Children of No Man's Land

by G. B. Stern

“She shall dance to her own melodies. Ja, ja, it will be pleasant to have a happy little daughter, not checked, not afraid. And we must learn not to be shocked at her, as we grow older. She shall know that we trust her. Indeed, yes, it will be all right. When one is happy, one is also good. Our parents never understood that.”

“It will be all right,” echoed Dorothea, her dark eyes tender and luminous. “And we won’t grumble, or ask questions, will we? Papa was always grumbling, and Mama asked so many questions.... Ferdie, it would be terrible if we should forget, and wake up one morning to find we were only ordinary parents.”

She gave a little gasp of horror. Her husband took her face between his hands and kissed it....

They made quite a pretty hobby out of extraordinary parenthood.

Then, as if to remind them that the other species still existed, when Deb was a wilful little creature of seven, came an imperious summons from Ferdinand’s father, who most inopportunely had decided to forgive them. The old thraldom held; they had no option but meekly to submit to forgiveness. This necessitated a journey to Bavaria—a long stay in Munich. Stella was so glad of them, so glad of this young, laughing sister-in-law in the house. But Marcus defied all tradition of stern grandfathers by refusing to succumb instantly to the pretty fearless ways of his first grandchild; in fact, he disapproved so completely of Deb, her looks, her English education, her unrebuked chatter, her clothes, her nurse, her loose shower of black hair, of everything that was Deb’s, that she was kept as much as possible out of his way. Sweet-natured and subservient in all else, Ferdinand was implacable on the one point: the old autocrat should not interfere with the happiness of one more girl-child. Already he had doomed Stella to spinsterhood; he forbade young men inside the house, and forbade Stella outside the house. One conventional marriage arrangement he had made for her with the parents of a sufficiently wealthy suitor, who, however, turned from Stella to a larger dowry. No father could be expected to do more in the way of duty. An arrangement which Stella had the temerity to make for herself, he countered by the simple Teutonic method of locking her up, and shouting at her till she was tired....

For Ferdinand, he had gained a slight respect. The boy had at least managed to win some sort of commercial foothold. “What do you reckon to make per annum, wass?” “About six hundred to a thousand.” Marcus was distinctly impressed: “Ach! as little as that?” Ferdinand enquired after the old firm. “The profits are excellent, sir; increasing yearly. Bah, did you think we should go to pieces because you left us?” sarcastically.

The arrogant old merchant was lying. At Dorothea’s death he was thankful for an excuse to let Stella go to England and take over the charge of her brother’s household; thankful for an excuse to cut down expenses ... the business was rapidly running downhill. He warded off bankruptcy for another eleven years—then came the irrevocable crash. Ferdinand, who could not rid himself of the filial habit, immediately wrote and offered his father a home with them. So Hermann Marcus, at the age of seventy-seven, came to England, to “Daisybanks,” in Lansdowne Terrace. He found himself instantly relegated to a very comfortable back-seat among his children and grandchildren. Ferdie, though still timid in actual converse with his father, yet proved stubbornly master in his own house; and Stella had developed a brisk liveliness which was a true source of grief to her father. The two now treated his attempts to bully them, with a semi-humorous tolerance which the puzzled despot could only ascribe to his loss of income—“Of course, if I were swollen with money,”—with grim common-sense he resigned himself to dependence and rheumatism; it comforted him to suppose his loss of authority was due to material and not to moral causes.

As for the third generation, he continued to disapprove of Deb, but liked Richard infinitely better. “You’ve no eyes for anyone but the girl,” he would growl at Ferdinand. “To my two children I dispensed equal affection.” Ferdinand smiled.... When he smiled he more than ever resembled a cheerful little troll, his small ripe face a web of intersecting spidery wrinkles. It was true that Deb was his darling who could do no wrong; it was for Deb that he and Dorothea had built up so many defiant immature plans—beautiful plans. Dorothea had died for Richard’s life ... she would have loved the boy best, if she had lived; Ferdie guessed it, and conscientiously tried to supply a double quantity of favouritism. But Richard was undemonstrative; had started the schoolboy attitude even while his nurse was hopefully striving against odds to turn him into a pretty dear, a Fauntleroy. At three years old, his voice was gruff, his knees scraped, his manner properly off-hand, his tastes independent; he called ladies and gentlemen by their surnames, without prefix, when they bent to caress “dear little Dickie.” It was disconcerting to Ferdie’s kindly-disposed partners, misled by the white suit and deep lace collar, to find heavy brows bent upon them, while they were boomingly hailed as “Nash” and “Rothenburg.” Aunt Stella, wisely accepting the inevitable, bought her nephew a couple of rough navy-blue jerseys, a pair of sturdy boots, and a Newmarket overcoat; Nurse lamented that this latter article was not in white bunny-fur—“Master Dickie looks such a darling in white.” “He looks something between a burglar and a prize-fighter in anything; for the future, Nurse, he had better be known only as Richard.” “Oh, Madam, he’s but a baby yet!” Richard overheard, and: “I’m but a baby yet,” he pleaded with dignity the next time his father attempted to administer mild but well-deserved chastisement. From sheer astonishment, Ferdie let him off.

And after that, he seemed to be always at school, or “knocking round with other chaps.” He fell into frequent scrapes, and usually managed to fall out of them again without extraneous assistance. He stolidly kept a place in class a little above half-way, without spurts or lapses. His philosophy was eminently suited to practical needs; he kept his ugliness well brushed and tubbed and free from eccentricity, and his slow white grin had a bewildering fascination.

“Our young Richard, my dear,” commented Aunt Stella to Deb, “reminds me of the best quality of almond rock; you take it home, and prepare for a treat, and then you find the sweetshop girl has forgotten to break it up for you.” She spoke English perfectly, but with foreign vivacity and a strong foreign accent. “Richard has never been broken up; he is unwieldy; he cannot be put in the mouth.”