“I thought I was English,” Richard said. And repeated, with a sort of dazed pugnacious idiocy: “I thought I was English.” Then he flared out again: “You didn’t think at all. You were just careless. Why on earth did you want to take me to Germany to be born?”
“I have told you; your grandfather sent for us.”
“It wouldn’t have hurt him to wait a year or two. Much he cared if he never saw any of you again. You were all afraid to say no to him. I thought myself so lucky to be born in these times. What’s the good of the war now?”
His father could not forbear from a smile at the savage young egoism. The boy saw it, and raged on: “It would have been better if I’d died when my mother died——”
“Hush, hush, my son.”
... Richard crashed his weight on to a chair, head butted down on his arms along the back rail. And the two men watched him in silence; one of them thinking with a slow, grudging, resentment how good a moment it might have been for him to have seen this youngster in an officer’s light-blue uniform, come clanging and jangling into a certain house in Munich, to bid good-bye before his departure to win glory for the Vaterland. And the other was vainly groping round for what comfort he could give his only son in trouble; Dorothea would have so known what little tender thing to do or say ... his eyes filled with tears, and in his over-anxious endeavour to play mother at this juncture, he blundered dismally:
“Come, come, my boy—buck up! You who are usually so sensible. It isn’t such a tragedy, even if it should end, at the worst, by internment. You will be safe, and with friends——”
Richard slowly lifted his head. He looked rather old for sixteen, and his voice dragged like tired footsteps on a heavy road:
“Sorry if I was rude, dad. Yes, of course I’ll be safe. Much safer than in the Flying Corps. I didn’t think of that. I’m going to bed now. Good-night.”
Half-way across the room, he came back for the evening paper. Then he went out.