“He’s a Major in the Sappers, isn’t he?”
“Samson? No, only Captain. Why?”
“Nothing.... I mean the family are known to be tremendously patriotic and all that sort of thing, aren’t they?”
“I suppose so. Rotting apart, Richard, d’you think I need go to-night?”
“Yes, I do.”
So Deb went, a shy, prim creature in flowered silk and fichu; all her troll mood of October dried into apprehension of spending three awful hours in the awful company of an awful family hating her because she had flouted it. More than ever did she quake at the sound of her unnecessarily loud and nervous peal at the bell, and wished that the Phillips would conduct their love affairs in solo, and not in the bulk.
By the end of dinner, she was, metaphorically, rubbing her eyes and wondering if she had dreamt the whole matter of Samson’s proposal and her rejection of it. The cicatrice of her infliction showed not a trace on the smooth firm skin of the Phillips’ complacency. The Phillips’ grandparents still made a fuss of the dear little girl, such a well-mannered little girl, and (in brackets) our Samson’s little girl. Mrs Phillips and Beatrice still included her in all their plans, and consulted her with pleasant humorous allowance for her immaturity. While Herbert and Abe, the two younger brothers—Joseph was at the Front—and their wives Martha and Gwendolen—Florence was not yet allowed to be up more than an hour a day, although little Fanny was a miraculously good baby—continued their chaff as though the situation were at exactly the same stage as last time Deb had dined there. Abe even made reference to the threadbare matter of Delilah and clipped locks....
Only Samson was imperceptibly more silent than usual; but he was never talkative. “Can’t he have told them?” but of course he had told them. They were probably informed beforehand of the exact hour he had meant to propose. Then ... what was the psychology of their present behaviour? Deb was helpless, rebellious, wholly perplexed, and disliking her company more than ever before, because she had imagined she was definitely rid of it; that she would never again sit amongst flashes of white teeth—they were a handsome healthy family and had married handsome healthy girls—and hear the curiously robust conversation about Florence and her baby. When a married pair was in question, they knew no reticence; it was right and seemly that open discussion should take place, even in the presence of a young girl; no harm at all—had not Abe and Florence been enjoined in the Synagogue, within hearing of all, to wax fruitful?... But all jokes concerning love unsanctioned by the Rabbi were strictly prohibited by the Phillips’ men until they were in smoking-room seclusion. This was their code. The code of the Jewish male.
“I—I did say ‘no,’ didn’t I? I couldn’t have said ‘yes’ by mistake?” Deb racked her brains—and recognized with horror that her favourite pudding had been provided—a pudding she hated. She had told Mrs Phillips once that it was her favourite, because that lady was distressing herself over an imaginary poorness of fare; and ever since then it was carefully ordered for her, and beamingly heaped on to her plate. To-night the necessity for a second helping was worse than ever, because bewilderment had robbed her of appetite, especially for coals of fire.
Once or twice it seemed to her morbidly excited fancy as though the wedding had taken place already—while she was asleep or hypnotized or under drugs—and already she was a Phillips, doomed to dine at this seat at this table in this room for ever and ever, till she was as old as grandmother Phillips; until she died and all the male Phillips followed her corpse to its cremation, and were reluctant even then to scatter abroad the ashes.... “Yes, Mrs Phillips?” She started from her trance, to find the ladies had risen from their seats, and that she was being markedly beckoned upstairs by a would-be mother-in-law into her bedroom to see the corals purchased for little Fanny.