CHAPTER IV
I
“Captain Rothenburg—killed in action. Rothenburg—Rothenburg—that’s a German name. What was he doing in an English command, I’d like to know? Ought to have been interned.”
Richard sprang up, knuckles white with the clench of his hands on the rim of the breakfast-table, his brows a lowering black ridge of anger. He and Mr Gryce confronted one another across a space of half the dining-room. The other visitors sprinkled at the various tables looked up expectant, conscious of latent antagonism spurting at last into visibility. The old man’s eyes bulged like pale marbles over the top of his newspaper.... “Ought to have been interned,” he repeated ostentatiously to his neighbours.
“Sit down, Richard,” his father commanded quietly. And as though with a physical effort, the wrestling look was unlocked; the boy sat down, head turned away from the detestable civilian who had dared sneer away Con’s glory. As if Con wasn’t as thumpingly keen a soldier as any of the purest British descent! Con, the splendid sixth-form hero of Richard’s earliest Winborough days. And now ... to make out he had given his life to no effect because his name happened to be German....
Richard was still shaking from the harsh shock of the news, and from a sort of desperate hatred which almost approached fear. “Is it true?” he asked Ferdie, who was searching through “The Telegraph.”
“I’m afraid so. Ah, yes, here: On May 15th ... etc. I suppose his parents can only just have heard. Nearly a week, isn’t it? Poor Con, he was a nice fellow. Otto will be upset—his eldest boy.”
“But why do they print the name Rothenburg?” Stella questioned in a low voice, inaudible to Mr Gryce.
“I expect the young man had the good sense not to be ashamed of his father’s birthplace,” rumbled Hermann Marcus, in an aggressive voice distinctly audible to Mr Gryce, who muttered: “Damned old Hun!” amid a murmur of surrounding sympathy.