The chintz sitting-room, speaking for the Dunnes, repudiated Richard Marcus; bluff and careless Antony Dunne was definitely antagonistic towards him—and Antony Dunne dominated his family still, from the encircling oak frame. Richard had anticipated gratefully the room, the pictures, the model of a man-of-war, the curios from the Pacific Islands and Japan and the Malay; the albums with Greville and Frank in their different stages of allegiance to naval tradition, the battered boys’ books on the shelf, all yarning about the sea and sea-fights and sea-heroes; the view of low-lying fields beyond the windows; he had anticipated all these—and forgotten he was no longer careless participant. The room informed him now very definitely that he was an outsider; guilty in his birth-place; the room quietly but grimly imposed its personality upon Richard, as symbolizing all from which he was excluded. The Dunnes had lived in Essex, in Market Cottage, since five generations; the Dunnes had always been naval stock—dedicated to England’s sea-service long before any question of war; their patriotic allegiance need not even be mentioned—could be taken absolutely for granted; it stood—as this room stood. That the Dunnes should ever go messing about the Continent and having their sons in the wrong places ... the room was lazily scornful at the mere idea. The Dunnes were quite, quite certain beforehand where they were to be born and where buried. One of them had settled in another county, and one—Molly’s father—had married a London girl; these were their utmost excursions abroad. And one Dunne had learnt how to speak a foreign language, Spanish, fluently ... it was a great joke among the other Dunnes. And when their profession took them across wide seas and into strange ports and islands, these seas and ports and islands became, at a touch, English ... or English to them, which was the same thing. They were simply uninfluenced by what was not English; just as the room absorbed no outlandish flavour from the scattered lumps of stone and coral, weapons and embroideries. These were vivid and interesting enough—but only vivid and interesting on sufferance; the real thing was the chintz, the view, the album.
Richard grew to hate that room.
Next, he grew to hate Frank. Frank was a talkative lad of fourteen, who had met Richard with the pony-trap on arrival at the station of the nearest town; it was necessary, before driving out to Market Cottage, four miles away, that Richard should call at the police-station, and exhibit his papers and photograph and so forth; and answer the official’s searching questions. Frank’s curiosity had insisted on accompanying Richard inside, even to the lengths of bestowing pennies on an urchin to hold the pony; he thought the whole proceedings “rum”; no previous guest of the Dunnes had ever been subjected to all this fuss.... Frank asked the object of the fuss a great many questions about registration—recurred to it all through supper, in fact: “Five-mile limit—what does that mean? That you can’t go any further from here without special permit? Good Lord! Grev, did you hear that? Then you can’t come with us to the meet on Thursday. What rot for you! don’t you hate it! I say, show the Mater your photograph, won’t you?—the one you showed up at the Station. I suppose they think you’re a spy! Do you have to exhibit your thumb-prints too? Like a bally old convict, isn’t it?...”
Richard could not bring himself to be chatty or informative on the subject of registration; and Frank, incensed by his surliness, came to the conclusion that Richard was a spy, and as such ought to be tabooed from intimacy, and watched.
The situation worried Greville, the more so as he could not quite whole-heartedly champion Richard—“You see, Mater, he’s not a bit like he used to be. I mean, he was quite a jolly old bean last time he was here, wasn’t he? But now—he goes red as fire when Frank rags him about the police and so on——”
“We must just tell Frank to leave off, if it makes Richard uncomfortable. He’s our guest, after all.”
“Yes—but Mater—if—if——”
“What, dear?”
“If Richard felt as—as loyal—well, as other chaps, he’d laugh, wouldn’t he, when Frank....” The handsome young naval sub-lieutenant was no psychologist. “You don’t suppose there’s anything in it, do you, Mater? I’d never have dreamt of such a thing if Richard hadn’t changed so from when he was at Winborough. And Frank is always going on at this child for chumming up with a German. I punch his head, of course, pretty often; but why does he shy like an old cart-horse when we talk about the war? Richard, I mean?”
Mrs Dunne smiled: “I don’t think Richard is a spy in the German pay, Grev, if that’s what is on your mind.”