“You’re by nature—adaptable, aren’t you, Deb?!”
“Horribly so ... yes, and that fits in, too, Jill, for if I’d been very emphatically myself, all cornery and defiant, I’d have rebelled and gone on rebelling and urged Naomi to rebel ... and we’d have been uncomfortable for the rest of our lives. But for me as I am—the most pliable, accommodating, imitative creature on earth—I do see, oh, ... tolerable comfort and resignation ahead.”
“Intolerable discomfort and rebellion are better things for the soul, Deb. They stimulate it.”
But Deb only said: “The Phillips’ Illusion is too much for me....”
CHAPTER V
I
All this year of hope and reprieve, Richard had just dimly realized the continuation of Mr Gryce’s attacks; but they had slithered more or less harmlessly off the conviction that in the September of 1917 would come his own chance to prove to Englishmen whether or no he be an Englishman. Now ... Mr Gryce had not improved with keeping; and Richard was again exposed, without shield, to the old pestered agony of responsibility ... he had committed atrocities; he did not fight fairly; he was a German, the Germans.... No place for him during the war—no place afterwards. Where was he born? Where reared? where legally belonging? Where his sympathies?... All over the place—nowhere—anywhere. What country wanted him? What country claimed him? For what country and in what cause had he suffered during the Great War?—Jew, then, at least? Or Socialist—Conscientious Objector?
But he had no convictions—doubting even his own stubborn loyalty of schoolboyhood. He was no more a schoolboy. He was a man—a man with nerves. His nerves gave Richard no rest.
He did not regret, in the week that followed Samson’s letter, his refusal to serve in the Labour Battalion. Morally, he considered the evasion despicable—for him; though a good enough solution for those who really were indifferent for the fight, and impartial as to the issues. He did not regret it; nevertheless, his loathing towards internment swelled again to a morbid obsession. He positively could not bear the sound or sight of the word. And then Mr Gryce began to flaunt a button with “Intern them all” displayed thereon—Richard went down to stay with the Dunnes for his last week of liberty. He remembered affectionately and with a sense of far-off coolness and repose, that chintz sitting-room in the cottage; its portrait of Commander Antony Dunne over the mantelpiece; its atmosphere so casually, indubitably English; remembered too how naturally in those Christmas holidays of 1914 he had fitted himself into this room and what it stood for. Perhaps here was peace from the demons plaguing him; reassurance, also, as to where in spirit he belonged. If he were “all right” among the Dunnes, he was—all right.