Good night my most precious mother.
Your Chris.
Schuppenfelde, Friday, July 17,1914.
This morning when I came down to breakfast, sweet mother, there at the foot of the stairs was Herr von Inster. He didn't say anything, but watched me coming down with the contented look he has I like so much. I was frightfully pleased to see him, and smiled all over myself. "Oh," I exclaimed, "so you've come."
He held out his hand and helped me down the last steps. He was in green shooting clothes, like the Oberforster's, but without the official buttons, and looked very nice. You'd like him, I'm sure. You'd like what he looks like, and like what he is.
He had been in the forest since four this morning, shooting with his colonel, who came down with him to Koseritz last night. The colonel and Graf Koseritz, who came down from Berlin with them, were both breakfasting, attended by the Bornsteds, and it shows how soundly I sleep here that I hadn't heard anything.
"And aren't you having any breakfast?" I asked.
"I will now," he said. "I was listening for your door to open,"
I think you'd like himverymuch, little mother.
The colonel, whose name is Graf Hohenfeld, was being very pleasant to Frau Bornsted, watching her admiringly as she brought him things to eat. He was very pleasant to me too, and got up and put his heels together and said, "Old England for ever" when I appeared, and asked the Graf whether Frau Bornsted and I didn't remind him of a nosegay of flowers. Obviously we didn't. The Graf doesn't look as if anybody ever reminded him of anything. He greeted me briefly, and then sat staring abstractedly at the tablecloth, as he did in Berlin. The Colonel did all the talking. Both he and the Graf had on those pretty green shooting things they wear in Germany, with the becoming soft hats and little feathers. He was very jovial indeed, seemed fond and proud of his lieutenant, Herr von Inster, slapped the Oberforster every now and then on the back, which made him nearly faint with joy each time, and wished it weren't breakfast and only coffee, because he would have liked to drink our healths,—"The healths of these two delightful young roses," he said, bowing to Frau Bornsted and me, "the Rose of England—long live England, which produces such flowers—and the Rose of Germany, our own wild forest rose."
I laughed, and Frau Bornsted looked sedately indulgent,—I suppose because he is a great man, this staff officer, who helps work out all the wonderful plans that are some day to make Germany able to conquer the world; but, as she explained to me the other day when I said something about her eyelashes being so long and pretty, prettiness is out of place in her position, and she prefers it not mentioned. "What has the wife of an Oberforster to do with prettiness?" she asked. "It is good for ajunges Madchen, who has still to find a husband, but once she has him why be pretty? To be pretty when you are a married woman is only an undesirability. It exposes one easily to comment, and might cause, if one had not a solid character, an ever-afterwards-to-be-regretted expenditure on clothes."
The men were going to shoot with the Oberforster after breakfast and be all day in the forest, and the Colonel was going back to Berlin by the night train. He said he was leaving his lieutenant at Koseritz for a few days, but that he himself had to get back into harness at once,—"While the young one plays around," he said, slapping Herr von Inster on the back this time instead of the Oberforster, "among the varied and delightful flora of our old German forests. Here this nosegay," he said, sweeping his arm in our direction, "and there at Koseritz—" sweeping his arm in the other direction, "a nosegay no less charming but more hot-house,—theschoneHelena and her young lady friends."
I asked Herr von Inster after breakfast, when we were alone for a moment in the garden, what his Colonel was like after dinner, if even breakfast made him so jovial.
"He is very clever," he said. "He is one of our cleverest officers on the Staff, and this is how he hides it."
"Oh," I said; for I thought it a funny explanation. Why hide it?
Perhaps that is what's the matter with the Graf,—he's hiding how cleverheis.
But that Colonel certainly does seem clever. He asked where we live in England; a poser, rather, considering we don't at present live at all; but I told him where we did live, when Dad was alive.
"Ah," he said, "that is in Sussex. Very pretty just there. Which house was your home?"
I stared a little, for it seemed waste of time to describe it, but I said it was an old house on an open green.
"Yes," he said, nodding, "on the common. A very nice, roomy old house, with good outbuildings. But why do you not straighten out those corners on the road to Petworth? They are death traps."
"You've been there, then?" I said, astonished at the extreme smallness of the world.
"Never," he said, laughing. "But I study. We study, don't we, Inster my boy, at the old General Staff. And tell your Sussex County Council, beautiful English lady, to straighten out those corners, for they are very awkward indeed, and might easily cause serious accidents some day when the roads have to be used for real traffic."
"It is very good of you," I said politely, "to take such an interest in us."
"I not only take the greatest interest in you, charming young lady, and in your country, but I have an orderly mind and would be really pleased to see those corners straightened out. Use your influence, which I am sure must be great, with that shortsighted body of gentlemen, your County Council."
"I shall not fail," I said, more politely than ever, "to inform them of your wishes."
"Ah, but she is delightful,—delightful, your littleEnglanderin," he said gaily to Frau Bornsted, who listened to hisbadinagewith grave and respectful indulgence; and he said a lot more things about England and its products and exports, meaning compliments to me—what can he be like after dinner?—and went off, jovial to the last, clicking his heels and kissing first Frau Bornsted's hand and then mine, in spite, as he explained, of its being against the rules to kiss the hand of ajunges Madchen, but his way was never to take any notice of rules, he said, if they got between him and a charming young lady. And so he went off, waving his green hat to us and calling outAuf Wiedersehentill the forest engulfed him.
Herr von Inster and the Graf went too, but quietly. The Graf went exceedingly quietly. He hadn't said a word to anybody, as far as I could see, and no rallyings on the part of the Colonel could make him. He didn't even react to being told what I gather is the German equivalent for a sly dog.
Herr von Inster said, when he could get a word in, that he is coming over to-morrow to drive me about the forest. His attitude while his Colonel rattled on was very interesting: his punctilious attention, his apparent obligation to smile when there were sallies demanding that form of appreciation, his carefulness not to miss any indication of a wish.
"Why do you do it?" I asked, when the Colonel was engaged for a moment with the Oberforster indoors. "Isn't your military service enough? Are you drilled even to your smiles?"
"To everything," he said. "Including our enthusiasms. We're like theclaqueat a theatre."
Then he turned and looked at me with those kind, surprising eyes of his,—they're so reassuring, somehow, after his stern profile—and said, "To-morrow I shall be a human being again, and forget all this,—forget everything except the beautiful things of life."
Now I must leave off, because I want to iron out my white linen skirt and muslin blouse for to-morrow, as it's sure to be hot and I may as well look as clean as I can, so good-bye darling little mother. Oh, I forgot to say how glad I am you like being at Glion. I did mean to answer a great many things in your last letter, my little loved one, but I will tomorrow. It isn't that I don't read and reread your darling letters, it's that one has such heaps to say oneself to you. Each time I write to you I seem to empty the whole contents of the days I've lived since I last wrote into your lap. But to-morrow I'll answer all your questions,—to-morrow evening, after my day with Herr von Inster, then I can tell you all about it.
Good-bye till then, sweet mother.
Your Chris.
_Koseritz, Saturday evening, July 18, 1914.
My darling little mother,
See where I've got to! Who'd have thought it? Life is really very exciting, isn't it. The Grafin drove over to Schuppenfelde this afternoon, and took me away with her here. She said Kloster was coming for Sunday from Heringsdorf to them, and she knew he would want to see me and would go off to the Oberforsterei after me and leave her by herself if I were at the Bornsteds', and anyhow she wanted to see something of me before I went back to Berlin, and I couldn't refuse to give an old lady—she isn't a bit old—pleasure, and heaps of gracious things like that. Herr von Inster had brought a note from her in the morning, preparing my mind, and added his persuasions to hers. Not that I wanted persuading,—I thought it a heavenly idea, and didn't even mind Helena, because I felt that in a big house there'd be more room for her to stare at me in. And Herr von Inster is going to stay another week, taking his summer leave now instead of later, and he says he will see me safe to Berlin when I go next Saturday.
So we had the happiest morning wandering about the forest, he driving and letting the horses go as slowly as they liked while we talked, and after our sandwiches he took me back to the Bornsteds, and I showed Frau Bornsted the Grafin's letter.
If it hadn't been a Koseritz taking me away she would have been dreadfully offended at my wanting to go when only half my fortnight was over, but it was like a royal command to her, and she looked at me with greatly increased interest as the object of these high attentions. She had been inclined to warn me against Herr von Inster as a person removed by birth from my sphere—I suppose that's because I play the violin—and also against drives in forests generally if the parties were both unmarried; and she had been extraordinarily dignified when I laughed, and had told me it was all very well for me to laugh, being only an ignorantjunges Madchen, but she doubted whether my mother would laugh; and she watched our departure for our picnic very stiffly and unsmilingly from the porch. But after reading the Grafin's letter I was treated more nearly as an equal, and she became all interest and co-operation. She helped me pack, while Herr von Inster, who has a great gift for quiet patience, waited downstairs; and she told me how fortunate I was to be going to spend some days with Komtesse Helena, from whom I could learn, she said, what the real perfectjunges Madchenwas like; and by the time the Grafin herself drove up in her little carriage with the pretty white ponies, she was so much melted and stirred by a house-guest of hers being singled out for such an honour that she put her arm round my neck when I said good-bye, and whispered that though it wasn't really fit for ajunges Madchento hear, she must tell me, as she probably wouldn't see me again, that she hoped shortly after Christmas to enrich the world by yet one more German.
I laughed and kissed her.
"It is no laughing matter," she said, with solemn eyes.
"No," I said, suddenly solemn too, remembering how Agatha Trent died.
And I took her face in both my hands and kissed her again, but with the seriousness of a parting blessing. For all her dignity, she has to reach up to me when I kiss her.
She put my hair tidy with a gentle hand, and said, "You are not at all what ajunges Madchengenerally is, but you are very nice. Please wish that my child may be a boy, so that I shall become the mother of a soldier."
I kissed her again, and got out of it that way, for I don't wish anything of the sort, and with that we parted.
Meanwhile the Grafin had been sitting very firmly in her carriage, having refused all Frau Bornsted's entreaties to come in. It was wonderful to see how affable she was and yet how firm, and wonderful to see the gulf her affability put between the Bornsteds—he was at the gate too, bowing—and herself.
And now here I am, and it's past eleven, and my window opens right on to the Haff, and far away across the water I can see the lights of Swinemunde twinkling where the Haff joins the open sea. It is a most beautiful old house, centuries old, and we had a romantic evening,—first at supper in a long narrow pannelled room lit by candles, and then on the terrace beneath my window, where larkspurs grow against the low wall along the water's edge. There is nobody here except the Koseritzes, and Herr von Inster, and two girl-friends of Helena's, very pretty and smart-looking, and an old lady who was once the Grafin's governess and comes here every summer to enjoy what she called, speaking English to me, the Summer Fresh.
It was like a dream. The water made lovely little soft noises along the wall of the terrace. It was so still that we could hear the throb of a steamer far away on the Haff, crossing from Stettin to Swinemunde. The Graf, as usual, said nothing,—"He has much to think of," the Grafin whispered to me. The girls talked together in undertones, which would have made me feel shy and out of it if I hadn't somehow not minded a bit, and they did look exactly what the Colonel had said they were, in their pale evening frocks,—a nosegay of very delicate and well cared-for hothouse flowers. I had on my evening frock for the first time since I left England, and after the weeks of high blouses felt conspicuously and terribly overdressed up in my bedroom and till I saw the frocks the others had on, and then I felt the exact opposite. Herr von Inster hardly spoke, and not to me at all, but I didn't mind, I had so much in my head that he had talked about this morning. I feel so completely natural with him, so content; and I think it is because he is here at Koseritz that I'm so comfortable, and not in the least shy, as I was that day at luncheon. I simply take things as they come, and don't think about myself at all. When I came down to supper to-night he was waiting in the hall, to show me the way, he said; and he watched me coming down the stairs with that look in his eyes that is such a contrast to the smart, alert efficiency of his figure and manner,—it is so gentle, so kind. I went into the room where they all were with a funny feeling of being safe. I don't even know whether Helena stared.
To-morrow the Klosters come over, and are going to stay the night, and to-morrow I may play my fiddle again. I've faithfully kept my promise and not touched it. Really, as it's a quarter to twelve now and at midnight my week's fasting will be over, I might begin and play it quite soon. I wonder what would happen if I sat on my window-sill and played Ravel to the larkspurs and the stars! I believe it would make even the Graf say something. But I won't do anything so unlike, as Frau Bornsted would say, what ajunges Madchengenerally does, but go to bed instead, into the prettiest bed I've slept in since I had a frilly cot in the nursery,—all pink silk coverlet and lace-edged sheets. The room is just like an English country-house bedroom; in fact the Grafin told me she got all her chintzes in London! It's so funny after my room at Frau Berg's, and my little unpainted wooden attic at the Oberforsterei.
Good night, my blessed mother. There are two owls somewhere calling to each other in the forest. Not another sound. Such utter peace.
Your Chris.
Koseritz, Sunday evening, July 19, 1914.
My own darling mother,
I don't know what you'll say, but I'm engaged to Bernd. That's Herr von Inster. You know his name is Bernd? I don't know what to say to it myself. I can't quite believe it. This time last night I was writing to you in this very room, with no thought of anything in the world but just ordinary happiness with kind friends and one specially kind and understanding friend, and here I am twenty-four hours later done with ordinary happiness, taken into my lover's heart for ever.
It was so strange. I don't believe any girl ever got engaged in quite that way before. I'm sure everybody thinks we're insane, except Kloster. Kloster doesn't. He understands.
It was after supper. Only three hours ago. I wonder if it wasn't a dream. We were all on the terrace, as we were last night. The Klosters had come early in the afternoon. There wasn't a leaf stirring, and not a sound except that lapping water against the bottom of the wall where the larkspurs are. You know how sometimes when everybody has been talking together without stopping there's a sudden hush. That happened to-night, and after what seemed a long while of silence the Grafin said to Kloster, "I suppose, Master, it would be too much to ask you to play to us?"
"Here?" he said. "Out here?"
"Why not?" she said.
I hung breathless on what he would say. Suppose he played, out there in the dusk, with the stars and the water and the forest all round us, what would it be like?
He got up without a word and went indoors.
The Grafin looked uneasy. "I hope," she said to Frau Kloster, "my asking has not offended him?"
But Bernd knew—Bernd, still at that moment only Herr von Inster for me. "He is going to play," he said.
And presently he came out again with his Strad, and standing on the step outside the drawingroom window he played.
I thought, This is the most wonderful moment of my life. But it wasn't; there was a more wonderful one coming.
We sat there in the great brooding night, and the music told us the things about love and God that we know but can never say. When he had done nobody spoke. He stood on the step for a minute in silence, then he came down to where I was sitting on the low wall by the water and put the Strad into my hands. "Now you," he said.
Nobody spoke. I felt as though I were asleep.
He took my hand and made me stand up. "Play what you like," he said; and left me there, and went and sat down again on the steps by the window.
I don't know what I played. It was the violin that played while I held it and listened. I forgot everybody,—forgot Kloster critically noting what I did wrong, and forgot, so completely that I might have been unconscious, myself. I waslistening; and what I heard were secrets, secrets strange and exquisite; noble, and so courageous that suffering didn't matter, didn't touch,—all the secrets of life. I can't explain. It wasn't like anything one knows really. It was like something very important, very beautiful that oneusedto know, but has forgotten.
Presently the sounds left off. I didn't feel as though I had had anything to do with their leaving off. There was dead silence. I stood wondering rather confusedly, as one wonders when first one wakes from a dream and sees familiar things again and doesn't quite understand.
Kloster got up and came and took the Strad from me. I could see his face in the dusk, and thought it looked queer. He lifted up my hands one after the other, and kissed them.
But Bernd got up from where he was sitting away from the others, and took me in his arms and kissed my eyes.
And that's how we were engaged. I think they said something. I don't know what it was, but there was a murmur, but I seemed very far away and very safe; and he turned round when they murmured, and took my hand, and said, "This is my wife." And he looked at me and said, "Is it not so?" And I said "Yes." And I don't remember what happened next, and perhaps it was all a dream. I'm so tired,—so tired and heavy with happiness that I could drop in a heap on the floor and go to sleep like that. Beloved mother—bless your Chris.
Koseritz, Monday, July 20.
My own darling mother,
I'm too happy,—too happy to write, or think, or remember, or do anything except be happy. You'll forgive me, my own ever-understanding mother, because the minutes I have to take for other things seem so snatched away and lost, snatched from the real thing, the one real thing, which is my lover. Oh, I expect I'm shameless, and I don't care. Ought I to simper, and pretend I don't feel particularly much? Be ladylike, and hide how I adore him? Telegraph to me—telegraph your blessing. I must be blessed by you. Till I have been, it's like not having had my crown put on, and standing waiting, all ready in my beautiful clothes of happiness except for that. I don't care if I'm silly. I don't care about anything. I don't know what they think of our engagement here. I imagine they deplore it on Bernd's account,—he's an officer and a Junker and an only son and a person of promise, and altogether heaps of important things besides the important thing, which is that he's Bernd. And you see, little mother, I'm only a woman who is going to have a profession, and that's an impossible thing from the Junker point of view. It's queer how nothing matters, no criticism or disapproval, how one can't be touched directly one loves somebody and is loved back. It is like being inside a magic ring of safety. Why, I don't think that there's anything that could hurt me so long as we love each other. We've had a wonderful morning walking in the forest. It's all quite true what happened last night. It wasn't a dream. We are engaged. I've hardly seen the others. They congratulated us quite politely. Kloster was very kind, but anxious lest I should let love, as he says, spoil art. We laughed at that. Bernd, who would have been a musician but for his family and his obligations, is going to be it vicariously through me. I shall work all the harder with him to help me. How right you were about a lover being the best of all things in the world! I don't know how anybody gets on without one. I can't think how I did. It amazes me to remember that I used to think I was happy. Bless me, little mother—bless us. Send a telegram. I can't wait.
Your Chris.
Koseritz, Thursday, July 23.
My own mother,
Thank you so much for your telegram of blessing, darling one, which I have just had. It seems to set the seal of happiness on me. I know you will love Bernd, and understand directly you see him why I do. We are so placid here these beautiful summer days. Everybody accepts us now resignedly as afait accompli, and though they remain unenthusiastic they are polite and tolerant. And whenever I play to them they all grow kind. It's rather like being Orpheus with his lute, and they the mountain tops that freeze. I've discovered I can melt them by just making music. Helena really does love music. It was quite true what her mother said. Since I played that first wonderful night of my engagement she has been quite different to me. She still is silent, because that's her nature, and she still stares; but now she stares in a sort of surprise, with a question in her eyes. And wherever she may be in the house or garden, if she hears me beginning to play she creeps near on tiptoe and listens.
Kloster has gone. He and his wife were both very kind to us, but Kloster is worried because I've fallen in love. I'm not to go back to Berlin till Monday, as Bernd can stay on here till then, and there's no point in spending a Sunday in Berlin unless one has to. Kloster is going to give me three lessons a week instead of two, and I shall work now with such renewed delight! He says I won't, but I know better. Everything I do seems to be touched now with delight. How funny that room at Frau Berg's will look and feel after being here. But I don't mind going back to it one little half a scrap. Bernd will be in Berlin; he'll be writing to me, seeing me, walking with me. With him there it will be, every bit of it, perfect.
"When I come back to town in October," the Grafin said to me, "you must stay with us. It is not fitting that Bernd's betrothed should live in that boarding-house of Frau Berg's. Will not your mother soon join you?"
It is very kind of her, I think. It appears that a girl who is engaged has to be chaperoned even more than a girl who isn't. What funny ancient stuff these conventions are. I wonder how long more we shall have of them. Of course Frau Berg and her boarders are to the Junker dreadful beyond words.
But her question about you set me thinking. Won't you come, little mother? As it is such an unusual and never-to-be-repeated occurrence in our family that its one and only child should be going to marry? And yet I can't quite see you in August in lodgings in Berlin, come down from your beautiful mountain, away from your beautiful lake. After all, I've only got four more months of it, and then I'm finished and can go back to you. What is going to happen then, exactly, I don't know. Bernd says, Marry, and that you'll come and live with us in Germany. That's all very well, but what about, if I marry so soon, starting my public career, which was to have begun this next winter? Kloster says impatiently. Oh marry, and get done with it, and that then | I'll be sensible again and able to arrange my debut as a violinist with the calm, I gather he thinks, of the disillusioned.
"I'm perfectly sensible," I said.
"You are not. You are in love. A woman should never be an artist. Again I say, Mees Chrees, what I have said to you before, that it is sheer malice on the part of Providence to have taken you, a woman, as the vessel which is to carry this great gift about the world. A man, gifted to the extent you so unluckily are, falls in love and is inspired by it. Indeed, it is in that condition that he does his best work; which is why the man artist is so seldom a faithful husband, for the faithful husband is precluded from being in love."
"Why can't he be in love?" I asked, husbands now having become very interesting to me.
"Because he is a faithful husband."
"But he can be in love with his wife."
"No," said Kloster, "he cannot. And he cannot for the same reason that no man can go on wanting his dinner who has had it. Whereas," he went on louder, because I had opened my mouth and was going to say something, "a woman artist who falls in love neglects everything and merely loves. Merely loves," he repeated, looking me up and down with great severity and disfavour.
"You'll see how I'll work," I said.
"Nonsense," he said, waving that aside impatiently. "Which is why," he continued, "I urge you to marry quickly. Then the woman, so unfortunately singled out by Providence to be something she is not fitted for, having married and secured her husband, prey, victim. Or whatever you prefer to call him—"
"I prefer to call him husband," I said.
"—if she succeeds in steering clear of detaining and delaying objects like cradles, is cured and can go back with proper serenity to that which alone matters. Art and the work necessary to produce it. But she will have wasted time," he said, shaking his head. "She will most sadly have wasted time."
In my turn I said Nonsense, and laughed with that heavenly, glorious security one has when one has a lover.
I expect there are some people who may be as Kloster says, but we're not like them, Bernd and I. We're not going to waste a minute. He adores my music, and his pride in it inspires me and makes me glow with longing to do better and better for his sake, so as to see him moved, to see him with that dear look of happy triumph in his eyes. Why, I feel lifted high up above any sort of difficulty or obstacle life can try to put in my way. I'm going to work when I get to Berlin as I never did before.
I said something like this to Kloster, who replied with great tartness that I oughtn't to want to do anything for the sake of producing a certain look in somebody's eyes. "That is not Art, Mees Chrees. That is nothing that will ever be any good. You are, you see, just the veriest woman; and here—" he almost cried—"is this gift, this precious immortal gift, placed in such shaky small hands as yours."
"I'm very sorry," I said, feeling quite ashamed that I had it, he was so much annoyed.
"No, no," he said, relenting a little, "do not be sorry—marry. Marry quickly. Then there may be recovery."
And when he was saying good-bye—I tell you this because it will amuse you—he said with a kind of angry grief that if Providence were determined in its unaccountable freakishness to place a gift which should be so exclusively man's in the shell or husk (I forget which he called it, but anyhow it sounded contemptuous), of a woman, it might at least have selected an ugly woman. "It need not," he said angrily, "have taken one who was likely in any case to be selected for purposes of love-making, and given her, besides the ordinary collection of allurements provided by nature to attract the male, aBeethovenkopf. Never should that wide sweep of brow and those deep set eyes, the whole noble thoughtfulness of such a head,"—you mustn't think me vain, little mother, he positively said all these things and was so angry—"have been combined with the rubbish, in this case irrelevant and actually harmful, that goes to make up the usual pretty young face. Mees Chrees, I could have wished you some minor deformity, such as many spots, for then you would not now be in this lamentable condition of being loved and responding to it. And if," he said as a parting shot, "Providence was determined to commit this folly, it need not have crowned it by choosing an Englishwoman."
"What?" I said, astonished, following him out on to the steps, for he has always seemed to like and admire us.
"The English are not musical," he said, climbing into the car that was to take him to the station, and in which Frau Kloster had been patiently waiting. "They are not, they never were, and they never will be. Purcell? A fig for your Purcell. You cannot make a great gallery of art out of one miniature, however perfect. And as for your moderns, your Parrys and Stanfords and Elgars and the rest, why, what stuff are they? Very nice, very good, very conscientious: the translation into musical notation of respectable English gentlemen in black coats and silk hats. They are the British Stock Exchange got into music. No, no," he said, tucking the dust-cover round himself and his wife, "the English are not musicians. And you," he called back as the car was moving, "You, Mees Chrees, are a freak,—nothing whatever but a freak and an accident."
We turned away to go indoors. The Grafin said she considered he might have wished her good-bye. "After all," she remarked, "I was his hostess."
She looked thoughtfully at me and Bernd as we stood arm-in-arm aside at the door to let her pass. "These geniuses," she said, laying her hand a moment on Bernd's shoulder, "are interesting but difficult."
I think, little mother, she meant me, and was feeling a little sorry for Bernd!
Isn't it queer how people don't understand. Anyhow, when she had gone in we looked at each other and laughed, and Bernd took my hands and kissed them one after the other, and said something so sweet, so dear,—but I can't tell you what it was. That's the worst of this having a lover,—all the most wonderful, beautiful things that are being said to me by him are things I can't tell you, my mother, my beloved mother whom I've always told everything to all my life. Just the things you'd love most to hear, the things that crown me with glory and pride, I can't tell you. It is because they're sacred. Sacred and holy to him and to me. You must imagine them, my precious one; imagine the very loveliest things you'd like said to your Chris, and they won't be half as lovely as what is being said to her. I must go now, because Bernd and I are going sailing on the Haff in a fishing boat there is. We're taking tea, and are going to be away till the evening. The fishing boat has orange-coloured sails, and is quite big,—I mean you can walk about on her and she doesn't tip up. We're going to run her nose into the rushes along the shore when we're tired of sailing, and Bernd is going to hear me say my German psalms and read Heine to me. Good-bye then for the moment, my little darling one. How very heavenly it is being engaged, and having the right to go off openly for hours with the one person you want to be with, and nobody can say, "No, you mustn't." Do you know Bernd has to have the Kaiser's permission to marry? All officers have to, and he quite often says no. The girl has to prove she has an income of her own of at least 5000 marks—that's 250 pounds a year—and be of demonstrably decent birth. Well, the birth part is all right—I wonder if the Kaiser knows how to pronounce Cholmondeley—and of course once I get playing at concerts I shall earn heaps more than the 250 pounds; so I expect we shall be able to arrange that. Kloster will give me a certificate of future earning powers, I'm sure. But marrying seems so far off, such a dreamy thing, that I've not begun really to think of it. Being engaged is quite lovely enough to go on with. There's Bernd calling.
Evening.
I've just come in. It's ten o'clock. I've had the most perfect day. Little mother, what an amazingly beautiful world it is. Everything is combining to make this summer the most wonderful of summers for me. How I shall think of it when I am old, and laugh for joy. The weather is so perfect, people are so kind, my playing prospects are so encouraging; and there's Bernd. Did you ever know such a lot of lovely things for one girl? All my days are filled with sunshine and love. Everywhere I look there's nothing but kindness. Do you think the world is getting really kinder, or is it only that I'm so happy? I can't help thinking that all that talk I heard in Berlin, all that restlessness and desire to hit out at somebody, anybody,—the knock-him-down-and-rob him idea they seemed obsessed with, was simply because it was drawing near the holiday time of year, and every one was overworked and nervy after a year's being cooped up in offices; and then the great heat came and finished them. They were cross, like overtired children, cross and quarrelsome. How cross I was too, tormented by those flies! After this month, when everybody has been away at the sea and in the forests, they'll be different, and as full of kindliness and gentleness as these gentle kind skies are, and the morning and the evening, and the placid noons. I don't believe anybody who has watched cows pasturing in golden meadows, as Bernd and I have for hours this afternoon, or heard water lapping among reeds, or seen eagles shining far up in the blue above the pine trees, and drawn in with every breath the sweetness, the extraordinary warm sweetness, of this summer in places in the forests and by the sea,—I don't believe people who had done that could for at least another year want to quarrel and fight. And by the time they did want to, having got jumpy in the course of months of uninterrupted herding together, it will be time for them to go for holidays again, back to the blessed country to be soothed and healed. And each year we shall grow wiser, each year more grown-up, less like naughty children, nearer to God. All we want is time,—time to think and understand. I feel religious now. Happiness has made me so religious that I would satisfy even Aunt Edith. I'm sure happiness brings one to God much quicker than ways of grief. Indeed it's the only right way of being brought, I think. You know, little mother, I've always hated the idea of being kicked to God, of getting on to our knees because we've been beaten till we can't stand. I think if I were to lose what I love,—you, Bernd, or be hurt in my hands so that I couldn't play,—it wouldn't make me good, it would make me bad. I'd go all hard, and defy and rebel. And really God ought to like that best. It's at least a square and manly attitude. Think how we would despise any creature who fawned on us, and praised and thanked us because we had been cruel. And why should God be less fine than we are? Oh well, I must go to bed. One can't settle God in the tail-end of a letter. But I'm going to say prayers tonight, real prayers of gratitude, real uplifting of the heart in thanks and praise. I think I was always happy, little mother. I don't remember anything else; but it wasn't this secure happiness. I used to be anxious sometimes. I knew we were poor, and that you were so very precious. Now I feel safe, safe about you as well as myself. I can look life in the eyes, quite confident, almost careless. I have such faith in Bernd! Two together are so strong, if one of the two is Bernd.
Good night my blessed mother of my heart. I'm going to say thank-prayers now, for you, for him, for the whole beautifulness of the world. My windows are wide open on to the Haff. There's no sound at all, except that little plop, plop, of the water against the terrace wall. Sometimes a bird flutters for a moment in the trees of the forest on either side of the garden, turning over in its sleep, I suppose, and then everything is still again, so still; just as if some great cool hand were laid gently on the hot forehead of the world and was hushing it to sleep.
Your Chris who loves you.
Koseritz, Friday, July 25th, 1914.
Beloved mother,
Bernd was telegraphed for this afternoon from headquarters to go back at once to Berlin, and he's gone. I'm rubbing my eyes to see if I'm awake, it has been so sudden. The whole house seemed changed in an instant. The Graf went too. The newspaper doesn't get here till we are at lunch, and is always brought in and laid by the Graf, and today there was the Austrian ultimatum to Servia in it, and when the Graf saw that in the headlines of theTageszeitunghe laid it down without a word and got up and left the room. Bernd reached over for the paper to see what had happened, and it was that. He read it out to us. "This means war," he said, and the Grafin said, "Hush," very quickly; I suppose because she couldn't bear to hear the word. Then she got up too, and went after the Graf, and we were left, Helena and the governess, and the children, and Bernd, and I at a confused and untidy table, everybody with a question in their eyes, and the servants' hands not very steady as they held the dishes. The menservants would all have to go and fight if there were war. No wonder the dishes shook a little, for they can't but feel excited.
As soon as we could get away from the diningroom Bernd and I went out into the garden—the Graf and Grafin hadn't reappeared—and he said that though for a moment he had thought Austria's ultimatum would mean war, it was only just the first moment, but that he believed Servia would agree to everything, and the crisis would blow over in the way so many of them had blown over before.
I asked him what would happen if it didn't; I wanted things explained to me clearly, for positively I'm not quite clear about which nations would be fighting; and he said why talk about hateful things like war as long as there wasn't a war. He said that as long as his chief left him peacefully at Koseritz and didn't send for him to Berlin I might be sure it was going to be just a local quarrel, for his being sent for would mean that all officers on leave were being sent for, and that the Government was at least uneasy. Then at four o'clock came the telegram. The Government is, accordingly, at least uneasy.
I saw hardly any more of him. He got his things together with a quickness that astonished me, and he and the Graf, who was going to Berlin by the same train, motored to Stettin to catch the last express. Just before they left he caught hold of my hand and pulled me into the library where no one was, and told me how he thanked God I was English. "Chris, if you had been French or Russian,"—he said, looking as though the very thought filled him with horror. He laid his face against mine. "I'd have loved you just the same," he said, "I could have done nothing else but love you, and think, think what it would have meant—"
"Then it will be Germany as well, if there's war?" I said, "Germany as well as Austria, and France and Russia—what, almost all Europe?" I exclaimed, incredulous of such a terror.
"Except England," he said; and whispered, "Oh, thank God, except England." Somebody opened the door an inch and told him he must come at once. I whispered in his ear that I would go back to Berlin tomorrow and be near him. He went out so quickly that by the time I got into the hall after him the car was tearing down the avenue, and I only caught a flash of the sun on his helmet as he disappeared round the corner.
It has all been so quick. I can't believe it quite. I don't know what to think, and nobody says anything here. The Grafin, when I ask her what she thinks, says soothingly that I needn't worry my little head—my little head! As though I were six, and made of sugar—and that everything will settle down again. "Europe is in an excited state," she says placidly, "and suspects danger round every corner, and when it has reached the corner and looked round it, it finds nothing there after all. It has happened often before, and will no doubt happen again. Go to bed, my child, and forget politics. Leave them to older and more experienced heads. Always our Kaiser has been on the side of peace, and we can trust him to smooth down Austria's ruffled feathers."
Greatly doubting her Kaiser, after all I've heard of him at Kloster's, I was too polite to be anything but silent, and came up to my room obediently. If there is war, then Bernd—oh well, I'm tired. I don't think I'll write any more tonight. But I do love you so very much, darling mother.
Your Chris.
What a mercy that mothers are women, and needn't go away and fight.Wouldn't it have been too awful if they had been men!
_Koseritz, Saturday, July 25th, 1914.
You know, my beloved one, I'd much rather be at Frau Berg's in Berlin and independent, and able to see Bernd whenever he can come, without saying dozens of thank you's and may I's to anybody each time, and I had arranged to go today, and now the Grafin won't let me. She says she'll take me up on Monday when she and Helena go. They're going for a short time because they want to be nearer any news there is than they are here, and she says it wouldn't be right for her, so nearly my aunt, to allow me, so nearly her niece, to stay by myself in a pension while she is in her house in the next street. What would people say? she asked—was wurden die Leute sagen, as every German before doing or refraining from doing a thing invariably inquires. They all from top to bottom seem to walk in terror ofdie Leuteand what they wouldsagen. So I'm to go to her house in the Sommerstrasse, and live in chaperoned splendour for as long as she is there. She says she is certain my mother would wish it. I'm not a hit certain, I who know my mother and know how beautifully empty she is of conventions and how divinely indifferent todie Leute; but as I'm going to marry a German of the Junker class I suppose I must appease his relations,—at any rate till I've got them, by gentle and devious methods, a little more used to me. So I gave in sullenly. Don't be afraid,—only sullenly inside, not outside. Outside I was so well-bred and pleased, you can't think. It really is very kind of the Grafin, and her want of enthusiasm, which was marked, only makes it all the kinder. On that principle, too, my gratefulness, owing to an equal want of enthusiasm, is all the more grateful.
I don't want to wait here till Monday. I'd like to have gone today,—got through all the miles of slow forest that lie between us and the nearest railway station, the miles of forest news has to crawl through by slow steps, dragged towards us in a cart at a walking pace once a day. Nearly all today and quite all tomorrow we shall sit here in this sunny emptiness. It is a wonderful day again, but to me it's like a body with the soul gone, like the meaningless smile of a handsome idiot. Evidently, little mother, your unfortunate Chris is very seriously in love. I don't believe it is news I want to be nearer to: it's Bernd.
As for news, the papers today seem to think things will arrange themselves. They're rather unctuous about it, but then they're always unctuous,—as though, if they had eyes, they would be turned up to heaven with lots of the pious whites showing. They point out the awful results there would be to the whole world if Servia, that miserable small criminal, should dare not satisfy the just demands of Germany's outraged and noble ally Austria. But of course Servia will. They take that for granted. Impossible that she shouldn't. The Kaiser is cruising in his yacht somewhere up round Norway, and His Majesty has shown no signs, they say, of interrupting his holiday. As long as he stays away, they remark, nothing serious can happen. What an indictment of S. M.! As long as he stays away, playing about, there will be peace. How excellent it would be, then, if he stayed away and played indefinitely.
I wanted to say this to the Grafin when she read the papers aloud to us at lunch, and I wonder what would have happened to me if I had. Well, though I've got to stay with her and be polite in the Sommerstrasse, I shall escape every other day to that happy, rude place, Kloster's flat, and can say what I like. I think I told you he is going to give me three lessons a week now.
After tea,
I practised most of the morning. I wrote to Bernd, and told him about Monday, and told him—oh, lots of little things I just happened to think of. I went out after lunch and lay in the meadow by the water's edge with a book I didn't read, the same meadow Bernd and I anchored our fishing boat at only the day before yesterday, but really ten years ago, and I lay so quiet that the cows forgot me, and came and scrunched away at the grass quite close to my head. We had tea as usual on the terrace in the shady angle of the south-west walls, and the Grafin discoursed placidly on the political situation. She was most instructive; calmly imparting knowledge to Helena and me; calmly embroidering a little calm-looking shirt for her married daughter's baby, with calm, cool white fingers. She seemed very content with the world, and the way it is behaving. She looked as unruffled as one of the swans on the Haff. All the sedition and heretical opinions she must have heard Kloster fling about have slid off her without leaving a mark. Evidently she pays no attention to anything he thinks, on the ground that he is a genius. Geniuses are privileged lunatics. I gather that is rather how she feels. She was quite interesting about Germany,—her talk was all of Germany. She knows a great deal of its history and I think she must have told us all she knew. By the time the servants came to take away the tea-things I had a distinct vision of Germany as the most lovable of little lambs with a blue ribbon round its neck, standing knee-deep in daisies and looking about the world with kind little eyes.
Good-bye darling mother. Saturday is nearly over now. By this time the time limit for Servia has expired. I wonder what has happened. I wonder what you in Switzerland are feeling about it. You know, my dearest one, I'll interrupt my lessons and come to Switzerland if you have the least shred of a wish that I should; and perhaps if Bernd really had to go away—supposing the unlikely were to happen after all and there were war—I'd want to come creeping back close to you till he is safe again. And yet I don't know. Surely the right thing would be to go on, whatever happens, quietly working with Kloster till October as we had planned. But you've only got to lift your little finger, and I'll come. I mean, if you get thinking things and feeling worried.
Your Chris.
Koseritz, Sunday evening, July 26th.
Beloved mother,
I've packed, and I'm ready. We start early tomorrow. The newspapers, for some reason, perhaps excitement and disorganization, didn't come today, but the Graf telephoned from Berlin about the Austro-Hungarian minister having asked the Servian government for his passports and left Belgrade. You'll know about this today too. The Grafin, still placid, says Austria will now very properly punish Servia, both for the murder and for the insolence of refusing her, Austria's, just demands. The Graf merely telephoned that Servia had refused. It did seem incredible. I did think Servia would deserve her punishing. Yesterday's papers said the demands were most reasonable considering what had been done. I hadn't read the Austrian note, because of the confusion of Bernd's sudden going away, and I was full of indignation at Servia's behaviour, piling insult on injury in this way and risking setting Europe by the ears, but was pulled up short and set thinking by the Grafin's looking pleased at my expressions of indignation, and her coming over to me to pat my cheek and say, "This child will make an excellent little German."
Then I thought I'd better wait and know more before sweeping Servia out of my disgusted sight. There are probably lots of other things to know. Kloster will tell me. I find I have a profound distrust really of these people. I don't mean of particular people, like the Koseritzes and the Klosters and their friends, but of Germans in the mass. It is a sort of deep-down discomfort of spirit, the discomfort of disagreement in fundamentals.
"Then there'll be war?" I said to the Grafin, staring at her placid face, and not a bit pleased about being going to be an excellent little German.
"Oh, a punitive expedition only," she said.
"Bernd thought it would mean Russia and France and you as well," I said.
"Oh, Bernd—he is in love," said the Grafin, smiling.
"I don't quite see—" I began.
"Lovers always exaggerate," she said. "Russia and France will not interfere in so just a punishment."
"But is it just?" I asked.
She gazed at me critically at this. It was not, she evidently considered, a suitable remark for one whose business it was to turn into an excellent little German. "Dear child," she said, "you cannot suppose that our ally, the Kaiser's ally, would make demands that are not just?"
"Do you think Friday's papers are still anywhere about?" was my answer. "I'd like to read the Austrian note, and think it over for myself. I haven't yet."
The Grafin smiled at this, and rang the bell. "I expect Dorner"—Dorner is the butler—"has them," she said. "But do not worry your little head this hot weather too much."
"It won't melt," I said, resenting that my head should be regarded as so very small and also made of sugar,—she said something like this the other day, and I resented that too.
"There are people whose business it is to think these high matters out for us," she said, "and in their hands we can safely leave them."
"As if they were God," I remarked.
She looked at me critically again. "Precisely," she said. "Loyal subjects, true Christians, are alike in their unquestioning trust and obedience to authority."
I came upstairs then, in case I shouldn't be able to keep from saying something truthful and rude.
What a misfortune it is that truth always is so rude. So that a person who, like myself, for reasons that I can't help thinking are on the whole base, is anxious to hang on to being what servants call a real lady, is accordingly constantly forced into a regrettable want of candour. I wish Bernd weren't a Junker. It is a great blot on his perfection. I'd much rather he were a navvy, a stark, swearing navvy, and we could go in for stark, swearing candour, and I needn't be a lady any more. It's so middle-class being a lady. These German aristocrats are hopelessly middle-class.
I know when I get to Berlin, and only want to keep abreast of the real things that may be going to happen, which will take me all my time, for I haven't been used to big events, it will be very annoying to be caught and delayed at every turn by small nets of politenesses and phrases and considerations, by having to remember every blessed one of the manners they go in for so terribly here. I've never met somuchmanners as in Germany. The protestations you have to make! The elaborateness and length of every acceptance or refusal! And it's all so much fluff and wind, signifying nothing, nothing at all unless it's fear; fear, again, their everlasting haunting spectre; fear of the other person's being offended if he is stronger than you, higher up,—because then he'll hurt you, punish you somehow; ten to one, if you're a man, he'll fight you.
I've read the Austrian Note. I don't wonder very much at Servia's refusing to accept it, and yet surely it would have been wiser if she had accepted it, anyhow as much of it as shepossiblycould.
"Much wiser," said the Grafin, smiling gently when I said this at dinner tonight. "At least, wiser for Servia. But it is well so." And she smiled again.
I've come to the conclusion that the Grafin too wants war,—-a big European war, so that Germany, who is so longing to get that tiresome rattling sword of hers out of the scabbard, can seize the excuse and rush in. One only has to have stayed here, lived among them and heard them talk, toknowthat they're all on tiptoe for an excuse to start their attacking. They've been working for years for the moment when they can safely attack. It has been the Kaiser's one idea, Kloster says, during the whole of his reign. Of course it's true it has been a peaceful reign,—they're always pointing that out here when endeavouring to convince a foreigner that the last thing their immense preparations mean is war; of course a reign is peaceful up to the moment when it isn't. They've edged away carefully up to now from any possible quarrel, because they weren't ready for the almighty smash they mean to have when they are ready. They've prepared to the smallest detail. Bernd told me that the men who can't fight, the old and unfit, each have received instructions for years and years past every autumn, secret exact instructions, as to what they are to do, when war is declared, to help in the successful killing of their brothers,—their brothers, little mother, for whom, too, Christ died. Each of these aged or more or less diseased Germans, the left-overs who really can't possibly fight, has his place allotted to him in these secret orders in the nearest town to where he lives, a place supervising the stores or doing organizing work. Every other man, except those who have the luck to be idiots or dying—what a world to have to live in, when this is luck—will fight. The women, and the thousands of imported Russians and Poles, will look after the farms for the short time the men will be away, for it is to be a short war, a few weeks only, as short as the triumphant war of 1870. Did you ever know anything so horrifying, so evil, as this minute concentration, year in year out, for decades, on killing—on successful, triumphant killing, just so that you can grab something that doesn't belong to you. It is no use dressing it up in big windy words likeDeutschthumand the rest of the stuff the authorities find it convenient to fool their slaves with,—it comes to exactly that. I always, you see, think of Germany as the grabber, the attacker. Anything else, now that I've lived here, is simply inconceivable. A defensive war in which she should have to defend her homes from wanton attack is inconceivable. There is no wantonness now in the civilized nations. We have outgrown the blood stage. We are sober peoples, sober and civilian,—grown up, in fact. And the semi-civilized peoples would be afraid to attack a nation so strong as Germany. She is training and living, and has been training and living for years and years, simply to attack. What is the use of their protesting? One has only to listen to their points of view to brush aside the perfunctory protestations they put in every now and then, as if by order, whenever they remember not to be natural. Oh, I know this is very different from what I was writing and feeling two or three days ago, but I've been let down with a jerk, I'm being reminded of the impressions I got in Berlin, they've come up sharply again, and I'm not so confident that what was the matter with the people there was only heat and overwork. There was an eagerness about them, a kind of fever to begin their grabbing. I told you, I think, how Berlin made me think when first I got there of somethingseething.
Darling mother, forgive me if I'm shrill. I wouldn't be shrill, I'm certain I wouldn't, if I could believe in the necessity, the justice of such a war, if Germany weren't going to war but war were coming to Germany. And I'm afraid,—afraid because of Bernd. Suppose he—Well, perhaps by the time we get to Berlin things will have calmed down, and the Grafin will be able to come back straight here, which God grant, and I shall go back to Frau Berg and my flies. I shall regard those flies now with the utmost friendliness. I shan't mind anything they do.
Good night blessed mother. I'm so thankful these two days are over.
Your Chris.
It is this silence here, this absurd peaceful sunshine, and the placid Grafin, and the bland unconsciousness of nature that I find hard to bear.
Berlin, Wednesday, July 29th.
My own little mother,
It is six o'clock in the morning, and I'm in my dressing-gown writing to you, because if I don't do it now I shall be swamped with people and things, as I was all yesterday and the day before, and not get a moment's quiet. You see, there is going to be war, almost to a dead certainty, and the Germans have gone mad. The effect even on this house is feverish, so that getting up very early will be my only chance of writing to you.
You never saw anything like the streets yesterday. They seemed full of drunken people, shouting up and down with red faces all swollen with excitement. It is of course intensely interesting and new to me, who have never been closer to such a thing as war than history lessons at school, but what do they all think they're going to get, what do they all think it's reallyfor, these poor creatures bellowing and strutting, and waving their hats and handkerchiefs, and even their babies, high over their heads whenever akonigliche Hoheitdashes past in a motor, which happens every five minutes because there are such a lot of them. Our drive from Koseritz to Stettin on Monday, which now seems so remote that it is as if it was another life, was the last beautiful ordinary thing that happened. Since then it has been one great noise and ugliness. I can't forget the look of the country as we passed through it on Monday, so lovely in its summer peacefulness, the first rye being cut in the fields, the hedges full of Traveler's Joy. I didn't notice how beautiful it was at the time, I only wanted to get on, to get away, to get the news; but now I'm here I remember it as something curiouslyinnocent, and I'm so glad we had a puncture that made us stop for ten minutes in a bit of the road where there were great cornfields as far as one could see, and a great stretch of sky with peaceful little white clouds that hardly moved, and only the sound of poplars by the roadside rustling their leaves with that lovely liquid sound they make, and larks singing. It comforts me to call this up again, to hide in it for a minute away from the shouting ofDeutschland uber Alles, and thehochsand yellings. Then we got to Stettin; and since then I have lived in ugliness.
The Kaiser came back on Monday. He had arrived in Berlin by the time we got here, and the Grafin's triumphant calm visibly increased when the footman who met us at the station eagerly told her the news. For this, as the papers said that evening, hardly able to conceal their joy beneath their pious hopes that the horrors of war may even yet be spared the world, reveals the full seriousness of the situation. I like the "even yet," don't you? Bernd was at the station, and drove with us to the Sommerstrasse. We went along the Dorotheenstrasse, at the back of Unter den Linden, as the Lindens were choked with people. It was impossible to get through them. They were a living wedge of people, with frantic mounted policemen trying to get them to go somewhere else.
Bernd was so dear, and oh it was such a blessing to be near him again! But he was solemn, and didn't smile at all except when he looked at me. Then that dear smile that is so full of goodness changed his whole face. "Oh Bernd, I do love you somuch," I couldn't help whispering, leaning forward to do it regardless of Helena who sat next to him; and seeing by Helena's stare that she had heard, and feeling recklessly cheerful at having got back to him, I turned on her and said, "Well, he shouldn't smile at me in that darling way."
The Grafin laughed gently, so I knew she thought my manners bad. I've learned that when she laughs gently she disapproves, just as I've learned that when she says with a placid sigh that war is terrible and must be avoided, all her hopes are bound up in its not being avoided. Her only son is in the Cuirassiers, and is, Kloster says, a naturally unsuccessful person. War is his chance of promotion, of making a career. It is also his chance of death or maiming, as I said to Helena on Sunday at Koseritz when she was talking about her brother and his chances if there is war to the pastor, who was calling hat in hand and very full of bows.
She stared at me, and so did the pastor. I'm afraid I plumped into the conversation impetuously.
"I had sooner," said Helena, "that Werner were dead or maimed for life than that he should not make a career. One's brother must not, cannot be a failure."
And the pastor bowed and exclaimed, "That is well and finely said.That is full of pride, of the true German patrician pride."
Helena, you see, forgot, as Germans sometimes do, not to be natural. She said straight but it was a career she wanted for her brother. She forgot the usual talk of patriotism and the glory of being mangled on behalf of Hohenzollerns.
Yesterday the menservants disappeared, and women waited on us. There was no jolt in the machinery. It went on as smoothly as though the change had been weeks ago. Even the butler, who certainly is too old to fight, vanished.
Bernd comes in whenever he can. Luckily we're quite close to the General Staff Headquarters here, and he has his meals with us. He persists that the war will be kept rigidly to Austria and Servia, and therefore will be over in a week or two. He says Sir Edward Grey has soothed bellicose governments before now, and will be able to do so again. He talks of the madness of war, and of how no Government nowadays would commit such a sheer stupidity as starting it. I listen to him, and am convinced and comforted; then I go back to the others, and my comfort slips away again. For the others are so sure. There's no question for them, no doubt. They don't say so, any of them, neither the Graf, nor the Grafin, nor the son Werner who was here yesterday nor Bernd's Colonel who dined here last night, nor any of the other people. Government officials who come to see the Graf, and women friends who come to see the Grafin. They don't say war is certain, but each one of them has the look of satisfaction and relief people have when they get something they've wanted very much for a very long time and sigh out "At last!" Some of them let out their satisfaction more than others,—Bernd's Colonel, for instance, who seems particularly hilarious. He was very hilarious last night, though not ostensibly about war. If the possibility of war is mentioned, as of course it constantly is, they at once all shake their heads as if to order, and look serious, and say God grant it may even now be avoided, or something like that; just as the newspapers do. And last night at dinner somebody added a hope, expressed with a very grave face, that the people of Germany wouldn't get out of hand and force war upon the Government against its judgment.
I thought that rather funny. Especially after two hours in the morning with Kloster, who explained that the Government is arranging everything that is happening, managing public opinion, creating the exact amount of enthusiasm and aggressiveness it wishes to have behind it, just as it did in 1870 when it wanted to bring about the war with France. I know it isn't proper for ajunges Madchento talk at dinner unless she is asked a question, and I know she mustn't have an opinion about anything except bonbons and flowers, and I also know that ajunges Madchenwho is betrothed is expected to show on all occasions such extreme modesty, such a continuous downcast eye, that it almost amounts to being ashamed of herself; yet I couldn't resist leaning across the table to the man who said that, a high official in theMinisterium des Innern, and saying "But your public is so disciplined and your Government so almighty—" and was going on to ask him what grounds he had for his fears that a public in that condition would force the Government's hand, for I was interested and wanted dreadfully to hear what he would say, when the Grafin slipped in, smiling gently.
"My dear new niece," she said, looking round the table at everybody, "promises to become a most excellent little German. See how she already recognizes and admires our restraint on the one hand, and on the other, our power."
The Colonel, who was sitting on one side of me, laughed, raised his glass, and begged me to permit him to drink my health and the health of that luckiest of young men, Lieutenant von Inster. "Old England forever!" he exclaimed, bowing over his glass to me, "The England that raises such fair flowers and allows Germany to pluck them. Long may she continue these altruistic activities. Long may the homes of Germany be decorated with England's fairest products."
By this time he was on his feet, and they were toasting England and me. They were all quite enthusiastic, and I felt so proud and pleased, with Bernd sitting beside me looking so proud and pleased. "England!" they called out, lifting their glasses, "England and the new alliance!" And they bowed and smiled to me, and came round one by one and clinked their glasses against mine.
Then Bernd had to make a little speech and thank the Colonel, and you can't think how beautifully he speaks, and not a bit shy, and saying exactly the right things. Then the Graf actually got up and said something—I expect etiquette forced him to or he never would have—but once he was in for it he did it with the same unfaltering fluency and appropriateness that Bernd had surprised me with. He said they—the Koseritzes and Insters—welcomed the proposed marriage between Bernd and myself, not alone for the many graces, virtues, and, above all gifts—(picture the abstracted Graf reeling off these compliments! You should have seen my open mouth)—that so happily adorned the young lady, great and numerous though they were, but also because such a marriage would still further cement the already close union existing between two great countries of the same faith, the same blood, and the same ideals. "Long may these two countries," he said, "who carry in their hands the blazing torches of humanity and civilization, march abreast down the pages of history, writing it in glorious letters as they march." Then he sat down, and instantly relapsed into silence and abstraction. It was as if a candle had been blown out.
They're all certainly very kind to me, the people I've met here, and say the nicest things about England. They're in love with her, as I used to tell Frau Berg's boarders, but openly and enthusiastically, not angrily and reluctantly as the boarders were. I've not heard so many nice things about England ever as I did yesterday. I loved hearing them, and felt all lit up.
We went out on the balcony overlooking the Thiergarten after dinner. The Graf's chief had sent for him, and Bernd and some of the men had gone away too, but more people kept dropping in and joining us on the balcony watching the crowds. The Brandenburger Thor is close on our left, and the Reichstag is a stone's throw across the road on our right. When the crowd saw the officers in our group, they yelled for joy and flung their hats in the air. The Colonel, in his staff officer's uniform, was the chief attraction. He seemed unaware that there was a crowd, and talked to me in much the same hilarious and flowery strain he had talked at the Oberforsterei, saying a great number of things about hair and eyes and such. I know I've got hair and eyes; I've had them all my life, so what's the use of wasting time telling me about them? I tried all I knew to get him to talk about what he really thought of the chances of war, but quite in vain.
Do you know what time it is? Nearly eight, and theDeutschland uber Allesbusiness has already started in the streets. There are little crowds of people, looking so tiny and black, not a bit as if they were real, and had blood in them and could be hurt, already on the steps of the Reichstag eagerly reading the morning papers. I must get dressed and go down and hear if anything fresh has happened. Good-bye my own loved mother,—I'll write whenever I get a moment. And don't forget, mother darling, that if you're worried about my being here I'll start straight off for Switzerland. But if you're not worried I wouldn't like to interrupt my lessons. They really are very important things for our future.
Your Chris.
Berlin, Friday afternoon, July 31st.
My sweetest mother,
Your letters have been following me about, to Koseritz and to Frau Berg's, where of course you didn't know I wouldn't be. I went to Frau Berg's today and found your last two. I love you, my precious mother, and thank you for all your dearness and sweet unselfish understanding about Bernd and me. You have always been my closest, dearest friend, as well as my own darling mother. I seem now to be living in a sort of bath of love. Can anything more ever be added to it? I feel as if I had reached the very innermost heart of happiness. Wonderful how one carries about such a precious consciousness. It's like something magic and hidden that takes care of one, keeping one untouched and unharmed; while outside, day and night, there's this terrible noise of a people gone mad.