G. B. Stern

“ And suddenly Richard stood still and began to laugh. And what chance of defence had a man standing beside a bursting bomb thrown by an unseen hand from fifty yards away? Little silly, fretful rules—with death and destruction and decay streaming wide over one country after another; whirring in the very air above God’s churches; throbbing in the sea under the millionaire’s pleasure-ship; each individual helplessly involved with their bodies or with their goods or with their hearts. Then, what the devil is the use of some abstract gabble about the conventions of a game? ”

“ 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. ”

“ And suddenly Ferdie was dead—and she saw that loop with the dangling ends, and it struck her painfully that she would never again see it round Ferdie’s neck, plum and blue stem to that genial rubicund face with the kind eyes ... Dad was dead ... everybody dies....
Whether she had been vouchsafed a swift keyhole peep at an inevitable future, or if the vision were merely a childish drench of sentiment—whichever it was, it sent Deb straight past grandfather’s sarcastic smile and Aunt Stella’s antagonism, to her knees beside Ferdie’s chair—snuggled up against him—Thank God, he was not dead yet! ”

“ Nobody would bother to verify the discrepancy in time; the loss of an hour....
So—straight to Jermyn Street ... just for the fun of it! Just for the fun of huddling herself in a disguising cloak, and once again creeping with awed feet along that silent, mysterious avenue where “men of the world” abode ... for the fun of gazing wistfully up at the imperturbable stone frontage behind which playtime lay forgotten ... for the fun of being once more in mischief, dreading discovery, thrilling at her own daring ... for the fun of flouting the Phillips’ Illusion! ”

“ In Antonia Verity, Deb recognized with mixed feelings the temperament she had always most coveted, most desired to find in herself. The natural Artemis, Artemis from no simpering prudery nor actual coldness of disposition—but that Artemis who instinctively runs from the pursuer; Artemis in love with her own chastity. Her eyes, changing from hazel to green, deepset in shadow and drooping at the corners, were at perpetual war with the pure scissored curves of her mouth. Deb was aware that Antonia could never deal in fragments where her love-affairs were concerned ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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. ”

“ It galled Deb, not unreasonably, to be identified with La llorraine as a rouette of 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....” ”

“ But Hardy, with his light eyes, light hair, light skin, and enormous nose, gave somewhat the impression of a Jew who had been well bleached. Hedda’s colouring lay between the two extremes. Con enjoyed the good looks of the family; blue eyes always afire with mirth; tall, athletic figure; incarnate good-nature and high spirits, he was adored by his men, and well-liked by his superior officers. As for his mother—not Max nor Hardy nor David, nor Hedda nor Nell, could in sum equal her love for this miracle of an eldest-born, now in the trenches. ”

“ And with belief came power—oh, what strange new power in her deep look ... young Nell knew everything now—all about feelings and life and colour ... she knew what feelings were when Timothy’s hand lay on her bare arm; and life was—Oh, but she mustn’t tell ... not yet ... you wouldn’t understand, because it’s all got to do with Timothy. And colour was what happened to Timothy if near to him she stirred or brushed his khaki sleeve....
She lay on her back among the buttercups; staring into the sky, and thinking. ”

“ But I have then, for Stella and Deb and Richard. So when I feel pessimist, when my opinion is not likely to be a popular opinion, I keep it to myself. For the difference between us and the British-born is this: there is, alas, no bias on our judgments. That pleasant happy bias! ah, it must be reposeful to let one’s judgment roll with the bias; but the bias is lodged in the nature, and the nature springs from the soil, and the soil of England is not ours—we who belong to no country, and are therefore doomed to see things exactly as they are. ”

“ And he knew that though the picture of Trudchen Redbury perplexed over the question whether tidings of Con’s death in the English trenches should be sent to spoil the birthday of her sister Anna in Berlin, might and did symbolize an international predicament—yet that other picture was indeed war and the splendour of war and beyond war; was patriotism itself, the urge and reason for patriotism, the ultimate answer to all niggling private issues; he knew that before war and after war, war may be averted; but during war ours is to shut both eyes and stand by the blind and follow the dead. ”

“ Deb shook back her ragged curtain, and scissors suspended, gazed in sheer surprise at Antonia. “Or was it Jill speaking in Antonia’s voice?”
“The whole way—or no way. The last, for me. But you’ve proved that it’s impossible for you, now. So the whole way. I despise—debatable ground.”
“It’s too late for the whole way, too. Yes, I’m quite logical. You either rush headlong from chastity into wantonness—forgive me, Jill, it’s the wrong word, but I can’t think of another—or else into matrimony. Debatable ground is for those who hesitate. And hesitation makes the demi-maid!” ”

“ Bobby was soundly asleep in his cot; his round, monkey face, so comically a replica of Jenny’s, snuggled half under the bed-clothes to meet his huddled-up knees. Deb was compelled to bend and lightly kiss him, for the sake of her private fondness for all small boys. A night-light floating on the table beside him was suddenly quenched. Deb turned to grope her way out of the room. She heard a groan behind her—and, for Bobby’s sake, bit back a sharp scream of terror—
“It’s only me,” came Dolph’s despondent reassurance. ”

“ If Deb and Nell weren’t at the canteen, and Antonia a chauffeuse, and Zoe an affliction to the War Office, and I in my laboratory spying out new diseases that resent bitterly not being allowed to keep themselves to themselves; if we were just mooching and flirting and grumbling, and prodding our emotions, people might be justified in saying we were all in an unhealthy frame of mind from lack of topical co-operation. But as it is, the war goes on, and sex goes on, quite self-reliantly. You can’t cancel one against the other. ”

“ Need one be nice to grown-up men? Because even when it’s only a boy—even when it’s Lothar von Relling, nobody understands that you’re just “trying to be nice.”... She had been waiting over a year for a little heavenly approbation for that act. Nevertheless, she ought to have said something softening in answer to Samson’s avowal, besides the bald and honest: “Oh no” ... Manners!—What did one say? “Believe me, Sir, I am deeply sensible of the honour you have done me, though all unworthy of it,”—Deb could not suppress a joyous gurgle of laughter—she was free—free—light of heel and of heart. ”

“ A past that held her only, the encompassing present—and now he claimed the future as well.... “It’s so heavy,” murmured Deb. He must not be allowed to wait for her—he must not. Could no word, no act of hers shrivel the Phillips’ illusion? Besides ... there were moods which might assail her, driven, persecuted moods that cried for anchorage; soft drowsy Oriental moods, when for sheer languor one might yield—neither of these moods ought to be open to the peril of a Samson waiting and hoping. ”

“ His household was revolutionized; he turned livid at the sound of a single German word spoken; he clung to such English acquaintances as were his, with a limpet-like fervour of affection which no coldness could disconcert. He forbade all communication with relatives abroad; and all mention of them. In short, Mr Otto Redbury was afraid. To their mother’s utter bewilderment, Hedvig, Lenchen, Konrad and Gerhardt were metamorphosed to Hedda, Nell, Con and Hardy. His fever reached its zenith when Gustav Fürth, an unnaturalized German of military age, was arrested and interned. ”

“ The younger generation governed themselves by new laws; how unlawful these laws Ferdie was happily ignorant. According to him, if “it did not come off,” then either one of the pair was indifferent to the other’s love, or else they were “just good friends, nothing more”—no reason why a man and a girl should not be comrades, in these enlightened days. But that any working arrangement could exist whereby passion was deliberately and even verbally harnessed with comradeship, and held in check, and given rein, and expelled again—no, that certainly never occurred to Ferdie Marcus. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He was, thank God, incapable now of reason or justice or sanity—unconscious of himself and his position, oblivious of an enemy point of view. Just English for all he was worth. One man for one land. A patriot ... and—in it!... He forgot that he was alone; the rending chaos all about him gave him the illusion of being a central participant; so his solitary figure jigged and capered on the flat sea-wall with incoherent vocal splutter of encouragement and fury and a very delirium of pleasure. ”

“ 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——”
“She shall dance to her own melodies. Ja, ja, it will be pleasant to have a happy little daughter, not checked, not afraid. And we must learn not to be shocked at her, as we grow older. She shall know that we trust her. Indeed, yes, it will be all right. When one is happy, one is also good. ”

“ The world is my birthplace.... Men had wandered, drifted, flung themselves down in alien places. Why not? The subconscious trust in the brotherhood of nations had urged them to such courses.
And Internationalism had failed them. Each country was tightly puckered again to self-sufficiency. Internationalism had no country to give her devotees during a European war. No country but No Man’s Land ... desolate sodden track without end or beginning, neither land nor sea ... to Richard, almost asleep, came a vision of the estuary echoed somewhere in space and in deeper shadow ... ”

“ Richard waited too, a few moments. Then, impatient of immobility, strolled along the path on his right. He was impressed by the absence of fuss on the part of the civil population. All very well for him who had no more fastenings on life; but these ordinary people appeared to take it so for granted that they should be disturbed in the midst of their daily business, to an encounter with such grotesque apparition as bombs and shrapnel and aerial torpedoes.... ”

“ Antonia sprang up. “Oh, Gillian, if you must try a theory——”
“Theory? Good Lord! Nothing of that sort. It’s just that Theo isn’t big enough or good enough, if you like, to remain faithful and decent and honourable to a woman who’s only his spiritual love. Why pretend?—we all know what Theo is!” she shrugged her thin shoulders and flashed a wide smile up at her friend—“He’s clever—with a sort of malicious destructive cleverness. Otherwise just an amorous gutter-snipe, who can’t resist anything of the other sex—a Zoe in male. ”

“ Richard said slowly: “It’s such a beastly position for all of them—all of us,” he amended; but it still seemed a grotesque nightmare that he should be one of the band whom he was unwillingly compelled to understand and defend.
“It’s all very well to be down on your pater, Redbury, and of course one rags about the change of names, and Swiss waiters and so on—but it’s so utterly unnatural to have no country when your country is the one thing in all the world that matters. As good patriots as any are drifting about loose with nowhere to dump their load of patriotism. ”