He knew! ... he knew well enough—he only put the question to drag out his answer—he should have it then!... Frank smiled meaningly at Molly.... Richard saw him—and the room, the little chintz sitting-room which was all England, was glad, glad, glad at his impending humiliation.... Nerves drawn tighter and tighter—then they twanged apart, burst strings—“You’re not quite English, are you, Mr Marcus?”
“No,” Richard screamed suddenly, “I’m a German. And I hate the English—I hate them——”
It was not true. As he rushed for the door, and down the passage and out into the garden, all that was left sane in him denied the cry; he did not hate the English—loved them—wanted to be like them—wanted to belong to them—fight for them. But they had pushed him into the lie. And now he could not live, having said it ... the sea was somewhere ... he would run till he got to the sea....
The pad of footsteps in his rear ... he plunged forward, slipping on the soaked ground.... More footsteps, louder—only let him get away—if there were no shock of barbed wire ahead to stay him ... he would escape the barbed wire, escape the mob that since two and a half years had been hounding behind him ... never so close as now.... “Schnabel! Schnabel!” soft rain blowing across his face ... head down, arms pressed against his sides, breath sobbing fiercely, he ran on in a blind panic....
“I can’t catch up with the beggar,” said Greville, returning to the sitting-room. “I called him, too.... I s’pose he’ll come back all right?”
CHAPTER VI
I
Why had he not thought of suicide before this? Looked upon calmly and dispassionately, from a merely business aspect, it was the only course for him—lacking the vital sustenance which men drew nowadays from love of their own land. It annoyed Richard that even though he had reached the sea, the sea was nowhere in sight—lost behind wide flats of mud. He leant against the rail which divided the path beside the railway from a strip of coarse sand, sullenly determined not to plunge across all that marsh till he found deep enough water to drown him; even suicide, it seemed, was to be a difficulty and a favour;—well, the sea could come to him—he would wait for the returning tide.
He must have run more than five miles; that was all he knew of his whereabouts. For when he registered, it was made clear that for him the Essex coast was prohibited area. Leigh was evidently the name of this little estuary town he had struck haphazard. There would be half a column in the local paper: “Enemy alien drowns himself.”... Perhaps two lines in the London Press, amongst other minor items of news.