fur coats? Wives did not get fur coats unless they earned them better.

Deb did not try to break away from the cramping pressure of his arms. She recognized that she had been to blame; had been—careless, somewhere, she was not quite sure where. But she too had now a dim sense of Marianna’s object in inviting her, of Marianna’s pinched smile outside the door.

... This man was rather handsome, viewed from the close range which usually brings distortion of features. She tried to laugh under his stinging kisses, to pick up the spirit of burlesque where they had dropped it.... “Pretty child,” he muttered; “pretty neck—no wonder she leaves it always unclothed.”

“Herr Koch—you promised—I said I wanted to rest——”

“Felix, then.”

“I want to rest, Felix——” She took advantage of a momentary relaxation of his arms, to snuggle down into the cushions, as a baby might; to close her eyes with a semblance of trustful drowsiness ... her lips were half parted, her breathing regular; one curled-up fist pushed against her cheek. At any moment she might just drop off to sleep....

Would he leave her alone now? Was she safe under this guise of silly, innocent confidence? Any sophisticated recognition of his attempt to start a surreptitious affair with her, would have been fatal.

Felix Koch, like all South Germans, was a sentimentalist. Church spires by moonlight, or a slumbering infant, were unfailing bell-pulls to his softer nature. Gently he touched her hair with his fingers. “Sleep then, pretty child, there is nothing to fear,” he murmured, profoundly moved by this self-evidence of the rake’s reverence for purity. It was all the easier to assume, since he did not really care for Deb.

Deb thought: “And so one must love a man, to like being kissed by him?... Or is it only because he is married that I can’t like it?”

She had been in love, of course; not the conventional once and once only, but twice. A glamorous episode with a young Territorial Captain, Con Rothenburg, eldest son of her father’s partner. And later on, a man whose age doubled hers: the doctor who had taken over the practice while the Marcus’ old family practitioner went round the world for his health. This was a less complete attachment than with Con, for Doctor Steele was not even aware of her tremulous passion; nor with what conscientious honesty she prevented herself from deliberately seeking to contract the ailments which would have ensured his attendance. It had occurred to her, while his hand was on her racing pulse: “How easy it would be for him just to bend down and kiss me. So easy that it doesn’t seem fair he shouldn’t. So easy—he could forget it at once; and I should always remember....” But Doctor Steele had relinquished his locum tenency, and disappeared, leaving Deb with no such memory.

There had been other—minor adventures. A great many. So irresistibly did she attract them, that one might fancy her reincarnated from some famous harlot of old history. And besides, she involuntarily invited them because she was so plainly on the look-out. Yet she was on the look-out not for minor adventures, but for the big thing; the thing to engross her existence; to dwarf its lesser trickiness; to drench her quick nervous soul with peace; provide employment for her restless, life-bitten brain. If Deb had been an artist, the big thing had been easier to find. She was an artist, but in appreciation only; non-creative. Or if Deb had been religious.... Religion attacked her imagination as little as the winged Victory, rushing like wind down the steps of the Louvre. She knew that the masterpiece was there; she had not seen it herself; others had seen it; she hoped one day to see it. Meanwhile—she could do without it, and not feel the loss.

So, a pilgrim without a staff, she had roamed....

But this special incident ought not to have occurred. Instinct told her there was a certain type of girl to whom it could not have occurred. She had always hoped she was this girl; sheathed in a sort of hard, transparent whiteness from which anything that was not the one big thing would infallibly slide off, without giving the occupant of this convenient armour the slightest trouble.

Of late, however, she had been growing suspicious of her powers to ward off an accumulation of petty experiences.

Experiences?—but she wanted experience.

She tried to trace back the initial carelessness—yes, carelessness was the only word for it—which had led to her present plight. She ought to have gone to her room to lie down, in spite of Marianna’s sneers. Yet that would have seemed a ridiculous affectation of prudery, especially as that very afternoon.... Ah, here the fault, then!... But she had not really flirted with Ralph von Sittart; the ladies of Dorzheim had misread that spurt of revolt which had suddenly lit her to flame; revolt from their disapproval of her; revolt from the stiff chairs on which each one stiffly sat, with her stiff neck upheld in whalebone.... Rather than make one of them, she had preferred to squat upon the bearskin in front of the tall, white, frozen stove; bend down her unfettered neck to rub her cheek caressingly against the animal’s beautiful head—Oh, it had been an exhibition of bad manners, certainly; even cheap bad manners ... bearskins and tigerskins were a bohemianism which London had long discarded; but these German women could be shocked by nothing more subtle than the effronteries of five seasons ago. And Deb had to shock them, in the impish mood which possessed her, for which Elly Ladenberg (née Harrison) was perhaps primarily responsible. “You haven’t brought your needle-work?” “I haven’t got any,” laughed Deb. “Then you have finished your present for Frau Koch?” in a discreet undertone. Deb learnt that it was the sacred custom here for any young girl staying with a married lady, to stitch a most elaborate piece of embroidery as a thank-offering for her hostess.

The information depressed her. She enquired if it would not be possible to obtain the same effect of overpowering gratitude, by sending to an expensive shop in London.

“You can see for yourself that it would not do. The sentiment would not be the same.”

“Curse the sentiment,” murmured Deb mournfully, disappointed of an ally.

... The word was passed round that the English girl was, to say the least of it, eccentric. Anything sensational might be expected of her.

Deb responded flauntingly to their expectations. Impossible anyway to efface herself from the conspicuous position she occupied as “Frau Koch’s visitor.” Guests were rare in Dorzheim; no jolly, casual happening, but a solemn event which exacted a whole code of ceremonial. And even then the visitors were usually somebody’s relations. But all of a sudden a strange girl—from that mad country—even Frau Koch confessing to a minimum of previous acquaintance.... “The poor Marianna tells me she had no idea that the father would permit it.” “Odd, very odd. Has she money, do you know?” “Oh, surely; her dresses are of the best material, even though they are fashioned in a style ... dearest Frau Bergmann—that skirt!”

And then Ralph von Sittart had strolled into the party; handsome, middle-aged German-American, who propped up his indolence by an elderly wife’s income. And it had been a well-nigh hysterical relief for Deb to hear English spoken.... Frau von Sittart’s face ... the whispers ... and all the knitting-needles clacking....

She had behaved outrageously. But only under the goad of alert protest to her entire personality, to her slightest act. She was in a false position from the start. She should not have come. She had only come because of John Thorpe’s mother and the ear-trumpet....

III

At this stage of her attempts to track consequences to their motive lair, Deb became aware that her feet were being plagued by pins and needles, and that she most desperately desired to wriggle. She judged that it would be safe now to awake from slumber ... it must be a full half-hour that she and Felix Koch were lying motionless side by side. She opened her eyes, raised herself on one elbow, sighed deeply, as one who yields up a pleasant dreamland. Then only did she perceive that all this pantomime was unnecessary; her companion was quite peacefully asleep.

Deb slithered off the couch, tip-toed to the door, closed it soundlessly behind her. No one was in the hall. She ran upstairs, and knocked at the door of her brother’s room.

Richard, in his shirt-sleeves, was standing in front of the looking-glass; and with a brush ferociously brandished in either hand, was frustrating his hair’s racial inclination to curl.

“Are you dressing for supper? The others don’t, you know.”

“No reason for me to be a barbarian, if they are, is it?”

“When in Rome——”

“Do as the Romans don’t—if they’re Germans!”

“Richard—we had awful trouble at home sometimes to get you to dress in the evenings.”

He grinned. “Had you? I shouldn’t be surprised if you had it again.” After a pause, he enquired: “How long d’you want to stop here, Deb?”

“In Dorzheim? Don’t you like it?”

He considered a moment. “No.”

“Why not?”

“Lots of reasons. Can’t be bothered to think ’em all out.”

“We ought to stay a fortnight, now they’ve invited us, and we’ve come.”

“All right.”

Deb sat down on the bed. Immediately the great inflated pillow that acted as eiderdown almost submerged her in its rising billows. She struck them down passionately—

“Richard.”

“Um?”

“Don’t leave me alone with Felix Koch, if you can manage it....”

She was prepared for a brotherly outburst: “D’you mean to say the fellow dared——” But Richard laid down his brushes, and took up his collar, with a total absence of all emotion. “Oh, all right.”

CHAPTER II

I

A few days later, Felix Koch came back at an unwonted hour, between dinner and supper, and beckoned his wife to a private conference. Her luminous eyes, as she went, testified to a hope that the mystery enveloped a fur cloak.

Presently Richard was summoned.

“Row about Lothar von Relling,” he explained nonchalantly to Deb afterwards.

“Lothar?”

“Gloomy little beggar with the astonished hair who came here once to tea. You ought to know, Deb. The whole shindy concerns you. What have you been up to?”

She reflected a moment before confession. Prudence prompted the query: “What do they say I’ve been up to?”

Richard chuckled—then became instantly solemn. “This morning, Herr Sanitäts-Rath Oberunterammergau von und zu hellofarau Maximilian Hauffe called upon the honest and respected banker, Felix Koch, to complain that his daughter Frieda-Marie had been slighted and insulted by said daughter’s plighted husband-to-be, Lothar von Relling, who was seen two evenings ago in the darkest portion of the Grünewald—need I go on?”

“N-no,” said Deb, “you needn’t go on with that part of it. Tell me what the Kochs are saying?”

Richard dropped into a creditable imitation of Felix Koch:

“So I say with dignity to Herr Hauffe: ‘Herr Hauffe, tell me only this: is your anger at what has occurred, is it because my guest is a Jewess? because I myself am a Jew? If so, I regret, but I will not move in the matter.’ And he replied, taking off his hat: ‘Herr Koch, let me now assure you that there is no one in this town for whom I have a respect more profound than for yourself; I am a broad-minded man, and had your guest been a Christian lady, which she is not, I should have still been obliged my present course in defence of my daughter’s honour to pursue.’ At this I started up, and put on my hat, and gave him my hand in friendship, and together we went to Frau von Relling. Ei, but Dorzheim stared to see us arm-in-arm; twenty-seven Catholics alone took off their hats to us——”

“Is there lots more about hats, Richard?”

“No, the rest is mostly about Lothar and you. The whole town is simply ramping. You’re a goose, Deb. ’Tisn’t worth it. Why, he’s only six months older than I am—and a German!”

“Do you suppose I got any fun out of it?” she flared.

But it was niggardly to grudge something that lay within her power to give. Or wasn’t it?... Chastity—the girl in white armour.... To give so easily, though—she remembered Doctor Steele. And the gloomy little boy had thirsted for that one kiss; too inarticulate to ask for it; too comic, in his owl’s spectacles and low collar and vertical crest of hair, to make a silently romantic plea, he just sat on the pile of logs looking up at her in dazed sickly reverie, as she came towards him along the misty blue road that meandered among the fir trees behind the town. She understood that by lightly dropping her lips on to his, there, in that scene, at that hour, she could give him an exquisite moment to carry through the sentimental years into manhood. Why not, then? The girl who withholds such chance gifts in her power, for the sake of what was called her bloom, what was she, after all, but a miser?

Deb’s kiss was just an impulse of almsgiving. She did not shatter the boy’s ecstasy by speech. Hardly pausing in her walk, she bent ... he had a vision of her serious mouth and warmly glowing eyes ... and she went swiftly on.

Frau Huldah von Sittart, who witnessed the idyll and reported on it, could not have been expected to interpret its psychology correctly. But to Richard, Deb tried to explain.... It was intolerable that he should suppose she enjoyed kissing scrubby little schoolboys.

He listened, brows knitted severely: “But, my dear kid, that sort of philanthropy is rather dangerous, isn’t it, where men in general are concerned?”

“It’s just whether one is to be generous or stingy—oh, don’t you see? ... to give what matters so little to me, and so tremendously much to them——”

“Make a habit of it, you’ll end by giving what means so much to you and so precious little to them.”

Richard’s wisdom was a mere accident of repartee; and Deb did not smile; she very rarely smiled; but her voice at all times held a certain clear joyousness that was in startling contrast to her tired little face; her voice was a child, years younger than her lips or her eyes. So that Richard could only dimly suspect her of hidden laughter as she said: “I esteem your judgment, but—you’re rather precocious, aren’t you?”

“Good Lord, no!” he shouted, appalled. “I’m sensible. You can’t walk about dropping kisses.”

“Dropping magic,” she corrected him gravely. “And if I’m not the poorer, and am quite sure they will be the richer....” She tilted her head defiantly: “Richard, I’d rather be royal than—good!”

Richard pondered a moment over this. His sister watched him with eyes that were half sorrowful, half impudent. Most people would have been astonished that she could confide such feminine subtleties in a brother eight years her junior. But she had never yet been disappointed by a rebuff from Richard that was sheer scoffing schoolboy and no more. He possessed certain qualities she lacked, of uncompromising fairness and sanity. Also, he was shock-proof; an imperturbable Mahomet to whom all mountains came, and were received in a take-it-for-granted spirit.

Sometimes Deb wondered just where, in all this mass of solidity, lay buried that mysterious streak of understanding—kinship, perhaps—on which she relied.

Now he said: “Well, I wouldn’t practise your theory of magic-dropping in Dorzheim, if I were you. ’Tisn’t the right place for it. Too many Germans about. Germans take things seriously.”

Richard was right. Dorzheim did take this act of Deb’s with great and exceeding seriousness. They had primarily consulted Richard, and begged him to reprimand his sister, in the Teuton spirit that the male, in all emergencies, takes precedence.

The pastor and the schoolmaster and Frau von Relling and Herr Sanitäts-Rath Hauffe and Huldah van Sittart and Felix Koch paid one another a succession of formal calls. Then suddenly Frau von Relling called no more upon the Kochs ... and small wonder, since Frieda-Marie Hauffe had been promised an exceptionally large dowry, and it was sheer madness for Lothar to have imperilled this. True, Wanda von Relling still came to Marianna’s At Home day; but this was merely an act of defiance towards old Frau Koch (not on speaking terms with Marianna) who had condoled with Frau von Relling (not on speaking terms with Wanda) on her affliction for which the younger Koch household was responsible. And anyhow, all Dorzheim knew that Wanda had tried to get Sigismund Koch and had failed; so naturally and out of spite, she would choose to continue visiting at the house of Felix (not on speaking terms with Sigismund).... But all this led back to ancient history; and Dorzheim, flushed and garrulous, was not to be diverted from the delicious new scandal of the daughter of Herr Sanitäts-Rath Hauffe insulted through the medium of the English girl staying with the Felix Kochs. Well, and had she not flirted with Ralph van Sittart as well? Half Dorzheim had seen her do it. The other half of Dorzheim had noticed her drinking coffee with Sigismund Koch; yes, actually setting her cap at him, the buck of the town, the famous rake—Ach! and did Felix know?... “And what was she doing walking alone in the woods at that hour of evening?” demanded Frau Huldah with relish: “Do modest maidens walk without escort? Though to be sure I have heard her say she is already twenty-three; doubtless she is in fear she will be left sitting.” “And Lothar von Relling is a Protestant; has been confirmed only half a year ago, with my Karl; that comes of it, then, when one permits oneself to be intimate with a Jewish family; I could have told Frau von Relling....”

The scandal threatened to broaden into religious controversy.

And Frieda-Marie, poor wormling, was, ach, inconsolable! Hitherto in Dorzheim a betrothal was sacred. Others of our sons may follow Lothar von Relling’s example of insubordination. To prevent which calamity, Lothar was first expelled from the Gymnasium; then locked into his bedroom; visited alternately by the pastor and the schoolmaster; finally, banished to an aunt and uncle in Dresden. Lothar went, darkly uplifted in his martyrdom; thrilling to a certain deathless memory; but wishing, nevertheless, that before going he might have had a word or two with Frieda-Marie, of whom he was very fond, and who was after all his betrothed....

Still without a smile, Dorzheim settled down to see what Deb would do.

Deb did quite a lot. She was heady with her first draught of conspicuous unpopularity. Vivid and defiant and a little frightened too. Never before had she found herself so the centre of animated disapproval. And as none of those who disapproved were of the people who mattered to her, she was not hurt, nor cast down, but merely possessed by the mischievous wish to do her worst on the propriety of Dorzheim; to avenge their harsh dealings with inoffensive little Lothar von Relling; to yield them more and more material for spiteful gossip. In brief, to earn their condemnation—these folk, who would not, could not, laugh.

She had plenty of social opportunity for exploiting her histrionic demon. For whatever Dorzheim’s private opinion of Deb, etiquette decreed that Frau Koch’s guest should be shown “attention,” should be feted and entertained. Dorzheim did its duty by Deb, and so considered itself free to censure her. She was invited to attend numerous afternoon coffee-parties, and one big dinner-party at which lawyers and doctors and their wives formed the majority, and Felix Koch was the only banker, as he gleefully informed Deb. She learnt then for the first time the exact ladder of snobbery, of which the apex is the nobility; thence on a descending scale to the military—the professionals—bankers—merchants—clergy and schoolmasters—everybody heedful of their head among the feet on the rung above; everybody ignoring the humbler position of their own feet. Jews had their own parallel ladder of snobbery; and actors and artists were not properly considered on any ladder at all.

The great event of her stay was a Masonic entertainment, where she was conspicuous in her dead-black crêpe-de-chine evening-dress. “An unmarried girl in black—Gott in Himmel! And brunette too; had she been a blonde, one might have forgiven her, though even then——” Most of the other ladies wore afternoon toilet; and a few were in tartan blouses with the neck ripped out, and dark skirts. At this party Deb made the acquaintance of the owner of the largest jewel factory in Dorzheim; who the next day formally conducted her over the premises; into the cavernous underground workshops; dimness speckled by small shaded red lights; at each separate table a man in tinted blinkers intent on a heap of precious stones that he would sift carelessly through his huge hairy fingers, before selecting one for his mysterious tools. None of these men looked up as their employer and his party passed among them. Deb felt the sunless air choked up with hatred and menace; the whirring of the thousand little machines oppressed her; it was an evil place—and she remembered Koch’s allusion to the Socialist influence and possible trouble....

Home-life did not exist for the Kochs; every evening, when no set form of entertainment was offered, Felix and Marianna, Deb and Richard, sat in the big restaurant in Lindenstrasse; sat there for two or three hours, drinking coffee or syrups, eating sweet cloying cakes; while the men roared their politics or slammed the domino-cubes on the table, and slowly obliterated their womenfolk in clouds of foul smoke. The group about the Kochs was always a large one, and included the younger brothers who had been hastily sent for from neighbouring towns on rumour of Deb’s enormous dowry. Deb was herself responsible for this rumour. It was one of her first acts of devilry. Actually it procured her three proposals ... her excited fancy multiplied these to a grotesque figure out of all proportion to the truth. The trio of smug-correct young men, overwhelming her with staccato bows and wired nosegays and compliments which an intelligent child of ten might have disdained, made their offers of marriage almost simultaneously, and were all three accepted, with meek surprise that they should care for a portionless damsel ... at which they melted to the limpness of three candles left in a strong sun, and melted out of Deb’s sight, and melted away from Dorzheim. And two of them, because they had begun to love her, kept silence as to the reason for their withdrawal. But Ludo Salzmann wrote vindictively to the sister-in-law who had summoned him. And Deb, compelled in self-respect to commit one villainy the more, accepted Sigismund Koch’s invitation to drink tea with him in his rooms ... “English fashion—yes, I have dwelt some time in England.”

He had been accidentally introduced to her at the Lodge entertainment. And afterwards Felix remarked wrathfully, and hardly in the spirit of Masonic or natural brotherhood: “You are not to speak to that fine fellow. You understand? Not with my consent. Hundert-tausendteufel!—and what did you think of him?”

“He’s very handsome,” demurely.

“Ach, he is a scoundrel! And do you know what they call him in the town, with his brown curly beard and pale face? They call him Jesus Christus. That’s a joke, you see.” Felix laughed uproariously, and Richard asked: “Why is it a joke, sir?” “But can’t you see? He, my brother, is a Jew ... and they call him Jesus Christus!” “But Jesus Christ was a Jew,” argued Richard stolidly. Koch stared at him. The English had no sense of humour. He turned the conversation from wit to politics: “What in your opinion are the present aims of Mister Usskeess?” But Richard was unable to fit the name to any English statesman of his knowledge, so did not take up the challenge.

With all his reputation of a fascinating rake, Sigismund behaved at his tea-party with exemplary decorum. Moreover, he had invited his mother to be present. Deb liked him better than any one she had met since her arrival in Germany.

“What are you doing in Dorzheim, for goodness’ sake, child?” This query he put when he was escorting her home.

Deb laughed. “I wish I knew. I ran away from a scrape——”

“To find yourself in worse scrapes here?”

“You’ve ... heard something about me?”

His eyes twinkled. “Tongues wag in Dorzheim.”

“May—may I come to you about it ... if things get bad?” For in spite of bravado, she was becoming apprehensive of the sly malice ever more apparent in Marianna’s conversation; of the enmity piling up against her; and of a vague, more impersonal enmity which, strangely, seemed to loom behind.

“Heaven protect me—and you too!” exclaimed Sigismund in mock horror. “And you suppose Dorzheim would regard me, me of all people, as a suitable confessor for your sins?”

It was evident that Sigismund prided himself on his reputation as a “dangerous man.”

“Where have you been this afternoon?” demanded Felix.

“To your brother’s flat. It’s—it’s—a very pretty flat, isn’t it?”

The banker grew livid. “I tell you, Fräulein Deb, he is trying to marry you for your money.”

“He did not try anything of the sort!” indignantly. “And I have no money. And your Frau Mama was there.”

“That was an arranged insult to me,” Marianna declared.

Marianna was enraged because her well-planned intentions with regard to her husband and Deb had miscarried. Yet more enraged, because they had not quite miscarried. Moreover, Sigismund happened to be the unknown rival whom Felix suspected in the background. If this does not accord with his care in providing an adequate chaperone for the little English rebel who so indiscreetly accepted an invitation to his rooms, let it be remembered that there is no element with whom the true rake deals more circumspectly than with girlhood ... until he reaches the age when chastity becomes desirable instead of formidable.

Marianna was further enraged because Felix had said he could not afford visitors and fur cloaks. The von Rellings had ceased to call. And now Deb was drinking tea with her mother-in-law—and not even bothering to lie about it.

And yet, when Richard proposed abruptly, at supper, that they ought to be thinking of departure, both his host and hostess were unable to stem themselves in mechanical utterance of their habitual code of protest and renewed hospitality: “But certainly you must not dream of leaving us yet—we shall not allow it—you have been with us so little time—it is such a pleasure. No, no, indeed you must not go....”

II

The next day, most of the workmen in the factories went on strike. Those who refused were attacked as blacklegs. The quaint, sunshiny streets were hideous with brawling. And Deb could no longer with safety be allowed to take her solitary walks, which were the only relief from the strain of Marianna’s perpetual smiling hatred.

By degrees, her feverish mood of excitement evaporated entirely. She began to dread stumbling over the traces of her own joyous misdemeanour. Was there no careless youth in this tight, compressed little city of envious wranglings and complicated feuds and bitter snobbery? It struck her with a shock that Dorzheim seemed to contain no element between subdued childhood and ambitious or self-satisfied matrimony.

Something ominous was afoot; she was no longer the centre of interest; men came and went on short journeys; men held whispered conferences, excluding their womenfolk. Deb felt ever more urgently the need for departure. But she was waiting for a letter from her family to say when they intended leaving Switzerland; and if she and Richard were to rejoin them at Montreux, or at home in England. The letter was delayed; morning after morning she expected it, and it did not come. It ought to have contained money for the journey....

Dorzheim was no longer a funny little German town, inhabited mainly by caricatures. It was a place of horror.... She was wakeful at nights; and musing at her window, she saw, or thought she saw, long phantom trains glide without shriek or rumble over the railway-lines some half-mile distant. Black shapes of trains, no single window lit ... all night they were creeping past in the darkness ... and the next night ... and the next ... every time she rose from her bed to look again....

III

“Deb, you know Austria declared war on Servia the other day?”

“Yes. Well?”

“Seen the papers lately?”

“German papers!” scornfully; good enough for Germans, of course, but——

“Russia has joined Servia, and Germany has declared war on Russia, and—we’re in Germany. They say that France will have to join up with Russia, and perhaps England with France. Then there’s Holland and Belgium ... doubtful if they can keep out....”

With a sound like the rush of bursting waters, Deb’s nightmare ceased to be her private affair.... Bursting waters ... yes, a piece of music—Ravel, was it? She had heard it before she left London—the Sorcerer’s ignorant apprentice left alone with the magic broom ... trickle of water that he summoned up ... torrents of water ... multiplying devouring water ... it swamped the room and the corners of the room and the street outside and the world beyond ... gleeful swirls of water, unrelenting, irresistible, that pursued and flooded every inch of dry ... every inch of dry ... the music roared deafeningly in her head, drowning coherent thought.... Somebody had touched the broom....

She told Richard about the fantastic procession of trains.

“Troops, of course. Being hurried to the frontier. They must have quenched all the lights. Didn’t want us to know they were prepared.”

“Us? You and me?”

“England, you ass!” Richard grinned at the idea of a nation plunged in darkness for the benefit of himself and Deb. Deb—umph! he hunched his shoulders, and stared at her moodily. He was responsible for Deb’s safety.

“You wouldn’t care to marry somebody here and settle down, I suppose? It might come cheaper than hauling you along to England. It would be sport getting through if I were alone....”

“I’m sorry. No, I’d rather not settle in Dorzheim for good. But we could go home by two separate routes.”

“Job enough to find one route, I should say. Stop ragging, Deb; this isn’t a joke.”

“I’m sorry,” she murmured again, all womanhood abject before the gruff commonsense of all manhood.

“That idiot Koch ought to have warned us. He must have known something. We should have left here a week ago, when I suggested it.... If it’s going to be a general flare-up, then one jolly well wants to be in one’s own country, and not in somebody else’s!”

CHAPTER III

I

Patriotism, even more than bunting-deep, is largely a matter of habit. Before August, nineteen-fourteen, Richard had rather taken his country for granted. Now he awoke to an England that in return for years of security and a lazy pleasure at the sight of so many red patches on the school-map, suddenly exacted service—fighting service. Richard cursed his age; welcomed any indication in the trend of things “out there” that seemed to prophesy a minimum of three years’ activities. “If only the war holds out till I can get to it!” He suffered from disturbing premonitions of a peace signed and ratified just one day before his eighteenth birthday.

War, as a pastime, a profession, an emotional outlet, fulfilled every unspoken need of his temperament. He was a born pugilist; he did not mind bodily discomfort; he was endowed with splendid physique; he kept cool in emergencies; he had an infinite preference for male society; he was under a firm impression that he was devoid of that cumbersome burden called imagination; he lacked graceful accomplishments. What did the future hold for a boy of such capacities and disqualifications? Nineteen-fourteen came like an answer to an obstinate riddle.

And—confound it!—he was not yet sixteen.

Winborough had its Cadet Corps, which was a slight compensation for the utter meaningless absurdity of Latin and Greek—dead studies in a time of live history. At least, one was preparing for a later share in the conflict. The ethics of war and peace did not bother him. War suited him, as a definite opportunity for concerted action; whereas peace appeared a condition infinitely more difficult, more scattered and involved and hesitant. Richard approved of the indubitable simplicity of a nation at war: every mind thinking alike; every effort directed towards the same end; loyalty accepted as a predominant emotion, without need to fuss over lesser problems of one’s personal age. He was animated as yet by no special rancour towards the Germans.... Poor old Grandfather was a German; rotten for him, these days! Pater was naturalized, so he was all right (the yellow press was not circulated at Winborough).... The natural conditions of war demanded an enemy, and the Germans would do as well as anyone else; better, in fact; for they were powerful and well-prepared, so that there was an excellent chance that hostilities would last till Richard was eighteen——

He always came back to that.

The Dunnes were both in the navy; Greville, just about to join the Grand Fleet on H.M.S. “Canada”; young Frank, still at Osborne. Richard spent this Christmas of Greville’s final leave at Mrs Dunne’s jolly, crowded cottage in Essex, on the outskirts of a little country town that was just about the same size as Dorzheim.... He amused the Dunnes exceedingly by his accounts of that place, and of his headlong scramble home with Deb. It was something of an exploit to have been caught in enemy territory on the eve of war: “If we had started for home two days later, we shouldn’t have started at all; they’d have kept us there for weeks, probably, and then goose-stepped us over the frontier under strict official supervision.”

“Deb, not you,” Greville corrected. “I knew a chap of our age who was at Dresden at the time, and they’ve interned him over there.”

“Lord, not really! That would have been a swizzle, missing all the fun, tucked away with a lot of rotten Germans——”

“They’d be English, you ass, in a German internment camp.”

“M’yes, so they would. Still, one would be horribly out of it all; not that Winborough’s much better”—reverting to the old grievance—“I wish I’d plumped for the navy when you did.”

Mrs Dunne smiled rather wistfully. “I wonder if your father shares that wish of yours, Richard.”

“Dunno. Shan’t see him till Easter, I expect. I was glad to be away these hols. out of all the fuss of moving. We’ve let our house, you know.”

“You must have cheered when you got your hoof in England again,” Greville remarked, reverting to the journey from Dorzheim.

But instead of the “You bet!” one might have expected, Richard was silent.... He was still shy of remembering the rush of sentiment which had attacked him on arrival at Folkestone that second of August, after three chaotic days and nights through a continent that was screaming mad with war.... God bless these stolid English porters—these English engines that knew reliably whither they were bearing the train—this decent Sunday evening quiet everywhere.... Richard dug his hands in his pockets and snapped his lips firmly as he strode up the gangway of the boat; he was neither lunatic nor poet, to shout aloud the pæan: “England, my England!” that was tightening his throat and thrumming in his heart ... but he had vowed, nevertheless, as he stepped on shore, that he would prove to the utmost stretch of his powers a good citizen, a loyal patriot. He was definitely grateful to his country at this moment for its mere existence.

The emotion had died to a vague shame at having made an exhibition of himself, even with himself as the only witness. Yet now, as he bent forward to turn the chestnuts roasting over the fire, and tossed a burnt one on to the lap of Molly Dunne, Greville’s flapper cousin, he experienced the kind of satisfaction with his surroundings which can best be translated into a heartfelt grunt. They were the conventionally right sort of people: Mrs Dunne, frail and pleasant; the two boys in their blue and gold uniforms; Molly, tanned brown as her own tangle of hair—an ugly kid, but good sport. A rough little terrier lay on the hearthrug; everybody’s skates, caked from recent use, sprawled all over the shabby chintz furniture; and the big holly-twined portrait of the late Commander Dunne domineered the room from above the mantelpiece. Jolly things strewn about, too; the model of a Chinese junk; bits of queer distorted coral and stone and shell; fantastic weapons slung on the walls; photographs of battleships and their crews—all these evidences of a sailor family, and far lands, without in the least influencing the typically English atmosphere of the room. If the Dunnes had settled in Japan or Bulawayo, their apartments would still have been as—Dunne-ish. These curios—they were just curios, neither more nor less; and as such, were given their proper place.

Queer, reflected Richard, that before the spasm of homesick misery which had thrust at him on a certain evening in the streets of Dorzheim, he had never been consciously aware, as at present, of a state of well-being. He supposed the contrast had for good or for evil awakened him; and questioned glumly whether it were altogether convenient to be at the mercy of perceptions as sharpened and sensitive.

If this were Dorzheim, then the chestnuts would be gingerbread; Greville and Molly would be “betrothed” by arrangement of their elders; and Richard would be proudly noting the fact that he was the one Jew with whom the Dunnes had “traffic....”

Thank goodness, in England you could be a Jew, and hardly even know it....

II

Jews ... but the Marcus children were yearly allowed to hunt for hidden Easter eggs in their garden. Dorothea, Ferdinand’s wife, had been the mildest of Protestants, as he was the most tolerant of Israelites; and there were times when bacon and matsas had appeared simultaneously upon their table, not from any unadjusted clash of orthodoxy, but merely that Ferdinand insisted on the British national breakfast, and Dorothea had an eccentric liking for unleavened bread when it was “in season.” Richard and Deb never learnt any Hebrew, till the approach of the boy’s “Barmitzfa” rendered necessary in his case a certain knowledge of the language, easily forgotten. The occasion itself struck him as mainly remarkable for the amount of presents he received. Deb considered it distinctly unfair that boys should be able to put in such a profitable extra birthday; she tried to get quits in hard value, by accepting as often as offered the post of bridesmaid, whether in church or in synagogue. Both religious ceremonies made an equally profound impression upon her—for an hour. The Marcuses did not keep up the Jewish feast-days and holidays, and consequently the younger generation were rather hazy as to their origin and significance. Ferdinand made a half-hearted effort to keep them reminded of the most important of these, so that they should not give offence to such of their friends and relatives as were strict in observance, by a blank stare of ignorance on receiving salutation: “Muzzeltoff!” They wished each other a Happy New Year quite impartially in the autumn and on the first of January; and Christmas was a jovial mingling of whatever customs were pleasantest of diverse creeds and countries.

Dorothea and Ferdinand had agreed that whatever children might be born to them, should make their own choice of religion, or no religion, when they were old enough. Themselves had endured much from despotic parents, and were eagerly and insistently broad-minded in their educational intentions.

Old Hermann Marcus had sent his son to England on business when the lad was barely twenty—a shy, plump, sweet-faced little fellow, with bright brown eyes round with admiration for England and England’s ways. Peremptorily recalled to Bavaria after two years of Paradise, he summoned all his courage, and—from a safe distance—defied the tyrant ... somewhat tempering the grand effect of his rebellion by a diplomatic postscript pointing out that in London he could be of more service to the firm than in Munich; was rapidly gathering custom; and hoped in a few years to be able to marry. His father replied tersely that he was a thickhead, had always been a thickhead, would always be a thickhead, and was therefore admirably adapted by nature to settle down in a nation of thickheads—“but in that case, you will at once sever connection with my business.” Ferdinand dutifully trotted back to Germany; spent several wretched months in vain longings for his adopted country; and finally, not being of that stuff of which heroes are made, sneaked back to his Hampstead boarding-house, his tennis, his Sunday river-parties, and mysterious November fogs, leaving his sister Stella to break the news to old Marcus. The latter promptly cut his son out of his will. Ferdinand perseveringly worked himself up to a sufficiently good position on the Stock Exchange to be able, at the age of twenty-seven, to rescue Dorothea Ladislov from an uncongenial home, and marry her romantically at the registrar’s. The pretty, black-haired girl was the daughter of an aristocratic Czech family, which had settled in England before she was born. She and Ferdinand had fallen in love over their compared experiences of early years heavy and burdensome with must-nots. Deb, directly she appeared on the scene, flitted like a will-o’-the-wisp through dream-acres of sunshiny freedom planned for her by her parents, entirely from contrast with their own rigidly enclosed childhood. Not all the present bliss in the world could quite compensate for those best lost years. Deb should live carelessly radiant from the very beginning—“Not spoilt, Ferdie; that’s different and hateful. She must learn reasonable manners and control; obedience even. Only there needn’t be so very much to obey. And as soon as she can think for herself——”