Children of No Man's Land

by G. B. Stern

For which she rather liked him.

The family, of course, reminded him in an appalled chorus that Deb was—somewhat disreputable. Had she not run away from home, to live with that opera-woman? Samson replied inflexibly that they, by their contempt and reproach, might be responsible for driving a poor little girl to worse things.

“What worse things are there?” his grandmother demanded, for the rest of them.

Samson merely shrugged; and opposition perceived that the eldest son of the house of Phillips had chosen, and would not be swerved from his choice. His glucose fidelity was impressive. Samson was the Phillips’ fetish, and Samson’s wish the Phillips’ law. Moreover, there remained still the Phillips’ illusion that Deb had always loved Samson, had loved him all through his three proposals last Autumn, and must—poor child—have suffered terribly, refusing him. Certainly she deserved to suffer. But by this chance of making Samson happy, she might expiate her foolishness, and expiate it still more in giving Samson a fine healthy son.... So the many counsels in the dining-room of Mrs Phillips resolved at last on a programme of bounteous welcome, forgive and forget.

Deb, foreseeing complications, made more than one faltering attempt to explain privately to her fiancé exactly how the quaint mistake about her premature initiation had occurred.... But it was an impossible task. At each successive essay, Samson interrupted at the very start and in his well-known style: “I don’t want to hear a word about it, Deb. It’s all over and it’s all forgotten. Let’s turn over a fresh leaf and agree never to mention it again. I love you, and you know it, and nothing makes any difference, and I simply don’t want to hear another word about it.”

So she gave in. She was the flame, he was the extinguisher that stands beside the candle. However ardent her whim to burn, he could always put her out.

Ferdie Marcus was enraptured at the betrothal. It was what he had always desired for his little daughter—everyone was prefixing Deb with “little” just now—a good protector; a Jew; a husband in a solid position, both financially and—nowadays this was important—in point of nationality. He would never be quite healed of the unlooked-for wound dealt him by this same little daughter, last year; and he was rather puzzled as to how that affair had been glossed over where Samson was concerned. Did Samson know? But he hid both the scar and the perplexity; and without any formal reconciliation, it was understood that she had slipped into re-occupation of her old place in the home—home in the abstract and not literal sense; for she did not return to live at Montagu Hall. Neither Grandfather nor Aunt Stella were sufficiently cordial at the prospect; and Samson did not care either about the boarding-house. For the present he made special arrangement that she should stay with the Redburys—Beattie and Hardy. She should be married from his mother’s house, and as he was to be discharged from hospital in a month’s time, the wedding could quite well be arranged for October. In fact (“I’m a sentimental chap!”) he asked Deb, with a twinkle of meaning in his eye, whether October the 12th would suit her? Just in time to prevent her features from slipping into utter blankness, she remembered that this might be the anniversary of the silvery-stream business, and replied with a pretty smile, that she thought October the 12th would be ... nice.

“Will there be time to let your hair grow before then?” he teased her. “We can’t have a bride with short hair....”

The whole Phillips family had pounced, jabbering and shrieking and with white teeth all aflash in their olive faces, on the discovery that Delilah and not Samson had been shorn. Deb was prepared for this, and constant repetition of the joke did not afflict her in the measure of last year. The Phillips were themselves a joke, and her engagement, and Samson, and Otto Redbury sulking in the bathroom on the occasion of her formal visit on the arm of her fiancé; and the fact that she must ostentatiously refuse ever to meet Cliffe Kennedy again ... all a joke! That was her mood, and it was not once interpierced. She saw very little of her old set during her engagement—very little of Gillian and Antonia and Zoe. All that had dropped away like a whirl of sparks in the forgotten night.

The sense of a hilarious joke followed her to the very porch of the Synagogue, pursued her through the ceremony, with its gabble of Hebrew and wonderful song. It prodded her midway in the fatherly old Rabbi’s personal benediction, when he solemnly addressed Samson in these terms: “You are bearing away to a typically Jewish home a typically Jewish treasure....” Deb felt irresistibly impelled to drop her eyelids and murmur deprecatingly: “Oh, no ...” and Samson patted her arm reassuringly....