Of course there was the old argument of “blood tells.” Did it? His sudden rushing worship of the river-god disproved the argument wholly. For if he were no individual person, but the compound of his ancestors’ emotions, the Thames would bore him, and the thought of the Rhine stir him to unutterable pæans.
Thus Richard—he not knowing how a little shy German boy had once crossed to England, and worn a blazer, and sculled in a queer ecstasy from Bray to Cookham. Richard’s love of the Thames was a heritage from Ferdie....
“I can’t get hold of it—quite——” the boy decided at last, abandoning his quest for patriotism defined. “But it’s there——” There, elusively, tormentingly woven into the fabric itself; distinct from patriotism exploited, talked about, and sung about, and worked up into posters and pictures ... till it tasted like wood in the mouth. “Can’t a man serve his land unquestioningly, without all this cant?” But no emotion could be left deep-hid and dimly private—not love of art, nor love of child, nor love of man for woman ... patriotism must be thumbed with the rest, till its name was Jingoism. “A patriot for lost causes, and a Jingo after victory—that’s the difference....” Had David said so? It sounded like David.... Richard had not quite realized as yet how awakened by circumstances was his own powerful, slow-moving brain.
The suck of water startlingly near.... He raised himself on one elbow, then sprang to his feet, and saw the tide was up, flowing in clear, luminous black over the marshes, oozing greedily into each hole and inlet, lapping at the very foot of the sea-wall. The bump of lifted boats was audible in the moonless night.
Richard reflected, not without humour, that the sea had emerged from obscurity rather too late to be of any practical value—to him.
He looked at his watch—ten minutes after midnight. Then—he was eighteen to-day! ... and the dreaded evening would see him in prison—“Rum sort of birthday!”—But horror had all been drained out of the coming ordeal, leaving it, well—a nuisance, nothing more odious nor festering. A confounded nuisance—but inevitable; neither the fault of those interned nor of those who interned them; just a happening out of greater happenings.
The last London train from Leigh would have gone by now; he might catch an early morning workmen’s train. He did not want to go back to the Dunnes—grimaced slightly at the mere idea of encounter, with his burst of madness so very recent in their minds. Why—he had come rushing out minus even his cap; they could pack his bag and send it up to Montague Hall ... not that he would need anything much for the next year or two ... or for however long this dreary war was going to last.
And after the war——?
“Let ’em go back to their own country—we don’t want ’em here.” But, “This is my country....” Richard stood on the sea-wall, an obstinate figure, black against the dim flat wash of water. He was smiling a little ironically at the thought of Mr Gryce ... voice creaking in the hall as he came in: “Intern ’em all!”—and how he would exult on hearing the next day that one more enemy alien had indeed been interned!...