Children of No Man's Land

by G. B. Stern

“Shouldn’t we be miserable together, Deb?” And she wondered what reply etiquette dictated to this ardent declaration of no-marriage in the various forms it was offered her. “Please, I wasn’t even trying ...” occurred to her as the likeliest.

Amongst the tricks of this twentieth-century style of liaison was a totally unembarrassed delight in hoodwinking such of the older generation who still took propinquity at its face value, to the belief that the two concerned were indeed formally engaged; wantonly depositing raw material for scandal, where it would be easiest picked up by the person for whom intended.

Cliffe was enchanted when Deb reported to him grandfather’s indelicate enquiries re that young Kennedy’s prospects and declarations; or sentimental Trudchen Redbury’s eagerness to discover when congratulations might be allowed to cast off their decent veilings, and appear on the doorstep in the form of a large basket of flowers, white and pink. He even insisted on propping up all such suspicion by escorting Deb to a formal Sunday afternoon call at the Redburys. “Und nun,” Trudchen babbled to her husband, as Cliffe’s decorous top-hat passed up the street in devoted juxtaposition with Deb’s best white fox furs—“it may at any moment ... how happy the dear Stella will be!”

Ferdie and Stella, true to resolve, put no direct questions to Deb. The child was enjoying herself ... she was always out—that affirmed enjoyment. Stella was as rapacious of Deb’s conquests as though her own sterile girlhood were thus being avenged.... A gleam of triumph shot from her narrow dark eyes in the direction of Hermann Marcus, as Deb indifferently thwarted his industrious research. Here, at all events, the despot had no powers of destruction. Ferdie’s lenience rose from different motives. He prided himself on his lack of insistence that each succeeding episode should result in an eventual son-in-law. Plenty of time—plenty of time. His little Deb was flirting ... only natural! 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. His outlook was just half a generation ahead of his own; half a generation behind his daughter’s. Deb, in a sort of wilful despair at her vain search for control and supervision either from the authority she would have been quick enough to defy, or by some innermost spiritual compass she lacked, Deb went where she pleased, in what company she pleased, at what hours she pleased; rubbed her spirit in pioneer literature, pioneer drama and pioneer discussion, till it was mournfully sterile of glamour or amazement; and for some inexplicable reason, played up to all assumptions on the part of the Studio gang, that she was even as they were in experience of sin ... only it was not the fashion to call it sin, except when the term was used humorously. Not one of them, girl or man, would have believed Deb, had she chosen suddenly to discard her pose of sophistication. She had experimented just enough for this—no more. Her passionate little face, poised on its thick column of neck; the heavy lids that were never quite drawn back from her eyes; slow-smiling mouth, the rich blood veiled by skin crinkled and transparent as poppy-petals in the sun-rays; above all, a quality in each supple movement she made, which a dancer once defined as “limb-consciousness”—combined to uphold the lie that vanity in her had started.

“What can it matter—my life is my own affair!” thus Deb, who hoped hers was a wayward soul, and knew it was merely slipshod....

What can it matter?—why, nothing had mattered much since she had kissed Burton Ames ... and he had been called away to the telephone. She had broken bounds then ... entered on forbidden country. Of what avail afterwards to turn and crawl tamely back through the gap, resume an existence where girls did not cheapen themselves?

If he had made it worth while ... he had not made it worth while, or worth anything. One had heard of girls who, disappointed in love, had flung themselves headlong “to the bad.” Deb did not do that. She merely meandered bad-wards; her steps, like those of a very intricate dance, advancing and retreating with sideway darts and curvetings and inexplicable rushes for cover and sudden boldnesses ... all the haphazard effect, to an onlooker, of a dance without the accompanying inspiration of music. But the onlooker could not have guessed that Deb had seen Jenny die with all the eagerness of her being unfulfilled, baulked....

“I never knew it was so easy to die—while one still wanted things as much. One must take—take—and take quickly!”

She was wont to tell Cliffe of her adventures and escapes on Debatable Ground. He listened with proprietary zest, and many oaths of secrecy. And then betrayed her to Antonia or Zoe or Timothy—whomever the object of his next momentary death-or-nothing spasm of intimacy. Deb, following after, cleared up the litter of her character, agreed with Antonia or Zoe or Timothy that Cliffe was simply impossible and deserved to be forthwith discarded ... and then went off with him for the week-end to his country cottage near Wycombe.