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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12683 ***
+
+CHRISTINE
+
+BY
+
+ALICE CHOLMONDELEY
+
+1917
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHRISTINE
+
+My daughter Christine, who wrote me these letters, died at a hospital
+in Stuttgart on the morning of August 8th, 1914, of acute double
+pneumonia. I have kept the letters private for nearly three years,
+because, apart from the love in them that made them sacred things in
+days when we each still hoarded what we had of good, they seemed to me,
+who did not know the Germans and thought of them, as most people in
+England for a long while thought, without any bitterness and with a
+great inclination to explain away and excuse, too extreme and sweeping
+in their judgments.  Now, as the years have passed, and each has been
+more full of actions on Germany's part difficult to explain except in
+one way and impossible to excuse, I feel that these letters, giving a
+picture of the state of mind of the German public immediately before
+the War, and written by some one who went there enthusiastically ready
+to like everything and everybody, may have a certain value in helping
+to put together a small corner of the great picture of Germany which it
+will be necessary to keep clear and naked before us in the future if
+the world is to be saved.
+
+I am publishing the letters just as they came to me, leaving out
+nothing.  We no longer in these days belong to small circles, to
+limited little groups.  We have been stripped of our secrecies and of
+our private hoards.  We live in a great relationship.  We share our
+griefs; and anything there is of love and happiness, any smallest
+expression of it, should be shared too.  This is why I am leaving out
+nothing in the letters.
+
+The war killed Christine, just as surely as if she had been a soldier
+in the trenches.  I will not write of her great gift, which was
+extraordinary.  That too has been lost to the world, broken and thrown
+away by the war.
+
+I never saw her again.  I had a telegram saying she was dead.  I tried
+to go to Stuttgart, but was turned back at the frontier.  The two last
+letters, the ones from Halle and from Wurzburg, reached me after I knew
+that she was dead.
+
+  ALICE CHOLMONDELEY,
+  London, May, 1917.
+
+
+
+
+Publishers' Note
+
+The Publishers have considered it best to alter some of the personal
+names in the following pages.
+
+
+
+
+CHRISTINE
+
+
+  _Lutzowstrasse 49, Berlin,
+  Thursday, May 28th, 1914_.
+
+My blessed little mother,
+
+Here I am safe, and before I unpack or do a thing I'm writing you a
+little line of love.  I sent a telegram at the station, so that you'll
+know at once that nobody has eaten me on the way, as you seemed rather
+to fear.  It is wonderful to be here, quite on my own, as if I were a
+young man starting his career.  I feel quite solemn, it's such a great
+new adventure, Kloster can't see me till Saturday, but the moment I've
+had a bath and tidied up I shall get out my fiddle and see if I've
+forgotten how to play it between London and Berlin.  If only I can be
+sure you aren't going to be too lonely!  Beloved mother, it will only
+be a year, or even less if I work fearfully hard and really get on, and
+once it is over a year is nothing.  Oh, I know you'll write and tell me
+you don't mind a bit and rather like it, but you see your Chris hasn't
+lived with you all her life for nothing; she knows you very well
+now,--at least, as much of your dear sacred self that you will show
+her.  Of course I know you're going to be brave and all that, but one
+can be very unhappy while one is being brave, and besides, one isn't
+brave unless one is suffering.  The worst of it is that we're so poor,
+or you could have come with me and we'd have taken a house and set up
+housekeeping together for my year of study.  Well, we won't be poor for
+ever, little mother.  I'm going to be your son, and husband, and
+everything else that loves and is devoted, and I'm going to earn both
+our livings for us, and take care of you forever.  You've taken care of
+me till now, and now it's my turn.  You don't suppose I'm a great
+hulking person of twenty two, and five foot ten high, and with this
+lucky facility in fiddling, for nothing?  It's a good thing it is
+summer now, or soon will be, and you can work away in your garden, for
+I know that is where you are happiest; and by the time it's winter
+you'll be used to my not being there, and besides there'll be the
+spring to look forward to, and in the spring I come home, finished.
+Then I'll start playing and making money, and we'll have the little
+house we've dreamed of in London, as well as our cottage, and we'll be
+happy ever after.  And after all, it is really a beautiful arrangement
+that we only have each other in the world, because so we each get the
+other's concentrated love.  Else it would be spread out thin over a
+dozen husbands and brothers and people.  But for all that I do wish
+dear Dad were still alive and with you.
+
+This pension is the top fiat of a four-storied house, and there isn't a
+lift, so I arrived breathless, besides being greatly battered and all
+crooked after my night sitting up in the train; and Frau Berg came and
+opened the door herself when I rang, and when she saw me she threw up
+two immense hands and exclaimed, "_Herr Gott_!"
+
+"_Nicht wahr_?" I said, agreeing with her, for I knew I must be looking
+too awful.
+
+She then said, while I stood holding on to my violin-case and umbrella
+and coat and a paper bag of ginger biscuits I had been solacing myself
+with in the watches of the night, that she hadn't known when exactly to
+expect me, so she had decided not to expect me at all, for she had
+observed that the things you do not expect come to you, and the things
+you do expect do not; besides, she was a busy woman, and busy women
+waste no time expecting anything in any case; and then she said, "Come
+in."
+
+"_Seien Sie willkommen, mein Fraulein_," she continued, with a sort of
+stern cordiality, when I was over the threshold, holding out both her
+hands in massive greeting; and as both mine were full she caught hold
+of what she could, and it was the bag of biscuits, and it burst.
+
+"_Herr Gott_!" cried Frau Berg again, as they rattled away over the
+wooden floor of the passage, "_Herr Gott, die schonen Kakes_!" And she
+started after them; so I put down my things on a chair and started
+after them too, and would you believe it the biscuits came out of the
+corners positively cleaner than when they went in.  The floor cleaned
+the biscuits instead of, as would have happened in London, the biscuits
+cleaning the floor, so you can be quite happy about its being a clean
+place.
+
+It is a good thing I learned German in my youth, for even if it is so
+rusty at present that I can only say things like _Nicht wahr_, I can
+understand everything, and I'm sure I'll get along very nicely for at
+least a week on the few words that somehow have stuck in my memory.
+I've discovered they are:
+
+  _Nicht wahr,
+  Wundervoll,
+  Naturlich,
+  Herrlich,
+  Ich gratuliere,
+    and
+  Doch_.
+
+And the only one with the faintest approach to contentiousness, or
+acidity, or any of the qualities that don't endear the stranger to the
+indigenous, is _doch_.
+
+My bedroom looks very clean, and is roomy and comfortable, and I shall
+be able to work very happily in it, I'm sure.  I can't tell you how
+much excited I am at getting here and going to study under the great
+Kloster!  You darling one, you beloved mother, stinting yourself,
+scraping your own life bare, so as to give me this chance.  _Won't_ I
+work.  And _work_.  _And_ work.  And in a year--no, we won't call it a
+year, we'll say in a few months--I shall come back to you for good,
+carrying my sheaves with me.  Oh, I hope there will be sheaves,--big
+ones, beautiful ones, to lay at your blessed feet!  Now I'll run down
+and post this.  I saw a letter-box a few yards down the street.  And
+then I'll have a bath and go to bed for a few hours, I think.  It is
+still only nine o'clock in the morning, so I have hours and hours of
+today before me, and can practise this afternoon and write to you again
+this evening.  So good-bye for a few hours, my precious mother.
+
+  Your happy Chris.
+
+
+
+  _May 28th.  Evening_.
+
+It's very funny here, but quite comfortable.  You needn't give a
+thought to my comforts, mother darling.  There's a lot to eat, and if
+I'm not in clover I'm certainly in feathers,--you should see the
+immense sackful of them in a dark red sateen bag on my bed!  As you
+have been in Germany trying to get poor Dad well in all those
+_Kurorten_, you'll understand how queer my bedroom looks, like a very
+solemn and gloomy drawingroom into which it has suddenly occurred to
+somebody to put a bed.  It is a tall room: tall of ceiling, which is
+painted at the corners with blue clouds and pink cherubim--unmistakable
+Germans--and tall of door, of which there are three, and tall of
+window, of which there are two.  The windows have long dark curtains of
+rep or something woolly, and long coffee-coloured lace curtains as
+well; and there's a big green majolica stove in one corner; and there's
+a dark brown wall-paper with gilt flowers on it; and an elaborate
+chandelier hanging from a coloured plaster rosette in the middle of the
+ceiling, all twisty and gilt, but it doesn't light,--Wanda, the maid of
+all work, brings me a petroleum lamp with a green glass shade to it
+when it gets dusk.  I've got a very short bed with a dark red sateen
+quilt on to which my sheet is buttoned a11 round, a pillow propped up
+so high on a wedge stuck under the mattress that I shall sleep sitting
+up almost straight, and then as a crowning glory the sack of feathers,
+which will do beautifully for holding me down when I'm having a
+nightmare.  In a corner, with an even greater air of being an
+afterthought than the bed, there's a very tiny washstand, and pinned on
+the wall behind it over the part of the wallpaper I might splash on
+Sunday mornings when I'm supposed really to wash, is a strip of grey
+linen with a motto worked on it in blue wool:
+
+  Eigener Heerd
+  Ist Goldes Werth
+
+which is a rhyme if you take it in the proper spirit, and isn't if you
+don't.  But I love the sentiment, don't you?  It seems peculiarly sound
+when one is in a room like this in a strange country.  And what I'm
+here for and am going to work for _is_ an _eigener Heerd_, with you and
+me one each side of it warming our happy toes on our very own fender.
+Oh, won't it be too lovely, mother darling, to be together again in our
+very own home!  Able to shut ourselves in, shut our front door in the
+face of the world, and just say to the world, "There now."
+
+There's a little looking-glass on a nail up above the _eigener Heerd_
+motto, so high that if it hadn't found its match in me I'd only be able
+to see my eyebrows in it.  As it is, I do see as far as my chin.  What
+goes on below that I shall never know while I continue to dwell in the
+Lutzowstrasse.  Outside, a very long way down, for the house has high
+rooms right through and I'm at the top, trams pass almost constantly
+along the street, clanging their bells.  They sound much more
+aggressive than other trams I have heard, or else it is because my ears
+are tired tonight.  There are double windows, though, which will shut
+out the noise while I'm practising--and also shut it in.  I mean to
+practise eight hours every day if Kloster will let me,--twelve if needs
+be, so I've made up my mind only to write to you on Sundays; for if I
+don't make a stern rule like that I shall be writing to you every day,
+and then what would happen to the eight hours?  I'm going to start them
+tomorrow, and try and get as ready as I can for the great man on
+Saturday.  I'm fearfully nervous and afraid, for so much depends on it,
+and in spite of knowing that somehow from somewhere I've got a kind of
+gift for fiddling.  Heaven knows where that little bit of luck came
+from, seeing that up to now, though you're such a perfect listener, you
+haven't developed any particular talent for playing anything, have you
+mother darling; and poor Dad positively preferred to be in a room where
+music wasn't.  Do you remember how he used to say he couldn't think
+which end of a violin the noises came out of, and whichever it was he
+wished they wouldn't?  But what a mercy, what a real mercy and solution
+of our difficulties, that I've got this one thing that perhaps I shall
+be able to do really well, I do thank God on my knees for this.
+
+There are four other boarders here,--three Germans and one Swede, and
+the Swede and two of the Germans are women; and five outside people
+come in for the midday dinner every day, all Germans, and four of them
+are men.  They have what they call _Abonnementskarten_ for their
+dinners, so much a month.  Frau Berg keeps an Open Midday Table--it is
+written up on a board on the street railing--and charges 1 mark 25
+pfennigs a dinner if a month's worth of them is taken, and 1 mark 50
+pfennigs if they're taken singly.  So everybody takes the month's
+worth, and it is going to be rather fun, I think.  Today I was solemnly
+presented to the diners, first collectively by Frau Berg as _Unser
+junge englische Gast_, Mees--no, I can't write what she made of
+Cholmondeley, but some day I'll pronounce it for you; and really it is
+hard on her that her one English guest, who might so easily have been
+Evans, or Dobbs, or something easy, should have a name that looks a
+yard long and sounds an inch short--and then each of them to me singly
+by name.  They all made the most beautiful stiff bows.  Some of them
+are students, I gathered; some, I imagine, are staying here because
+they have no homes,--wash-ups on the shores of life; some are clerks
+who come in for dinner from their offices near by; and one, the oldest
+of the men and the most deferred to, is a lawyer called Doctor
+something.  I suppose my being a stranger made them silent, for they
+were all very silent and stiff, but they'll get used to me quite soon I
+expect, for didn't you once rebuke me because everybody gets used to me
+much too soon?  Being the newest arrival I sat right at the end of the
+table in the darkness near the door, and looking along it towards the
+light it was really impressive, the concentration, the earnestness, the
+thoroughness, the skill, with which the two rows of guests dealt with
+things like gravy on their plates,--elusive, mobile things that are not
+caught without a struggle.  Why, if I can manage to apply myself to
+fiddling with half that skill and patience I shall be back home again
+in six months!
+
+I'm so sleepy, I must leave off and go to bed.  I did sleep this
+morning, but only for an hour or two; I was too much excited, I think,
+at having really got here to be able to sleep.  Now my eyes are
+shutting, but I do hate leaving off, for I'm not going to write again
+till Sunday, and that is two whole days further ahead, and you know my
+precious mother it's the only time I shall feel near you, when I'm
+talking to you in letters.  But I simply can't keep my eyes open any
+longer, so goodnight and good-bye my own blessed one, till Sunday.  All
+my heart's love to you.
+
+  Your Chris.
+
+We have supper at eight, and tonight it was cold herrings and fried
+potatoes and tea.  Do you think after a supper like that I shall be
+able to dream of anybody like you?
+
+
+
+  _Sunday, May 31st, 1914.
+
+Precious mother,
+
+I've been dying to write you at least six times a day since I posted my
+letter to you the day before yesterday, but rules are rules, aren't
+they, especially if one makes them oneself, because then the poor
+little things are so very helpless, and have to be protected.  I
+couldn't have looked myself in the face if I'd started off by breaking
+my own rule, but I've been thinking of you and loving you all the
+time--oh, so much!
+
+Well, I'm _very_ happy.  I'll say that first, so as to relieve your
+darling mind.  I've seen Kloster, and played to him, and he was
+fearfully kind and encouraging.  He said very much what Ysaye said in
+London, and Joachim when I was little and played my first piece to him
+standing on the dining-room table in Eccleston Square and staring
+fascinated, while I played, at the hairs of his beard, because I'd
+never been as close as that to a beard before.  So I've been walking on
+clouds with my chin well in the air, as who wouldn't?  Kloster is a
+little round, red, bald man, the baldest man I've ever seen; quite
+bald, with hardly any eyebrows, and clean-shaven as well.  He's the
+funniest little thing till you join him to a violin, and then--!  A
+year with him ought to do wonders for me.  He says so too; and when I
+had finished playing--it was the G minor Bach--you know,--the one with
+the fugue beginning:
+
+[Transcriber's note:  A Lilypond rendition of the music fragment can be
+found at the end of this e-text.]
+
+he solemnly shook hands with me and said--what do you think he
+said?--"My Fraulein, when you came in I thought, 'Behold yet one more
+well-washed, nice-looking, foolish, rich, nothing-at-all English Mees,
+who is going to waste my time and her money with lessons.'  I now
+perceive that I have to do with an artist.  My Fraulein _ich
+gratuliere_."  And he made me the funniest little solemn bow.  I
+thought I'd die of pride.
+
+I don't know why he thought me rich, seeing how ancient all my clothes
+are, and especially my blue jersey, which is what I put on because I
+can play so comfortably in it; except that, as I've already noticed,
+people here seem persuaded that everybody English is rich,--anyhow that
+they have more money than is good for them.  So I told him of our
+regrettable financial situation, and said if he didn't mind looking at
+my jersey it would convey to him without further words how very
+necessary it is that I should make some money.  And I told him I had a
+mother in just such another jersey, only it is a black one, and
+therefore somebody had to give her a new one before next winter, and
+there wasn't anybody to do it except me.
+
+He made me another little bow--(he talks English, so I could say a lot
+of things)--and he said, "My Fraulein, you need be in no anxiety.  Your
+Frau Mamma will have her jersey.  Those fingers of yours are full of
+that which turns instantly into gold."
+
+So now.  What do you think of that, my precious one?  He says I've got
+to turn to and work like a slave, practise with a _sozusagen
+verteufelte Unermudlichkeit_, as he put it, and if I rightly develop
+what he calls my unusual gift,--(I'm telling you exactly, and you know
+darling mother it isn't silly vainness makes me repeat these
+things,--I'm past being vain; I'm just bewildered with gratitude that I
+should happen to be able to fiddle)--at the end of a year, he declares,
+I shall be playing all over Europe and earning enough to make both you
+and me never have to think of money again.  Which will be a very
+blessed state to get to.
+
+You can picture the frame of mind in which I walked down his stairs and
+along the Potsdamerstrasse home.  I felt I could defy everybody now.
+Perhaps that remark will seem odd to you, but having given you such
+glorious news and told you how happy I am, I'll not conceal from you
+that I've been feeling a little forlorn at Frau Berg's.  Lonely.  Left
+out.  Darkly suspecting that they don't like me.
+
+You see, Kloster hadn't been able to have me go to him till yesterday,
+which was Saturday, and not then till the afternoon, so that I had had
+all Friday and most of Saturday to be at a loose end in, except for
+practising, and though I had got here prepared to find everybody very
+charming and kind it was somehow gradually conveyed to me, though for
+ages I thought it must be imagination, that Frau Berg and the other
+boarders and the _Mittagsgaste_ dislike me.  Well, I would have
+accepted it with a depressed resignation as the natural result of being
+unlikeable, and have tried by being pleasanter and pleasanter--wouldn't
+it have been a dreadful sight to see me screwing myself up more and
+more tightly to an awful pleasantness--to induce them to like me, but
+the people in the streets don't seem to like me either.  They're not
+friendly.  In fact they're rude.  And the people in the streets can't
+really personally dislike me, because they don't know me, so I can't
+imagine why they're so horrid.
+
+Of course one's ideal when one is in the streets is to be invisible,
+not to be noticed at all.  That's the best thing.  And the next best is
+to be behaved to kindly, with the patient politeness of the London
+policemen, or indeed of anybody one asks one's way of in England or
+Italy or France.  The Berlin man as he passes mutters the word
+_Englanderin_ as though it were a curse, or says into one's ear--they
+seem fond of saying or rather hissing this, and seem to think it both
+crushing and funny,--"_Ros bif_," and the women stare at one all over
+and also say to each other _Englanderin_.
+
+You never told me Germans were rude; or is it only in Berlin that they
+are, I wonder.  After my first expedition exploring through the
+Thiergarten and down Unter den Linden to the museums last Friday
+between my practisings, I preferred getting lost to asking anybody my
+way.  And as for the policemen, to whom I naturally turned when I
+wanted help, having been used to turning to policemen ever since I can
+remember for comfort and guidance, they simply never answered me at
+all.  They just stood and stared with a sort of mocking.  And of course
+they understood, for I got my question all ready beforehand.  I longed
+to hit them,--I who don't ever want to hit anybody, I whom you've so
+often reprimanded for being too friendly.  But the meekest lamb, a lamb
+dripping with milk and honey, would turn into a lion if its polite
+approaches were met with such wanton rudeness.  I was so indignantly
+certain that these people, any of them, policemen or policed, would
+have answered the same question with the most extravagant politeness if
+I had been an officer, or with an officer.  They grovel if an officer
+comes along; and a woman with an officer might walk on them if she
+wanted to.  They were rude simply because I was alone and a woman.  And
+that being so, though I spoke with the tongue of angels, as St.  Paul
+saith, and as I as a matter of fact did, if what that means is immense
+mellifluousness, it would avail me nothing.
+
+So when I was out, and being made so curiously to feel conspicuous and
+disliked, the knowledge that the only alternative was to go back to the
+muffled unfriendliness at Frau Berg's did make me feel a little
+forlorn.  I can tell you now, because of the joy I've had since.  I
+don't mind any more.  I'm raised up and blessed now.  Indeed I feel
+I've got much more by a long way than my share of good things, and with
+what Kloster said hugged secretly to my heart I'm placed outside the
+ordinary toiling-moiling that life means for most women who have got to
+wring a living out of it without having anything special to wring with.
+It's the sheerest, wonderfullest, most radiant luck that I've got this.
+Won't I just work.  Won't this funny frowning bedroom of mine become a
+temple of happiness.  I'm going to play Bach to it till it turns
+beautiful.
+
+I don't know why I always think of Bach first when I write about music.
+I think of him first as naturally when I think of music as I think of
+Wordsworth first when I think of poetry.  I know neither of them is the
+greatest, though Bach is the equal of the greatest, but they are the
+ones I love best.  What a world it is, my sweetest little mother!  It
+is so full of beauty.  And then there's the hard work that makes
+everything taste so good.  You have to have the hard work; I've found
+that out.  I do think it's a splendid world,--full of glory created in
+the past and lighting us up while we create still greater glory.  One
+has only got to shut out the parts of the present one doesn't like, to
+see this all clear and feel so happy.  I shut myself up in this
+bedroom, this ugly dingy bedroom with its silly heavy trappings, and
+get out my violin, and instantly it becomes a place of light, a place
+full of sound,--shivering with light and sound, the light and sound of
+the beautiful gracious things great men felt and thought long ago.  Who
+cares then about Frau Berg's boarders not speaking to one, and the
+Berlin streets and policemen being unkind?  Actually I forget the long
+miles and hours I am away from you, the endless long miles and hours
+that reach from me here to you there, and am happy, oh happy,--so happy
+that I could cry out for joy.  And so I would, I daresay, if it
+wouldn't spoil the music.
+
+There's Wanda coming to tell me dinner is ready.  She just bumps the
+soup-tureen against my door as she carries it down the passage to the
+diningroom, and calls out briefly, "_Essen_."
+
+I'll finish this tonight.
+
+
+  _Bedtime_.
+
+I just want to say goodnight, and tell you, in case you shouldn't have
+noticed it, how much your daughter loves you.  I mayn't practise on
+Sundays, because of the _Hausruhe_, Frau Berg says, and so I have time
+to think; and I'm astonished, mother darling, at the emptiness of life
+without you.  It is as though most of me had somehow got torn off, and
+I have to manage as best I can with a fragment.  What a good thing I
+feel it so much, for so I shall work all the harder to shorten the
+time.  Hard work is the bridge across which I'll get back to you.  You
+see, you're the one human being I've got in the world who loves me, the
+only one who is really, deeply, interested in me, who minds if I am
+hurt and is pleased if I am happy.  That's a watery word,--pleased; I
+should have said exults.  It is so wonderful, your happiness in my
+being happy,--so touching.  I'm all melted with love and gratitude when
+I think of it, and of the dear way you let me do this, come away here
+and realize my dream of studying with Kloster, when you knew it meant
+for you such a long row of dreary months alone.  Forgive me if I sound
+sentimental.  I know you will, so I needn't bother to ask.  That's what
+I so love about you,--you always understand, you never mind.  I can
+talk to you; and however idiotic I am, and whatever sort of a
+fool,--blind, unkind, ridiculous, obstinate or wilful--take your
+choice, little sweet mother, you'll remember occasions that were
+fitted by each of these--you look at me with those shrewd sweet eyes
+that always somehow have a laugh in them, and say some little thing
+that shows you are brushing aside all the ugly froth of nonsense,
+and are intelligently and with perfect detachment searching for the
+reason. And having found the reason you understand and forgive; for
+of course there always _is_ a reason when ordinary people, not born
+fiends, are disagreeable.  I'm sure that's why we've been so happy
+together,--because you've never taken anything I've done or said that
+was foolish or unkind personally.  You've always known it was just so
+much irrelevant rubbish, just an excrescence, a passing sickness;
+never, never your real Chris who loves you.
+
+Good-bye, my own blessed mother.  It's long past bedtime.  Tomorrow I'm
+to have my first regular lesson with Kloster.  And tomorrow I ought to
+get a letter from you.  You will take care of yourself, won't you?  You
+wouldn't like me to be anxious all this way off, would you?  Anxious,
+and not sure?
+
+  Your Chris.
+
+
+
+
+  _Berlin, Tuesday, June 2nd, 1914_.
+
+Darling mother, I've just got your two letters, two lovely long ones at
+once, and I simply can't wait till next Sunday to tell you how I
+rejoiced over them, so I'm going to squander 20 pfennigs just on that.
+I'm not breaking my rule and writing on a day that isn't Sunday,
+because I'm not really writing.  This isn't a letter, it's a kiss.  How
+glad I am you're so well and getting on so comfortably.  And I'm well
+and happy too, because I'm so busy,--you can't think how busy.  I'm
+working harder than I've ever done in my life, and Kloster is pleased
+with me.  So now that I've had letters from you there seems very little
+left in the world to want, and I go about on the tips of my toes.
+Good-bye my beloved one, till Sunday.
+
+  Chris.
+
+
+Oh, I must just tell you that at my lesson yesterday I played the Ernst
+F sharp minor concerto,---the virtuoso, firework thing, you know, with
+Kloster putting in bits of the orchestra part on the piano every now
+and then because he wanted to see what I could do in the way of
+gymnastics.  He laughed when I had finished, and patted my shoulder,
+and said, "Very good acrobatics.  Now we will do no more of them.  We
+will apply ourselves to real music."  And he said I was to play him
+what I could of the Bach Chaconne.
+
+I was so happy, little mother.  Kloster leading me about among the
+wonders of Bach, was like being taken by the hand by some great angel
+and led through heaven.
+
+
+
+  _Berlin, Sunday, June 7th, 1914_.
+
+On Sunday mornings, darling mother, directly I wake I remember it is my
+day for being with you.  I can hardly be patient with breakfast, and
+the time it takes to get done with those thick cups of coffee that are
+so thick that, however deftly I drink, drops always trickle down what
+would be my beard if I had one.  And I choke over the rolls, and I
+spill things in my hurry to run away and talk to you.  I got another
+letter from you yesterday, and Hilda Seeberg, a girl boarding here and
+studying painting, said when she met me in the passage after I had been
+reading it in my room, "You have had a letter from your _Frau Mutter,
+nicht_?"  So you see your letters shine in my face.
+
+Don't be afraid I won't take enough exercise.  I go for an immense walk
+directly after dinner every day, a real quick hot one through the
+Thiergarten.  The weather is fine, and Berlin I suppose is at its best,
+but I don't think it looks very nice after London.  There's no mystery
+about it, no atmosphere; it just blares away at you.  It has everything
+in it that a city ought to have,--public buildings, statues, fountains,
+parks, broad streets; and it is about as comforting and lovable as the
+latest thing in workhouses.  It looks disinfected; it has just that
+kind of rather awful cleanness.
+
+At dinner they talk of its beauty and its perfections till I nearly go
+to sleep.  You know how oddly sleepy one gets when one isn't
+interested.  They've left off being silent now, and have gone to the
+other extreme, and from not talking to me at all have jumped to talking
+to me all together.  They tell me over and over again that I'm in the
+most beautiful city in the world.  You never knew such eagerness and
+persistence as these German boarders have when it comes to praising
+what is theirs, and also when it comes to criticizing what isn't
+theirs.  They're so funny and personal.  They say, for instance, London
+is too hideous for words, and then they look at me defiantly, as though
+they had been insulting some personal defect of mine and meant to
+brazen it out.  They point out the horrors of the slums to me as though
+the slums were on my face.  They tell me pityingly what they look like,
+what terrible blots and deformities they are, and how I--they say
+England, but no one could dream from their manner that it wasn't
+me--can never hope to be regarded as fit for self-respecting European
+society while these spots and sore places are not purged away.
+
+The other day they assured me that England as a nation is really unfit
+for any decent other nation to know politically, but they added, with
+stiff bows in my direction, that sometimes the individual inhabitant of
+that low-minded and materialistic country is not without amiability,
+especially if he or she is by some miracle without the lofty,
+high-nosed manner that as a rule so regrettably characterizes the
+unfortunate people.  "_Sie sind so hochnasig_," the bank clerk who sits
+opposite me had shouted out, pointing an accusing finger at me; and for
+a moment I was so startled that I thought something disastrous had
+happened to my nose, and my anxious hand flew up to it.  Then they
+laughed; and it was after that that they made the speech conceding
+individual amiability here and there.
+
+I sit neatly in my chair while this sort of talk goes on--and it goes
+on at every meal now that they have got over the preliminary stage of
+icy coldness towards me--and I try to be sprightly, and bandy my six
+German words about whenever they seem appropriate.  Imagine your poor
+Chris trying to be sprightly with eleven Germans--no, ten Germans, for
+the eleventh is a Swede and doesn't say anything.  And the ten Germans,
+including Frau Berg, all fix their eyes reproachfully on me while as
+one man they tell me how awful my country is.  Do people in London
+boarding houses tell the German boarders how awful Germany is, I
+wonder?  I don't believe they do.  And I wish they would leave me alone
+about the Boer war.  I've tried to explain my extreme youth at the time
+it was going on, but they still appear to hold me directly responsible
+for it.  The fingers that have been pointed at me down that table on
+account of the Boer war!  They raise them at me, and shake them, and
+tell me of the terrible things the English did, and when I ask them how
+they know, they say it was in the newspapers; and when I ask them what
+newspapers, they say theirs; and when I ask them how they know it was
+true, they say they know because it was in the newspapers.  So there we
+are, stuck.  I take to English when the worst comes to the worst, and
+they flounder in after me.
+
+It is the funniest thing, their hostility to England, and the queer,
+reluctant, and yet passionate admiration that goes With it.  It is like
+some girl who can't get a man she admires very much to notice her.  He
+stays indifferent, while she gets more exasperated the more indifferent
+he stays; exasperated with the bitterness of thwarted love.  One day at
+dinner, when they had all been thumping away at me, this flashed across
+me as the explanation, and I exclaimed in English, "Why, you're in love
+with us!"
+
+Twenty round eyes stared at me, sombrely at first, not understanding,
+and then with horror slowly growing in them.
+
+"In love with you?  In love with England?" cried Frau Berg, the carving
+knife suspended in the air while she stared at me.  "_Nein, aber so
+was_!"  And she let down her heavy fists, knife and all, with a thud on
+the table.
+
+I thought I had best stand up to them, having started off so
+recklessly, and tried to lash myself into bravery by remembering how
+full I was of the blood of all the Cholmondeleys, let alone those
+relations of yours alleged to have fought alongside the Black Prince;
+so though I wished there were several of me rather than only one, I
+said with courage and obstinacy, "Passionately."
+
+You can't think how seriously they took it.  They all talked at once,
+very loud.  They were all extremely angry.  I wished I had kept quiet,
+for I couldn't elaborate my idea in my limping German, and it was quite
+difficult to go on smiling and behaving as though they were all not
+being rude, for I don't think they mean to be rude, and I was afraid,
+if I showed a trace of thinking they were that they might notice they
+were, and then they would have felt so uncomfortable, and the situation
+would have become, as they say, _peinlich_.
+
+Four of the Daily Dinner Guests are men, and one of the boarders is a
+man; and these five men and Frau Berg were the vociferous ones.  They
+exclaimed things like "_Nein, so was_!" and, "_Diese englische
+Hochmut_!" and single words like _unerhort_; and then one of them
+called Herr Doctor Krummlaut, who is a lawyer and a widower and much
+esteemed by the rest, detached himself from them and made me a
+carefully patient speech, in which he said how sorry they all were to
+see so young and gifted a lady,--(he bowed, and I bowed)--oh yes, he
+said, raising his hand as though to ward off any modest objections I
+might be going to make, only I wasn't going to make any, he had heard
+that I was undoubtedly gifted, and not only gifted but also, he would
+not be deterred from saying, and he felt sure his colleagues at the
+table would not be deterred from saying either if they were in his
+place, a lady of personal attractions,--(he bowed and I bowed,)--how
+sorry they all were to see a young Fraulein with these advantages,
+filled at the same time with opinions and views that were not only
+highly unsuitable to her sex but were also, in any sex, so terribly
+wrong.  Every lady, he said, should have some knowledge of history, and
+sufficient acquaintance with the three kinds of politics,--_Politik_,
+_Weltpolitik_, and _Realpolitik_, to enable her to avoid wrong and
+frivolous conclusions such as the one the young Fraulein had just
+informed them she had reached, and to listen intelligently to her
+husband or son when they discuss these matters.  He said a great deal
+more, about a woman knowing these things just enough but not too well,
+for her intelligence must not be strained because of her supreme
+function of being the cradle of the race; and the cradle part of her, I
+gather, isn't so useful if she is allowed to develop the other part of
+her beyond what is necessary for making an agreeable listener.
+
+It was no use even trying to explain what I had meant about Germany
+really being in love with England, because I hadn't got words enough;
+but that is exactly the impression I've received from my brief
+experiences of one corner of its life.  In this small corner of it,
+anyhow, it behaves exactly like a woman who is so unlucky as to love
+somebody who doesn't care about her.  She naturally, I imagine,--for I
+can only guess at these enslavements,--is very much humiliated and
+angry, and all the more because the loved and hated one--isn't it
+possible to love and hate at the same time, little mother?  I can
+imagine it quite well--is so indifferent as to whether she loves or
+hates.  And whichever she does, he is polite,--"Always gentleman," as
+the Germans say.  Which is, naturally, maddening.
+
+
+  _Evening_.
+
+Do you know I wrote to you the whole morning?  I wrote and wrote, with
+no idea how time was passing, and was astonished and indignant, for I
+haven't half told you all I want to, when I was called to dinner.  It
+seemed like shutting a door on you and leaving you outside without any
+dinner, to go away and have it without you.
+
+If it weren't for its being my day with you I don't know what I'd do
+with Sundays.  I would hate them.  I'm not allowed to play on Sundays,
+because practising is forbidden on that day, and, as Frau Berg said,
+how is she to know if I am practising or playing?  Besides, it would
+disturb the others, which of course is true, for they all rest on
+Sundays, getting up late, sleeping after dinner, and not going out till
+they have had coffee about five.  Today, when I hoped they had all gone
+out, I had such a longing to play a little that I muted my strings and
+played to myself in a whisper what I could remember of a very beautiful
+thing of Ravel's that Kloster showed me the other day,--the most
+haunting, exquisite thing; and I hummed the weird harmonies as I went
+along, because they are what is so particularly wonderful about it.
+Well, it really was a whisper, and I had to bend my head right over the
+violin to hear it at all whenever a tram passed, yet in five minutes
+Frau Berg appeared, unbuttoned and heated from her _Mittagsruhe_, and
+requested me to have some consideration for others as well as for the
+day.
+
+I was very much ashamed of myself, besides feeling as though I were
+fifteen and caught at school doing something wicked.  I didn't mind not
+having consideration for the day, because I think Ravel being played on
+it can't do Sunday anything but good, but I did mind having disturbed
+the other people in the flat.  I could only say I was sorry, and
+wouldn't do it again,--just like an apologetic schoolgirl.  But what do
+you think I wanted to do, little mother?  Run to Frau Berg, and put my
+arms round her neck, and tell her I was lonely and wanting you, and
+would she mind just pretending she was fond of me for a moment?  She
+did look so comfortable and fat and kind, standing there filling up the
+doorway, and she wasn't near enough for me to see her eyes, and it is
+her eyes that make one not want to run to her.
+
+But of course I didn't run.  I knew too well that she wouldn't
+understand.  And indeed I don't know why I should have felt such a
+longing to run into somebody's arms.  Perhaps it was because writing to
+you brings you so near to me that I realize how far away you are.
+During the week I work, and while I work I forget; and there's the
+excitement of my lessons, and the joy of hearing Kloster appreciate and
+encourage.  But on Sundays the day is all you, and then I feel what
+months can mean when they have to be lived through each in turn and day
+by day before one gets back to the person one loves.  Why are you so
+dear, my darling mother?  If you were an ordinary mother I'd be so much
+more placid.  I wouldn't mind not being with an ordinary mother.  When
+I look at other people's mothers I think I'd rather like not being with
+them.  But having known what it is to live in love and understanding
+with you, it wants a great deal of persistent courage, the sort that
+goes on steadily with no intervals, to make one able to do without it.
+
+Now please don't think I am fretting, will you, because I'm not.  It's
+only that I love you.  We're such _friends_.  You always understand,
+you are never shocked.  I can say whatever comes into my head to you.
+It is as good as saying one's prayers.  One never stops in those to
+wonder whether one is shocking God, and that is what one loves God
+for,--because we suppose he always understands, and therefore forgives;
+and how much more--is this very wicked?--one loves one's mother who
+understands, because, you see, there she is, and one can kiss her as
+well.  There's a great virtue in kissing, I think; an amazing comfort
+in just _touching_ the person one loves.  Goodnight, most blessed
+little mother, and good-bye for a week.  Your Chris.
+
+
+Perhaps I might write a little note--not a letter, just a little
+note,--on Wednesdays?  What do you think?  It would be nothing more,
+really, than a postcard, except that it would be in an envelope.
+
+
+
+
+_Berlin, Sunday, June 14th, 1914_.
+
+Well, I didn't write on Wednesday, I resisted.  (Good morning, darling
+mother.)  I knew quite well it wouldn't be a postcard, or anything even
+remotely related to the postcard family.  It would be a letter.  A long
+letter.  And presently I'd be writing every day, and staying all soft;
+living in the past, instead of getting on with my business, which is
+the future.  That is what I've got to do at this moment: not think too
+much of you and home, but turn my face away from both those sweet,
+desirable things so that I may get back to them quicker.  It's true we
+haven't got a home, if a home is a house and furniture; but home to
+your Chris is where you are.  Just simply anywhere and everywhere you
+are.  It's very convenient, isn't it, to have it so much concentrated
+and so movable.  Portable, I might say, seeing how little you are and
+how big I am.
+
+But you know, darling mother, it makes it easier for me to harden and
+look ahead with my chin in the air rather than over my shoulder back at
+you when I see, as I do see all day long, the extreme sentimentality of
+the Germans.  It is very surprising.  They're the oddest mixture of
+what really is a brutal hardness, the kind of hardness that springs
+from real fundamental differences from ours in their attitude towards
+life, and a squashiness that leaves one with one's mouth open.  They
+can't bear to let a single thing that has happened to them ever,
+however many years ago, drop away into oblivion and die decently in its
+own dust.  They hold on to it, and dig it out that day year and that
+day every year, for years apparently,--I expect for all their lives.
+When they leave off really feeling about it--which of course they do,
+for how can one go on feeling about a thing forever?--they start
+pretending that they feel.  Conceive going through life clogged like
+that, all one's pores choked with the dust of old yesterdays.  I
+picture the Germans trailing through life more and more heavily as they
+grow old, hauling an increasing number of anniversaries along with
+them, rolling them up as they go, dragging at each remove a lengthening
+chain, as your dear Goldsmith says,--and if he didn't, or it wasn't,
+you'll rebuke me and tell me who did and what it was, for you know I've
+no books here, except those two that are married as securely on one's
+tongue as Tennyson and Browning, or Arnold Bennet and his, I imagine
+reluctant, bride, H. G. Wells,--I mean Shakespeare and the Bible.
+
+
+I went into Hilda Seeberg's room the other day to ask her for some
+pins, and found her sitting in front of a photograph of her father, a
+cross-looking old man with a twirly moustache and a bald head; and she
+had put a wreath of white roses round the frame and tied it with a
+black bow, and there were two candles lit in front of it, and Hilda had
+put on a black dress, and was just sitting there gazing at it with her
+hands in her lap.  I begged her pardon, and was going away again
+quickly, but she called me back.
+
+"I celebrate," she said.
+
+"Oh," said I politely, but without an idea what she meant.
+
+"It is my Papa's birthday today," she said, pointing to the photograph.
+
+"Is it?" I said, surprised, for I thought I remembered she had told me
+he was dead.  "But didn't you say--"
+
+"Yes.  Certainly I told you Papa was dead since five years."
+
+"Then why--?"
+
+"But _liebes Fraulein_, he still continues to have birthdays," she
+said, staring at me in real surprise, while I stared back at her in at
+least equally real surprise.
+
+"Every year," she said, "the day comes round on which Papa was born.
+Shall he, then, merely because he is with God, not have it celebrated?
+And what would people think if I did not?  They would think I had no
+heart."
+
+After that I began to hope there would be a cake, for they have lovely
+birthday cakes here, and it is the custom to give a slice of them to
+every one who comes near you.  So I looked round the room out of the
+corners of my eyes, discreetly, lest I should seem to be as greedy as I
+was, and I lifted my nose a little and waved it cautiously about, but I
+neither saw nor smelt a cake.  Frau Berg had a birthday three days ago,
+and there was a heavenly cake at it, a great flat thing with cream in
+it, that one loved so that first one wanted to eat it and then to sit
+on it and see all the cream squash out at the sides; but evidently the
+cake is the one thing you don't have for your birthday after you are
+dead.  I don't want to laugh, darling mother, and I know well enough
+what it is to lose one's beloved Dad, but you see Hilda had shown me
+her family photographs only the other day, for we are making friends in
+a sort of flabby, hesitating way, and when she got to the one of her
+father she said with perfect frankness that she hadn't liked him, and
+that it had been an immense relief when he died.  "He prevented my
+doing anything," she said, frowning at the photograph, "except that
+which increased his comforts."
+
+I asked Kloster about anniversaries when I went for my lesson on
+Friday.  He is a very human little man, full of sympathy,---the sort of
+comprehending sympathy that laughs and understands together, yet his
+genius seems to detach him from other Germans, for he criticizes them
+with a dispassionate thoroughness that is surprising.  The remarks he
+makes about the Kaiser, for instance, whom he irreverently alludes to
+as S. M.--(short and rude for _Seine Majestat_)--simply make me shiver
+in this country of _lese majeste_.  In England, where we can say what
+we like, I have never heard anybody say anything disrespectful about
+the King.  Here, where you go to prison if you laugh even at officials,
+even at a policeman, at anything whatever in buttons, for that is the
+punishable offence of Beamtenbeleidigung--haven't they got heavenly
+words--Kloster and people I have come across in his rooms say what they
+like; and what they like is very rude indeed about that sacred man the
+Kaiser, who doesn't appear to be at all popular.  But then Kloster
+belongs to the intelligents, and his friends are all people of
+intelligence, and that sort of person doesn't care very much, I think,
+for absolute monarchs.  Kloster says they're anachronisms, that the
+world is too old for them, too grown-up for pretences and decorations.
+And when I went for my lesson on Friday I found his front door wreathed
+with evergreens and paper flowers,--pretences and decorations crawling
+even round Kloster--and I went in very reluctantly, not knowing what
+sort of a memorial celebration I was going to tumble into.  But it was
+only that his wife--I didn't know he had a wife, he seemed altogether
+so happily unmarried--was coming home.  She had been away for three
+weeks; not nearly long enough, you and I and others of our
+self-depreciatory and self-critical country would think, to deserve an
+evergreen garland round our door on coming back.  He laughed when I
+told him I had been afraid to come in lest I should disturb
+retrospective obsequies.
+
+"We are still so near, my dear Mees Chrees," he said, shrugging a fat
+shoulder--he asked me what I was called at home, and I said you called
+me Chris, and he said he would, with my permission, also call me
+Chrees, but with Mees in front of it to show that though he desired to
+be friendly he also wished to remain respectful--"we are still so near
+as a nation to the child and to the savage.  To the clever child, and
+the powerful savage.  We like simple and gross emotions and plenty of
+them; obvious tastes in our food and our pleasures, and a great deal of
+it; fat in our food, and fat in our women.  And, like the child, when
+we mourn we mourn to excess, and enjoy ourselves in that excess; and,
+like the savage, we are afraid, and therefore hedge ourselves about
+with observances, celebrations, cannon, kings.  In no other country is
+there more than one king.  In ours we find three and an emperor
+necessary.  The savage who fears all things does not fear more than we
+Germans.  We fear other nations, we fear other people, we fear public
+opinion to an extent incredible, and tremble before the opinion of our
+servants and tradespeople; we fear our own manners and therefore are
+obliged to preserve the idiotic practice of duelling, in which as often
+as not the man whose honour is being satisfied is the one who is
+killed; we fear all those above us, of whom there are invariably a
+great many; we fear all officials, and our country drips with
+officials.  The only person we do not fear is God."
+
+
+"But--" I began, remembering their motto, bestowed on them by Bismarck,
+
+
+"Yes, yes, I know," he interrupted.  "It is not, however, true.  The
+contrary is the truth.  We Germans fear not God, but everything else in
+the world.  It is only fear that makes us polite, fear of the duel;
+for, like the child and the savage, we have not had time to acquire the
+habit of good manners, the habit which makes manners inevitable and
+invariable, and it is not natural to us to be polite.  We are polite
+only by the force of fear.  Consequently--for all men must have their
+relaxations--whenever we meet the weak, the beneath us, the momentarily
+helpless, we are brutal.  It is an immense relief to be for a moment
+natural.  Every German welcomes even the smallest opportunity."
+
+
+You would be greatly interested in Kloster, I'm certain.  He sits
+there, his fiddle on his fat little knees, his bow punctuating his
+sentences with quivers and raps, his shiny bald head reflecting the
+light from the window behind him, and his eyes coming very much out of
+his face, which is excessively red.  He looks like an amiable prawn;
+not in the least like a person with an active and destructive mind, not
+in the least like a great musician.  He has the very opposite of the
+bushy eyebrows and overhanging forehead and deep set eyes and lots of
+hair you're supposed to have if you've got much music in you.  He came
+over to me the other day after I had finished playing, and stretched
+up--he's a good bit smaller than I am--and carefully drew his finger
+along my eyebrows, each in turn.  I couldn't think what he was doing.
+
+"My finger is clean, Mees Chrees," he said, seeing me draw back.  "I
+have just wiped it, Be not, therefore, afraid.  But you have the real
+Beethoven brow--the very shape--and I must touch it.  I regret if it
+incommodes you, but I must touch it.  I have seen no such resemblance
+to the brow of the Master.  You might be his child."
+
+I needn't tell you, darling mother, that I went back to the boarders
+and the midday guests not minding them much.  If I only could talk
+German properly I would have loved to have leant across the table to
+Herr Mannfried, an unwholesome looking young man who comes in to dinner
+every day from a bank in the Potsdamerstrasse, and is very full of that
+hatred which is really passion for England, and has pale hair and a
+mouth exactly like two scarlet slugs--I'm sorry to be so horrid, but it
+_is_ like two scarlet slugs--and said,--"Have you noticed that I have a
+_Beethovenkopf_?  What do you think of me, an _Englanderin_, having
+such a thing? One of your own great men says so, so it must be true."
+
+We are studying the Bach Chaconne now.  He is showing me a different
+reading of it, his idea.  He is going to play it at the Philarmonie
+here next week.  I wish you could hear him.  He was intending to go to
+London this season and play with a special orchestra of picked players,
+but has changed his mind.  I asked him why, and he shrugged his
+shoulder and said his agent, who arranges these things, seemed to think
+he had better not.  I asked him why again--you know my persistency--for
+I can't conceive why it should be better not for London to have such a
+joy and for him to give it, but he only shrugged his shoulder again,
+and said he always did what his agent told him to do.  "My agent knows
+his business, my dear Mees Chrees," he said.  "I put my affairs in his
+hands, and having done so I obey him.  It saves trouble.  Obedience is
+a comfortable thing."
+
+"Then why--" I began, remembering the things he says about kings and
+masters and persons in authority; but he picked up his violin and began
+to play a bit.  "See," he said, "this is how--"
+
+And when he plays I can only stand and listen.  It is like a spell.
+One stands there, and forgets. . . .
+
+
+  _Evening_.
+
+I've been reading your last darling letter again, so full of love, so
+full of thought for me, out in a corner of the Thiergarten this
+afternoon, and I see that while I'm eagerly writing and writing to you,
+page after page of the things I want to tell you, I forget to tell you
+the things you want to know.  I believe I never answer _any_ of your
+questions!  It's because I'm so all right, so comfortable as far as my
+body goes, that I don't remember to say so.  I have heaps to eat, and
+it is very satisfying food, being German, and will make me grow
+sideways quite soon, I should think, for Frau Berg fills us up daily
+with dumplings, and I'm certain they must end by somehow showing; and I
+haven't had a single cold since I've been here, so I'm outgrowing them
+at last; and I'm not sitting up late reading,--I couldn't if I tried,
+for Wanda, the general servant, who is general also in her person
+rather than particular--aren't I being funny--comes at ten o'clock each
+night on her way to bed and takes away my lamp.
+
+"Rules," said Frau Berg briefly, when I asked if it wasn't a little
+early to leave me in the dark.  "And you are not left in the dark.
+Have I not provided a candle and matches for the chance infirmities of
+the night?"
+
+But the candle is cheap and dim, so I don't sit up trying to read by
+that.  I preserve it wholly for the infirmities.
+
+I've been in the Thiergarten most of the afternoon, sitting in a green
+corner I found where there is some grass and daisies down by a pond and
+away from a path, and accordingly away from the Sunday crowds.  I
+watched the birds, and read the Winter's Tale, and picked some daisies,
+and felt very happy.  The daisies are in a saucer before me at this
+moment.  Everything smelt so good,--so warm, and sweet, and young, with
+the leaves on the oaks still little and delicate.  Life is an admirable
+arrangement, isn't it, little mother.  It is so clever of it to have a
+June in every year and a morning in every day, let alone things like
+birds, and Shakespeare, and one's work.  You've sometimes told me, when
+I was being particularly happy, that there were even greater happiness
+ahead for me,--when I have a lover, you said; when I have a husband;
+when I have a child.  I suppose you know, my wise, beloved mother; but
+the delight of work, of doing the work well that one is best fitted
+for, will be very hard to beat.  It is an exultation, a rapture, that
+manifest progress to better and better results through one's own
+effort.  After all, being obliged on Sundays to do nothing isn't so
+bad, because then I have time to think, to step back a little and look
+at life.
+
+See what a quiet afternoon sunning myself among daisies has done for
+me.  A week ago I was measuring the months to be got through before
+being with you again, in dismay.  Now I feel as if I were very happily
+climbing up a pleasant hill, just steep enough to make me glad I can
+climb well, and all the way is beautiful and safe, and on the top there
+is you.  To get to the top will be perfect joy, but the getting there
+is very wonderful too.  You'll judge, from all this that I've had a
+happy week, that work is going well, and that I'm hopeful and
+confident.  I mustn't be too confident, I know, but confidence is a
+great thing to work on.  I've never done anything good on days of
+dejection.
+
+Goodnight, dear mother.  I feel so close to you tonight, just as if you
+were here in the room with me, and I had only to put out my finger and
+touch Love.  I don't believe there's much in this body business.  It is
+only spirit that matters really; and nothing can stop your spirit and
+mine being together.
+
+  Your Chris.
+
+Still, a body is a great comfort when it comes to wanting to kiss one's
+darling mother.
+
+
+
+
+  _Berlin, Sunday, June 2lst, 1914_.
+
+My precious mother,
+
+The weeks fly by, full of work and _Weltpolitik_.  They talk of nothing
+here at meals but this _Weltpolitik_.  I've just been having a dose of
+it at breakfast.  To say that the boarders are interested in it is to
+speak feebly: they blaze with interest, they explode with it, they
+scorch and sizzle.  And they are so pugnacious!  Not to each other, for
+contrary to the attitude at Kloster's they are knit together by the
+toughest band of uncritical and obedient admiration for everything
+German, but they are pugnacious to the Swede girl and myself.
+Especially to myself.  There is a holy calm about the Swede girl that
+nothing can disturb.  She has an enviable gift for getting on with her
+meals and saying nothing.  I wish I had it.  Directly I have learned a
+new German word I want to say it.  I accumulate German words every day,
+of course, and there's something in my nature and something in the way
+I'm talked at and to at Frau Berg's table that makes me want to say all
+the words I've got as quickly as possible.  And as I can't string them
+into sentences my conversation consists of single words, which produce
+a very odd effect, quite unintended, of detached explosions.  When I've
+come to the end of them I take to English, and the boarders plunge in
+after me, and swim or drown in it according to their several ability.
+
+It's queer, the atmosphere here,--in this house, in the streets,
+wherever one goes.  They all seem to be in a condition of tension--of
+intense, tightly-strung waiting, very like that breathless expectancy
+in the last act of "Tristan" when Isolde's ship is sighted and all the
+violins hang high up on to a shrill, intolerably eager note.  There's a
+sort of fever.  And the big words!  I thought Germans were stolid,
+quiet people.  But how they talk!  And always in capital letters.  They
+talk in tremendous capitals about what they call the _deutscke
+Standpunkt_; and the _deutsche Standpunkt_ is the most wonderful thing
+you ever came across.  Butter wouldn't melt in its mouth.  It is too
+great and good, almost, they give one to understand, for a world so far
+behind in high qualities to appreciate.  No other people has anything
+approaching it.  As far as I can make out, stripped of its decorations
+its main idea is that what Germans do is right and what other people do
+is wrong.  Even when it is exactly the same thing.  And also, that
+wrong becomes right directly it has anything to do with Germans.  Not
+with _a_ German.  The individual German can and does commit every sort
+of wrong, just as other individuals do in other countries, and he gets
+punished for them with tremendous harshness; Kloster says with
+unfairness.  But directly he is in the plural and becomes _Wir
+Deutschen_, as they are forever saying, his crimes become virtues.  As
+a body he purifies, he has a purging quality.  Today they were saying
+at breakfast that if a crime is big enough, if it is on a grand scale,
+it leaves off being a crime, for then it is a success, and success is
+always virtue,--that is, I gather, if it is a German success; if it is
+a French one it is an outrage.  You mustn't rob a widow, for instance,
+they said, because that is stupid; the result is small and you may be
+found out and be cut by your friends.  But you may rob a great many
+widows and it will be a successful business deal.  No one will say
+anything, because you have been clever and successful.
+
+I know this view is not altogether unknown in other countries, but they
+don't hold it deliberately as a whole nation.  Among other things that
+Hilda Seeberg's father did which roused her unforgiveness was just
+this,--to rob too few widows, come to grief over it, and go bankrupt
+for very little.  She told me about it in an outburst of dark
+confidence.  Just talking of it made her eyes black with anger.  It was
+so terrible, she said, to smash for a small amount,--such an
+overwhelming shame for the Seeberg family, whose poverty thus became
+apparent and unhideable.  If one smashes, she said, one does it for
+millions, otherwise one doesn't smash.  There is something so chic
+about millions, she said, that whether you make them or whether you
+lose them you are equally well thought-of and renowned.
+
+"But it is better to--well, disappoint few widows than many," I
+suggested, picking my words.
+
+"For less than a million marks," she said, eyeing me sternly, "it is a
+disgrace to fail."
+
+They're funny, aren't they.  I'm greatly interested.  They remind me
+more and more of what Kloster says they are, clever children.  They
+have the unmoral quality of children.  I listen--they treat me as if I
+were the audience, and they address themselves in a bunch to my
+corner--and I put in one of my words now and then, generally with an
+unfortunate effect, for they talk even louder after that, and then
+presently the men get up and put their heels together and make a stiff
+inclusive bow and disappear, and Frau Berg folds up her napkin and
+brushes the crumbs out of her creases and says, "_Ja, ja_," with a
+sigh, as a sort of final benediction on the departed conversation, and
+then rises slowly and locks up the sugar, and then treads heavily away
+down the passage and has a brief skirmish in the kitchen with Wanda,
+who daily tries to pretend there hadn't been any pudding left over, and
+then treads heavily back again to her bedroom, and shuts herself in
+till four o'clock for her _Mittagsruhe_; and the other boarders drift
+away one by one, and I run out for a walk to get unstiffened after
+having practised all the morning, and as I walk I think over what
+they've been saying, and try to see things from their angle, and simply
+can't.
+
+On Tuesdays and Fridays I have my lesson, and tell Kloster about them.
+He says they're entirely typical of the great bulk of the nation.
+"_Wir Deutschen_," he says, and laughs, "are the easiest people in the
+world to govern, because we are obedient and inflammable.  We have that
+obedience of mind so convenient to Authority, and we are inflammable
+because we are greedy.  Any prospect held out to us of getting
+something belonging to some one else sets us instantly alight.  Dangle
+some one else's sausage before our eyes, and we will go anywhere after
+it.  Wonderful material for S. M."  And he adds a few irreverences.
+
+Last Wednesday was his concert at the Philarmonie.  He played like an
+angel.  It was so strange, the fat, red, more than commonplace-looking
+little bald man, with his quite expressionless face, his wilfully
+stupid face--for I believe he does it on purpose, that blankness, that
+bulgy look of one who never thinks and only eats--and then the heavenly
+music.  It was as strange and arresting as that other mixture, that
+startling one of the men who sell flowers in the London streets and the
+flowers they sell.  What does it look like, those poor ragged men
+shuffling along the kerb, and in their arms, rubbing against their
+dirty shoulders, great baskets of beauty, baskets heaped up with
+charming aristocrats, gracious and delicate purities of shape and
+colour and scent.  The strangest effect of all is when they happen,
+round about Easter, to be selling only lilies, and the unearthly purity
+of the lilies shines on the passersby from close to the seller's
+terrible face.  Christ must often have looked like that, when he sat
+close up to Pharisees.
+
+But although Kloster's music was certainly as beautiful as the lilies,
+he himself wasn't like those tragic sellers.  It was only that he was
+so very ordinary,--a little man compact, apparently, of grossness, and
+the music he was making was so divine.  It was that marvellous French
+and Russian stuff.  I must play it to you, and play it to you, till you
+love it.  It's like nothing there has ever been.  It is of an exquisite
+youth,--untouched, fearless, quite heedless of tradition, going its own
+way straight through and over difficulties and prohibitions that for
+centuries have been supposed final.  People like Wagner and Strauss and
+the rest seem so much sticky and insanitary mud next to these exquisite
+young ones, and so very old; and not old and wonderful like the great
+men, Beethoven and Bach and Mozart, but uglily old like a noisy old
+lady in a yellow wig.
+
+The audience applauded, but wasn't quite sure.  Such a master as
+Kloster, and one of their own flesh and blood, is always applauded, but
+I think the irregularity, the utter carelessness of the music, its
+apparently accidental beauty, was difficult for them.  Germans have to
+have beauty explained to them and accounted for,--stamped first by an
+official, authorized, before they can be comfortable with it.  I sat in
+a corner and cried, it was so lovely.  I couldn't help it.  I hid away
+and pulled my hat over my face and tried not to, for there was a German
+in eyeglasses near me, who, perceiving I wanted to hide, instantly
+spent his time staring at me to find out why.  The music held all
+things in it that I have known or guessed, all the beauty, the wonder,
+of life and death and love.  I _recognised_ it.  I almost called out,
+"Yes--of course--_I_ know that too."
+
+Afterwards I would have liked best to go home and to sleep with the
+sound of it still in my heart, but Kloster sent round a note saying I
+was to come to supper and meet some people who would be useful for me
+to know.  One of his pupils, who brought the note, had been ordered to
+pilot me safely to the house, it being late, and as we walked and
+Kloster drove in somebody's car he was there already when we arrived,
+busy opening beer bottles and looking much more appropriate than he had
+done an hour earlier.  I can't tell you how kindly he greeted me, and
+with what charming little elucidatory comments he presented me to his
+wife and the other guests.  He actually seemed proud of me.  Think how
+I must have glowed.
+
+"This is Mees Chrees," he said, taking my hand and leading me into the
+middle of the room.  "I will not and cannot embark on her family name,
+for it is one of those English names that a prudent man avoids.  Nor
+does it matter.  For in ten years--nay, in five--all Europe will have
+learned it by heart."
+
+There were about a dozen people, and we had beer and sandwiches and
+were very happy.  Kloster sat eating sandwiches and staring
+benevolently at us all, more like an amiable and hospitable prawn than
+ever.  You don't know, little mother, how wonderful it is that he
+should say these praising things of me, for I'm told by other pupils
+that he is dreadfully severe and disagreeable if he doesn't think one
+is getting on.  It was immensely kind of him to ask me to supper, for
+there was somebody there, a Grafin Koseritz, whose husband is in the
+ministry, and who is herself very influential and violently interested
+in music.  She pulls most of the strings at Bayreuth, Kloster says,
+more of them even than Frau Cosima now that she is old, and gets one
+into anything she likes if she thinks one is worth while.  She was very
+amiable and gracious, and told me I must marry a German!  Because, she
+said, all good music is by rights, by natural rights, the property of
+Germany.
+
+I wanted to say what about Debussy, and Ravel, and Stravinski, but I
+didn't.
+
+She said how much she enjoyed these informal evenings at Kloster's, and
+that she had a daughter about my age who was devoted, too, to music,
+and a worshipper of Kloster's.
+
+I asked if she was there, for there was a girl away in a corner, but
+she looked shocked, and said "Oh no"; and after a pause she said again,
+"Oh no.  One doesn't bring one's daughter here."
+
+"But I'm a daughter." I said,--I admit tactlessly; and she skimmed away
+over that to things that sounded wise but weren't really, about violins
+and the technique of fiddling.
+
+Not that I haven't already felt it, the cleavage here in the classes;
+but this was my first experience of the real thing, the real Junker
+lady--the Koseritzes are Prussians.  She, being married and mature, can
+dabble if she likes in other sets, can come down as a bright patroness
+from another world and clean her feathers in a refreshing mud bath, as
+Kloster put it, commenting on his supper party at my lesson last
+Friday; but she would carefully keep her young daughter out of it.
+
+They made me play after supper.  Actually Kloster brought out his Strad
+and said I should play on that.  It was evident he thought it important
+for me to play to these particular people, so though I was dreadfully
+taken aback and afraid I was going to disgrace my master, I was so much
+touched by this kindness and care for my future that I obeyed without a
+word.  I played the Kreutzer Sonata, and an officer played the
+accompaniment, a young man who looked so fearfully smart and correct
+and wooden that I wondered why he was there till he began to play, and
+then I knew; and as soon as I started I forgot the people sitting round
+so close to me, so awkwardly and embarrassingly near.  The Strad
+fascinated me.  It seemed to be playing by itself, singing to me,
+telling me strange and beautiful secrets.  I stood there just listening
+to it.
+
+They were all very kind and enthusiastic, and talked eagerly to each
+other of a new star, a _trouvaille_.  Think of your Chris, only the
+other day being put in a corner by you in just expiation of her
+offensiveness--it really feels as if it were yesterday--think of her
+being a new, or anything else, star!  But I won't be too proud, because
+people are always easily kind after supper, and besides they had been
+greatly stirred all the evening at the concert by Kloster's playing.
+He was pleased too, and said some encouraging and delightful things.
+The Junker lady was very kind, and asked me to lunch with her, and I'm
+going tomorrow.  The young man who played the accompaniment bowed,
+clicked his heels together, caught up my hand, and kissed it.  He
+didn't say anything.  Kloster says he is passionately devoted to music,
+and so good at it that he would easily have been a first-rate musician
+if he hadn't happened to have been born a Junker, and therefore has to
+be an officer.  It's a tragedy, apparently, for Kloster says he hates
+soldiering, and is ill if he is kept away long from music.  He went
+away soon after that.
+
+Grafin Koseritz brought me back in her car and dropped me at Frau
+Berg's on her way home.  She lives in the Sommerstrasse, next to the
+Brandenburger Thor, so she isn't very far from me.  She shuddered when
+she looked up at Frau Berg's house.  It did look very dismal.
+
+
+  _Bedtime_.
+
+I'm so sleepy, precious mother, so sleepy that I must go straight to
+bed.  I can't hold my head up or my eyes open.  I think it's the
+weather--it was very hot today.  Good night and bless you, my sweetest
+mother.
+
+  Your own Chris who loves you.
+
+
+
+
+  _Berlin, Sunday, June 28th.  Evening_.
+
+Beloved little mother,
+
+I didn't write this morning, but went for a whole day into the woods,
+because it was such a hot day and I longed to get away from Berlin.
+I've been wandering about Potsdam.  It is only half an hour away in the
+train, and is full of woods and stretches of water, as well as palaces.
+Palaces weren't the mood I was in.  I wanted to walk and walk, and get
+some of the pavement stiffness out of my legs, and when I was tired sit
+down under a tree and eat the bread and chocolate I took with me and
+stare at the sky through leaves.  So I did.
+
+I've had a most beautiful day, the best since I left you.  I didn't
+speak to a soul all day, and found a place up behind Sans Souci on the
+edge of a wood looking out over a ryefield to an old windmill, and
+there I sat for hours; and after I had finished remembering what I
+could of the Scholar Gypsy, which is what one generally does when one
+sits in summer on the edge of a cornfield, I sorted out my thoughts.
+They've been getting confused lately in the rush of work day after day,
+as confused as the drawer I keep my gloves and ribbons in, thrusting
+them in as I take them off and never having time to tidy.  Life tears
+along, and I have hardly time to look at my treasures.  I'm going to
+look at them and count them up on Sundays.  As the summer goes on I'll
+pilgrimage out every Sunday to the woods, as regularly as the pious go
+to church, and for much the same reason,--to consider, and praise, and
+thank.
+
+I took your two letters with me, reading them again in the woods.  They
+seemed even more dear out there where it was beautiful.  You sound so
+content, darling mother, about me, and so full of belief in me.  You
+may be very sure that if a human being, by trying and working, can
+justify your dear belief it's your Chris.  The snapshot of the border
+full of Canterbury bells makes me able to picture you.  Do you wear the
+old garden hat I loved you so in when you garden?  Tell me, because I
+want to think of you _exactly_.  It makes my mouth water, those
+Canterbury bells.  I can see their lovely colours, their pink and blue
+and purple, with the white Sweet Williams and the pale lilac violas you
+write about.  Well, there's nothing of that in the Lutzowstrasse.  No
+wonder I went away from it this morning to go out and look for June in
+the woods.  The woods were a little thin and austere, for there has
+been no rain lately, but how enchanting after the barren dustiness of
+my Berlin street!  I did love it so.  And I felt so free and glorious,
+coming off on my own for my hard-earned Sunday outing, just like any
+other young man.
+
+The train going down was full of officers, and they all looked very
+smart and efficient and satisfied with themselves and life.  In my
+compartment they were talking together eagerly all the way, talking
+shop with unaffected appetite, as though shop were so interesting that
+even on Sundays they couldn't let it be, and poring together over maps.
+No trace of stolidity.  But where is this stolidity one has heard
+about? Compared to the Germans I've seen, it is we who are stolid;
+stolid, and slow, and bored.  The last thing these people are is bored.
+On the contrary, the officers had that same excitement about them, that
+same strung-upness, that the men boarders at Frau Berg's have.
+
+Potsdam is charming, and swarms with palaces and parks.  If it hadn't
+been woods I was after I would have explored it with great interest.
+Do you remember when you read Carlyle's Frederick to me that winter you
+were trying to persuade me to learn to sew?  And, bribing me to sew,
+you read aloud?  I didn't learn to sew, but I did learn a great deal
+about Potsdam and Hohenzollerns, and some Sunday when it isn't quite so
+fine I shall go down and visit Sans Souci, and creep back into the past
+again.  But today I didn't want walls and roofs, I wanted just to walk
+and walk.  It was very crowded in the train coming back, full of people
+who had been out for the day, and weary little children were crying,
+and we all sat heaped up anyhow.  I know I clutched two babies on my
+lap, and that they showed every sign of having no self-control.  They
+were very sweet, though, and I wouldn't have minded it a bit if I had
+had lots of skirts; but when you only have two!
+
+Wanda was very kind, and brought me some secret coffee and bread and
+butter to my room when I told her I had walked at least ten miles and
+was too tired to go into supper.  She cried out "_Herr Je_!"--which I'm
+afraid is short for Lord Jesus, and is an exclamation dear to her--and
+seized the coffee pot at once and started heating it up.  I remembered
+afterwards that German miles are three times the size of English ones,
+so no wonder she said _Herr Je_.  But just think: I haven't seen a
+single boarder for a whole day.  I do feel so much refreshed.
+
+You know I told you in my last letter I was going to lunch with the
+Koseritzes on Monday, and so I did, and the chief thing that happened
+there, was that I was shy.  Imagine it.  So shy that I blushed and
+dropped things.  For years I haven't thought of what I looked like when
+I've been with other people, because for years other people have been
+so absorbingly interesting that I forgot I was there too; but at the
+Koseritzes I suddenly found myself remembering, greatly to my horror,
+that I have a face, and that it goes about with me wherever I go, and
+that parts of it are--well, I don't like them.  And I remembered that
+my hair had been done in a hurry, and that the fingers of my left hand
+have four hard lumps on their tips where they press the strings of my
+fiddle, and that they're very ugly, but then one can't have things both
+ways, can one.  Also I became aware of my clothes, and we know how
+fatal that is when they are weak clothes like mine, don't we, little
+mother?  You used to exhort me to put them on with care and
+concentration, and then leave them to God.  Such sound advice!  And
+I've followed it so long that I do completely forget them; but last
+Monday I didn't.  They were urged on my notice by Grafin Koseritz's
+daughter, whose eyes ran over me from head to foot and then back again
+when I came in.  She was the neatest thing--_aus dem Ei gegossen_, as
+they express perfect correctness of appearance.  I suddenly knew, what
+I have always suspected, that I was blowsy,--blowsy and loose-jointed,
+with legs that are too long and not the right sort of feet.  I hated my
+_Beethovenkopf_ and all its hair.  I wanted to have less hair, and for
+it to be drawn neatly high off my face and brushed and waved in
+beautiful regular lines.  And I wanted a spotless lacy blouse, and a
+string of pearls round my throat, and a perfectly made blue serge skirt
+without mud on it,--it was raining, and I had walked.  Do you know what
+I felt like?  A _goodnatured_ thing.  The sort of creature people say
+generously about afterwards, "Oh, but she's so goodnatured."
+
+Grafin Koseritz was terribly kind to me, and that made me shyer than
+ever, for I knew she was trying to put me at my ease, and you can
+imagine how shy _that_ made me.  I blushed and dropped things, and the
+more I blushed and dropped things the kinder she was.  And all the time
+my contemporary, Helena, looked at me with the same calm eyes.  She has
+a completely emotionless face.  I saw no trace of a passion for music
+or for anything else in it.  She made no approaches of any sort to me,
+she just calmly looked at me.  Her mother talked with the extreme
+vivacity of the hostess who has a difficult party on hand.  There was a
+silent governess between two children.  Junkerlets still in the
+school-room, who stared uninterruptedly at me and seemed unsuccessfully
+endeavouring to place me; there was a young lady cousin who talked
+during the whole meal in an undertone to Helena; and there was Graf
+Koseritz, an abstracted man who came in late, muttered something vague
+on being introduced to me and told I was a new genius Kloster had
+unearthed, sat down to his meal from which he did not look up again,
+and was monosyllabic when his wife tried to draw him in and make the
+conversation appear general.  And all the time, while lending an ear to
+her cousin's murmur of talk, Helena's calm eyes lingered on one portion
+after the other of your poor vulnerable Chris.
+
+Actually I found myself hoping hotly that I hadn't forgotten to wash my
+ears that morning in the melee of getting up.  I have to wash myself in
+bits, one at a time, because at Frau Berg's I'm only given a very small
+tin tub, the bath being used for keeping extra bedding in.  It is
+difficult and distracting, and sometimes one forgets little things like
+ears, little extra things like that; and when Helena's calm eyes, which
+appeared to have no sort of flicker in them, or hesitation, or blink,
+settled on one of my ears and hung there motionless, I became so much
+unnerved that I upset the spoon out of the whipped-cream dish that was
+just being served to me, on to the floor.  It was a parquet floor, and
+the spoon made such a noise, and the cream made such a mess.  I was so
+wretched, because I had already upset a pepper thing earlier in the
+meal, and spilt some water.  The white-gloved butler advanced in a sort
+of stately goose-step with another spoon, which he placed on the dish
+being handed to me, and a third menial of lesser splendour but also
+white-gloved brought a cloth and wiped up the mess, and the Grafin
+became more terribly and volubly kind than ever.  Helena's eyes never
+wavered.  They were still on my ear.  A little more and I would have
+reached that state the goaded shy get to when they suddenly in their
+agony say more striking things than the boldest would dream of saying,
+but Herr von Inster came in.
+
+He is the young man I told you about who played my accompaniment the
+other night.  We had got to the coffee, and the servants were gone, and
+the Graf had lit a cigar and was gazing in deep abstraction at the
+tablecloth while the Grafin assured me of his keen interest in music
+and its interpretation by the young and promising, and Helena's eyes
+were resting on a spot there is on my only really nice blouse,--I can't
+think how it got there, mother darling, and I'm fearfully sorry, and
+I've tried to get it out with benzin and stuff, but it is better to
+wear a blouse with spots on it than not to wear a blouse at all, isn't
+it.  I had pinned some flowers on it too, to hide it, and so they did
+at first, but they were fading and hanging down, and there was the
+spot, and Helena found it.  Well, Herr von Inster came in, and put us
+all right.  He looks like nothing but a smart young officer, very
+beautiful and slim in his Garde-Uhlan uniform, but he is really a lot
+of other things besides.  He is the Koseritz's cousin, and Helena says
+_Du_ to him.  He was very polite, said the right things to everybody,
+explained he had had his luncheon, but thought, as he was passing, he
+would look in.  He would not deny, be said, that he had heard I was
+coming--he made me a little bow across the table and smiled--and that
+he had hopes I might perhaps be persuaded to play.
+
+Not having a fiddle I couldn't do that.  I wish I could have, for I'm
+instantly natural and happy when I get playing; but the Grafin said she
+hoped I would play to some of her friends one evening as soon as she
+could arrange it,--friends interested in youthful geniuses, as she put
+it.
+
+I said I would love to, and that it was so kind of her, but privately I
+thought I would inquire of Kloster first; for if her friends are all as
+deeply interested in music as the Graf and Helena, then I would be
+doing better and more profitably by going to bed at ten o'clock as
+usual, rather than emerge bedizened from my lair to go and flaunt in
+these haunts of splendid virtue.
+
+After Herr von Inster came I began faintly to enjoy myself, for he
+talked all round, and greatly and obviously relieved his aunt by doing
+so.  Helena let go of my ear and looked at him.  Once she very nearly
+smiled.  The other girl left off murmuring, and talked about things I
+could talk about too, such as England and Germany--they're never tired
+of that--and Strauss and Debussy.  Only the Graf sat mute, his eyes
+fixed on the tablecloth.
+
+"My husband is dying to hear you play," said the Grafin, when he got up
+presently to go back to his work.  "Absolutely _dying_," she said,
+recklessly padding out the leanness of his very bald good-bye to me.
+
+He said nothing even to that.  He just went.  He didn't seem to be
+dying.
+
+Herr von luster walked back with me.  He is very agreeable-looking,
+with kind eyes that are both shrewd and sad.  He talks English very
+well, and so did everybody at the Koseritzes who talked at all.  He is
+pathetically keen on music.  Kloster says he would have been a really
+great player, but being a Junker settles him for ever.  It is tragic to
+be forced out of one's natural bent, and he says he hates soldiering.
+People in the street were very polite, and made way for me because I
+was with an officer.  I wasn't pushed off the pavement once.
+
+Good night my own mother.  I've had a happy week.  I put my arms round
+you and kiss you with all that I have of love.
+
+  Your Chris.
+
+
+
+Wanda came in in great excitement to fetch my tray just now, and said a
+prince has been assassinated.  She heard the _Herrschaften_ saying so
+at supper.  She thought they said it was an Austrian, but whatever
+prince it was it was _Majestatsbeleidigung_ to get killing him, and she
+marvelled how any one had dared.  Then Frau Berg herself came to tell
+me.  By this time I was in bed,--pig-tailed, and ready to go to sleep.
+She was tremendously excited, and I felt a cold shiver down my back
+watching her.  She was so much excited that I caught it from her and
+was excited too.  Well, it is very dreadful the way these king-people
+get bombed out of life.  She said it was the Austrian heir to the
+throne and his wife, both of them.  But of course you'll know all about
+it by the time you get this.  She didn't know any details, but there
+had been extra editions of the Sunday papers, and she said it would
+mean war.
+
+"War?" I echoed.
+
+"War," she repeated; and began to tread heavily about the room saying,
+"War.  War."
+
+"But who with?" I asked, watching her fascinated, sitting up in bed
+holding on to my knees.
+
+"It will come," said Frau Berg, treading about like some huge Judaic
+prophetess who sniffs blood.  "It must come.  There will be no quiet in
+the world till blood has been let."
+
+"But what blood?" I asked, rather tremulously, for her voice and
+behaviour curdled me.
+
+"The blood of all those evil-doers who are responsible," she said; and
+she paused a moment at the foot of my bed and folded her arms across
+her chest--they could hardly reach, and the word chest sounds much too
+flat--and added, "Of whom there are many."
+
+Then she began to walk about again, and each time a foot went down the
+room shook.  "All, all need punishing," she said as she walked.  "There
+will be, there must be, punishment for this.  Great and terrible.
+Blood will, blood must flow in streams before such a crime can be
+regarded as washed out.  Such evil-doers must be emptied of all their
+blood."
+
+And then luckily she went away, for I was beginning to freeze to the
+sheets with horror.
+
+I got out of bed to write this.  You'll be shocked too, I know.  The
+way royalties are snuffed out one after the other!  How glad I am I'm
+not one and you're not one, and we can live safely and fruitfully
+outside the range of bombs.  Poor things.  It is very horrible.  Yet
+they never seem to abdicate or want not to be royalties, so that I
+suppose they think it worth it on the whole.  But Frau Berg was
+terrible.  What a bloodthirsty woman.  I wonder if the other boarders
+will talk like that.  I do pray not, for I hate the very word blood.
+And why does she say there'll be war?  They will catch the murderers
+and punish them as they've done before, and there'll be an end of it.
+There wasn't war when the Empress of Austria was killed, or the King
+and Queen of Servia.  I think Frau Berg wanted to make me creep.  She
+has a fixed idea that English people are every one of them much too
+comfortable, and should at all costs be made to know what being
+uncomfortable is like.  For their good, I suppose.
+
+
+
+
+  _Berlin, Tuesday, June 30th, 1914_.
+
+Darling mother,
+
+How splendid that you're going to Switzerland next month with the
+Cunliffes.  I do think it is glorious, and it will make you so strong
+for the winter.  And think how much nearer you'll be to me!  I always
+suspected Mrs. Cunliffe of being secretly an angel, and now I know it.
+Your letter has just come and I simply had to tell you how glad I am.
+
+  Chris.
+
+This isn't a letter, it's a cry of joy.
+
+
+
+
+  _Berlin, Sunday, July 5th, 1914_.
+
+My blessed little mother,
+
+It has been so hot this week.  We've been sweltering up here under the
+roof.  If you are having it anything like this at Chertsey the sooner
+you persuade the Cunliffes to leave for Switzerland the better.  Just
+the sight of snow on the mountains out of your window would keep you
+cool.  You know I told you my bedroom looks onto the Lutzowstrasse and
+the sun beats on it nearly all day, and flies in great numbers have
+taken to coming up here and listening to me play, and it is difficult
+to practise satisfactorily while they walk about enraptured on my neck.
+I can't swish them away, because both my hands are busy.  I wish I had
+a tail.
+
+Frau Berg says there never used to be flies in this room, and suggests
+with some sternness that I brought them with me,--the eggs, I suppose,
+in my luggage.  She is inclined to deny that they're here at all, on
+the ground chiefly that nothing so irregular as a fly out of its proper
+place, which is, she says, a manure heap, is possible in Germany.  It
+is too well managed, is Germany, she says.  I said I supposed she knew
+that because she had seen it in the newspapers.  I was snappy, you see.
+The hot weather makes me disposed, I'm afraid, to impatience with Frau
+Berg.  She is so large, and she seems to soak up what air there is, and
+whenever she has sat on a chair it keeps warm afterwards for hours.  If
+only some clever American with inventions rioting in his brain would
+come here and adapt her to being an electric fan! I want one so badly,
+and she would be beautiful whirling round, and would make an immense
+volume of air, I'm sure.
+
+Well, darling one, you see I'm peevish.  It's because I'm so hot, and
+it doesn't get cool at night.  And the food is so hot too and so
+greasy, and the pallid young man with the red mouth who sits opposite
+me at dinner melts visibly and continuously all the time, and Wanda
+coming round with the dishes is like the coming of a blast of hot air.
+Kloster says I'm working too much, and wants me to practise less.  I
+said I didn't see that practising less would make Wanda and the young
+man cooler.  I did try it one day when my head ached, and you've no
+idea what a long day it seemed.  So empty.  Nothing to do.  Only
+Berlin.  And one feels more alone in Berlin than anywhere in the world,
+I think.  Kloster says it's because I'm working too much, but I don't
+see how working less would make Berlin more companionable.  Of course
+I'm not a bit alone really, for there is Kloster, who takes a very real
+and lively interest in me and is the most delightful of men, and there
+is Herr von Inster, who has been twice to see me since that day I
+lunched at his aunt's, and everybody in this house talks to me
+now,--more to me, I think, than to any other of the boarders, because
+I'm English and they seem to want to educate me out of it.  And Hilda
+Seeberg has actually got as far in friendship as a cautious invitation
+to have chocolate with her one afternoon some day in the future at
+Wertheim's; and the pallid young man has suggested showing me the
+Hohenzollern museum some Sunday, where he can explain to me, by means
+of relics, the glorious history of that high family, as he put it; and
+Frau Berg, though she looks like some massive Satan, isn't really
+satanic I expect; and Dr. Krummlaut says every day as he comes into the
+diningroom rubbing his hands and passes my chair, "_Na, was macht
+England_?" which is a sign he is being gracious.  It is only a feeling,
+this of being completely alone.  But I've got it, and the longer I'm
+here and the better I know people the greater it becomes.  It's an
+_uneasiness_.  I feel as if my _spirit_ were alone,--the real, ultimate
+and only bit of me that is me and that matters.
+
+If I go on like this you too, my little mother, will begin echoing
+Kloster and tell me that I'm working too much.  Dear England.  Dear,
+dear England.  To find out how much one loves England all one has to do
+is to come to Germany.
+
+Of course they talk of nothing else at every meal here now but the
+Archduke's murder.  It's the impudence of the Servians that chiefly
+makes them gasp.  That they should dare!  Dr. Krummlaut says they never
+would have dared if they hadn't been instigated to this deed of
+atrocious blasphemy by Russia,--Russia bursting with envy of the
+Germanic powers and encouraging every affront to them.  The whole
+table, except the Swede who eats steadily on, sees red at the word
+affront.  Frau Berg reiterates that the world needs blood-letting
+before there can be any real calm again, but it isn't German blood she
+wants to let.  Germany is surrounded by enormously wicked people, I
+gather, all swollen with envy, hatred and malice, and all of gigantic
+size.  In the middle of these monsters browses Germany, very white and
+woolly-haired and loveable, a little lamb among the nations, artlessly
+only wanting to love and be loved, weak physically compared to its
+towering neighbours, but strong in simplicity and the knowledge of its
+_gute Recht_.  And when they say these things they all turn to me for
+endorsement and approval--they've given up seeking response from the
+Swede, because she only eats--and I hastily run over my best words and
+pick out the most suitable one, which is generally _herrlich_, or else
+_ich gratuliere_.  The gigantic, the really cosmic cynicism I fling
+into it glances off their comfortable thick skins unnoticed.
+
+I think Kloster is right, and they haven't grown up yet.  People like
+the Koseritzes, people of the world, don't show how young they are in
+the way these middle-class Germans do, but I daresay they are just the
+same really.  They have the greediness of children too,--I don't mean
+in things to eat, though they have that too, and take the violent
+interest of ten years old in what there'll be for dinner--I mean greed
+for other people's possessions.  In all their talk, all their
+expoundings of _deutsche Idealen_, I have found no trace of
+consideration for others, or even of any sort of recognition that other
+nations too may have rights and virtues.  I asked Kloster whether I
+hadn't chanced on a little group of people who were exceptions in their
+way of looking at life, and he said No, they were perfectly typical of
+the Prussians, and that the other classes, upper and lower, thought in
+the same way, the difference lying only in their manner of expressing
+it.
+
+"All these people, Mees Chrees," he said, "have been drilled.  Do not
+forget that great fact.  Every man of every class has spent some of the
+most impressionable years of his life being drilled.  He never gets
+over it.  Before that, he has had the nursery and the schoolroom:
+drill, and very thorough drill, in another form.  He is drilled into
+what the authorities find it most convenient that he should think from
+the moment he can understand words.  By the time he comes to his
+military service his mind is already squeezed into the desired shape.
+Then comes the finishing off,--the body drilled to match the mind, and
+you have the perfect slave.  And it is because he is a slave that when
+he has power--and every man has power over some one--he is so great a
+bully."
+
+"But you must have been drilled too," I said, "and you're none of these
+things."
+
+He looked at me in silence for a moment, with his funny protruding
+eyes.  Then he said, "I am told, and I believe it, that no man ever
+really gets over having been imprisoned."
+
+
+
+  _Evening_.
+
+I feel greatly refreshed, for what do you think I've been doing since I
+left off writing this morning?  Motoring out into the country,--the
+sweet and blessed country, the home of God's elect, as the hymn says,
+only the hymn meant Jerusalem, and the golden kind of Jerusalem, which
+can't be half as beautiful as just plain grass and daisies.  Herr von
+Inster appeared up here about twelve.  Wanda came to my door and banged
+on it with what sounded like a saucepan, and I daresay was, for she
+wouldn't waste time leaving off stirring the pudding while she went to
+open the front door, and she called out very loud, "_Der Herr Offizier
+ist schon wieder da_."
+
+All the flat must have heard her, and so did Herr von Inster.
+
+"Here I am, _schon meeder da_" he said, clicking his heels together
+when I came into the diningroom where he was waiting among the _debris_
+of the first spasms of Wanda's table-laying; and we both laughed.
+
+He said the Master--so he always speaks of Kloster, and with such
+affection and admiration in his voice--and his wife were downstairs in
+his car, and wanted him to ask me to join them so that he might drive
+us all into the country on such a fine day.
+
+You can imagine how quickly I put on my hat.
+
+"It is doing you good already," he said, looking at me as we went down
+the four nights of stairs,--so Kloster had been telling him, too, that
+story about too much work.
+
+Herr von Inster drove, and we three sat on the back seat, because he
+had his soldier chauffeur with him, so I didn't get as much talk with
+him as I had hoped, for I like him _very_ much, and so would you,
+little mother.  There is nothing of the aggressive swashbuckler about
+him.  I'm sure he doesn't push a woman off the pavement when there
+isn't room for him.
+
+I don't think I've told you about Frau Kloster, but that is because one
+keeps on forgetting she is there.  Perhaps that quality of beneficent
+invisibleness is what an artist most needs in a wife.  She never says
+anything, except things that require no answering.  It's a great
+virtue, I should think, in a wife.  From time to time, when Kloster has
+_lese majestated_ a little too much, she murmurs _Aber_ Adolf; or she
+announces placidly that she has just killed a mosquito; or that the sky
+is blue; and Kloster's talk goes on on the top of this little
+undercurrent without taking the least notice of it.  They seem very
+happy.  She tends him as carefully as one would tend a baby,--one of
+those quite new pink ones that can't stand anything hardly without
+crumpling up,--and competently clears life round him all empty and
+free, so that he has room to work.  I wish I had a wife.
+
+We drove out through Potsdam in the direction of Brandenburg, and
+lunched in the woods at Potsdam by the lake the Marmor Palais is on.
+Kloster stared at this across the water while he ate, and the sight of
+it tinged his speech regrettably.  Herr von Inster, as an officer of
+the King, ought really to have smitten him with the flat side of his
+sword, but he didn't; he listened and smiled.  Perhaps he felt as the
+really religious do about God, that the Hohenzollerns are so high up
+that criticism can't harm them, but I doubt it; or perhaps he regards
+Kloster indulgently, as a gifted and wayward child, but I doubt that
+too.  He happens to be intelligent, and is not to be persuaded that a
+spade is anything but a spade, however much it may be got up to look
+like the Ark of the Covenant or anything else archaic and
+bedizened--God forbid, little mother, that you should suppose I meant
+that dreadful pun.
+
+Frau Kloster had brought food with her, part of which was cherries, and
+they slid down one's hot dry throat like so many cool little blessings.
+I could hardly believe that I had really escaped the Sunday dinner at
+the pension.  We were very content, all of us I think, sitting on the
+grass by the water's edge, a tiny wind stirring our hair--except
+Kloster's, because he so happily hasn't got any, which must be
+delicious in hot weather,--and rippling along the rushes.
+
+"She grows less pale every hour," Kloster said to Herr von Inster,
+fixing his round eyes on me.
+
+Herr von Inster looked at me with his grave shrewd ones, and said
+nothing.
+
+"We brought out a windflower," said Kloster, "and behold we will return
+with a rose.  At present, Mees Chrees, you are a cross between the two.
+You have ceased to be a windflower, and are not yet a rose.  I wager
+that by five o'clock the rose period will have set in."
+
+They were both so kind to me all day, you can't think little mother,
+and so was Frau Kloster, only one keeps on forgetting her.  Herr von
+Inster didn't talk much, but he looked quite as content as the rest of
+us.  It is strange to remember that only this morning I was writing
+about feeling so lonely and by myself in spirit.  And so I was; and so
+I have been all this week.  But I don't feel like that now.  You see
+how the company of one righteous man, far more than his prayers,
+availeth much.  And the company of two of them availeth exactly double.
+Kloster is certainly a righteous man, which I take it means a man who
+is both intelligent and good, and so I am sure is Herr von Inster.  If
+he were not, he, a Junker and an officer, would think being with people
+so outside his world as the Klosters intolerable.  But of course then
+he wouldn't be with them.  It wouldn't interest him.  It is so funny to
+watch his set, regular, wooden profile, and then when he turns and
+looks at one to see his eyes.  The difference just eyes can make!  His
+face is the face of the drilled, of the perfect unthinking machine, the
+correct and well-born Oberleutnant; and out of it look the eyes of a
+human being who knows, or will know I'm certain before life has done
+with him, what exultations are, and agonies, and love, and man's
+unconquerable mind.  He really is very nice.  I'm sure you'd like him.
+
+After lunch, and after Kloster had said some more regrettable things,
+being much moved, it appeared, by the palace facing him and by some
+personal recollections he had of the particular Hohenzollern it
+contained, while I lay looking up along the smooth beech-trunks to
+their bright leaves glancing against the wonderful blue of the sky--oh
+it was so lovely, little mother!--and Frau Kloster sometimes said
+_Aber_ Adolf, and occasionally announced that she had slain another
+mosquito, we motored on towards Brandenburg, along the chain of lakes
+formed by the Havel.  It was like heaven after the Lutzowstrasse.  And
+at four o'clock we stopped at a Gasthaus in the pinewoods and had
+coffee and wild strawberries, and Herr von Inster paddled me out on the
+Havel in an old punt we found moored among the rushes.
+
+It looked so queer to see an officer in full Sunday splendour punting,
+but there are a few things which seem to us ridiculous that Germans do
+with great simplicity.  It was rather like being punted on the Thames
+by somebody in a top hat and a black coat.  He looked like a bright
+dragon-fly in his lean elegance, balancing on the rotten little board
+across the end of the punt; or like Siegfried, made up to date, on his
+journey down the Rhine,--made very much up to date, his gorgeous
+barbaric boat and fine swaggering body that ate half a sheep at a
+sitting and made large love to lusty goddesses wittled away by the
+centuries to this old punt being paddled about slowly by a lean man
+with thoughtful eyes.
+
+I told him he was like Siegfried in the second act of the
+Gotterdammerung, but worn a little thin by the passage of the ages, and
+he laughed and said that he at least had got Brunnhilde safe in the
+boat with him, and wasn't going to have to climb through fire to fetch
+her.  He says he thinks Wagner's music and Strauss's intimately
+characteristic of modern Germany: the noise, the sugary sentimentality
+making the public weep tears of melted sugar, he said, the brutal
+glorification of force, the all-conquering swagger, the exaggeration of
+emotions, the big gloom.  They were the natural expression, he said, of
+the phase Germany was passing through, and Strauss is its latest
+flowering,--even noisier, even more bloody, of a bigger gloom.  In that
+immense noise, he said, was all Germany as it is now, as it will go on
+being till it wakes up from the nightmare dream of conquest that has
+possessed it ever since the present emperor came to the throne.
+
+"I'm sure you're saying things you oughtn't to," I said.
+
+"Of course," he said.  "One always is in Germany.  Everything being
+forbidden, there is nothing left but to sin.  I have yet to learn that
+a multiplicity of laws makes people behave.  Behave, I mean, in the way
+Authority wishes."
+
+"But Kloster says you're a nation of slaves, and that the drilling you
+get _does_ make you behave in the way Authority wishes."
+
+He said it was true they were slaves, but that slaves were of two
+kinds,--the completely cowed, who gave no further trouble, and the
+furtive evaders, who consoled themselves for their outward conformity
+to regulations by every sort of forbidden indulgence in thought and
+speech.  "This is the kind that only waits for an opportunity to flare
+out and free itself," he said.  "Mind, thinking, can't be chained up.
+Authority knows this, and of all things in the world fears thought."
+
+He talked about the Sarajevo assassinations, and said, he was afraid
+they would not be settled very easily.  He said Germany is
+seething,--seething, he said emphatically, with desire to fight; that
+it is almost impossible to have a great army at such a pitch of
+perfection as the German army is now and not use it; that if a thing
+like that isn't used it will fester inwardly and set up endless
+internal mischief and become a danger to the very Crown that created
+it.  To have it hanging about idle in this ripe state, he said, is like
+keeping an unexercised young horse tied up in the stable on full feed;
+it would soon kick the stable to pieces, wouldn't it, he said.
+
+"I hate armies," I said.  "I hate soldiering, and all it stands for of
+aggression, and cruelty, and crime on so big a scale that it's
+unpunishable."
+
+"Great God, and don't I!" He exclaimed, with infinite fervour.
+
+He told me something that greatly horrified me.  He says that children
+kill themselves in Germany.  They commit suicide, schoolchildren and
+even younger ones, in great numbers every year.  He says they're driven
+to it by the sheer cruelty of the way they are overworked and made to
+feel that if they are not moved up in the school at the set time they
+and their parents are for ever disgraced and their whole career
+blasted.  Imagine the misery a wretched child must suffer before it
+reaches the stage of _preferring_ to kill itself!  No other nation has
+this blot on it.
+
+"Yes," he said, nodding in agreement with the expression on my face,
+"yes, we are mad.  It is in this reign that we've gone mad, mad with
+the obsession to get at all costs and by any means to the top of the
+world.  We must outstrip; outstrip at whatever cost of happiness and
+life.  We must be better trained, more efficient, quicker at grabbing
+than other nations, and it is the children who must do it for us.  Our
+future rests on their brains.  And if they fail, if they can't stand
+the strain, we break them.  They're of no future use.  Let them go.
+Who cares if they kill themselves?  So many fewer inefficients, that's
+all.  The State considers that they are better dead."
+
+And all the while, while he was telling me these things, on the shore
+lay Kloster and his wife, neatly spread out side by side beneath a tree
+asleep with their handkerchiefs over their faces.  That's the idea
+we've got in England of Germany,--multitudes of comfortable couples,
+kindly and sleepy, snoozing away the afternoon hours in gardens or pine
+forests.  That's the idea the Government wants to keep before Europe,
+Herr von Inster says, this idea of benevolent, beery harmlessness.  It
+doesn't want other nations to know about the children, the dead, flung
+aside children, the ruthless breaking up of any material that will not
+help in the driving of their great machine of destruction, because then
+the other nations would know, he says, before Germany is ready for it
+to be known, that she will stick at nothing.
+
+Wanda has just taken away my lamp, Good night my own sweet mother.
+
+  Your Chris.
+
+
+
+
+  _Berlin, Wednesday, July 8th, 1914_.
+
+Beloved mother,
+
+Kloster says I'm to go into the country this very week and not come
+back for a whole fortnight.  This is just a line to tell you this, and
+that he has written to a forester's family he knows living in the
+depths of the forests up beyond Stettin.  They take in summer-boarders,
+and have had pupils of his before, and he is arranging with them for me
+to go there this very next Saturday.
+
+Do you mind, darling mother?  I mean, my doing something so suddenly
+without asking you first?  But I'm like the tail being wagged by the
+dog, obliged to wag whether it wants to or not.  I'm very unhappy at
+being shovelled off like this, away from my lessons for two solid
+weeks, but it's no use my protesting.  One can't protest with Kloster.
+He says he won't teach me any more if I don't go.  He was quite angry
+at last when I begged, and said it wouldn't be worth his while to go on
+teaching any one so stale with over-practising when they weren't fit to
+practise, and that if I didn't stop, all I'd ever be able to do would
+be to play in the second row of violins--(not even the first!)--at a
+pantomime.  That shrivelled me up into silence.  Horror-stricken
+silence.  Then he got kind again, and said I had this precious
+gift--God, he said, alone knew why I had got it, I a woman; what, he
+asked, staring prawnishly, is the good of a woman's having such a
+stroke of luck?--and that it was a great responsibility, and I wasn't
+to suppose it was my gift only, to spoil and mess up as I chose, but
+that it belonged to the world.  When he said that, cold shivers
+trickled down my spine.  He looked so solemn, and he made me feel so
+solemn, as though I were being turned, like Wordsworth in The Prelude,
+into a dedicated spirit.
+
+But I expect he is right, and it is time I went where it is cooler for
+a little while.  I've been getting steadily angrier at nothing all the
+week, and more and more fretted by the flies, and one day--would you
+believe it--I actually sat down and cried with irritation because of
+those silly flies.  I've had to promise not to touch a fiddle for the
+first week I'm away, and during the second week not to work more than
+two hours a day, and then I may come back if I feel quite well again.
+He says he'll be at Heringsdorf, which is a seaside place not very far
+away from where I shall be, for ten days himself, and will come over
+and see if I'm being good.  He says the Koseritz's country place isn't
+far from where I shall be, so I shan't feel as if I didn't know a soul
+anywhere.  The Koseritz party at which I was to play never came off.  I
+was glad of that.  I didn't a bit want to play at it, or bother about
+it, or anything else.  The hot weather drove the Grafin into the
+country, Herr von Inster told me, He too seems to think I ought to go
+away.  I saw him this afternoon after being with Kloster, and he says
+he'll go down to his aunt's--that is Grafin Koseritz--while I'm in the
+neighbourhood, and will ride over and see me.  I'm sure you'd like him
+very much.  My address will be:
+
+  _bei Herrn Oberforster Bornsted
+    Schuppenfelde
+      Reg. Bez. Stettin_.
+
+I don't know what Reg. Bez. means.  I've copied it from a card Kloster
+gave me, and I expect you had better put it on the envelope.  I'll
+write and tell you directly I get there.  Don't worry about me, little
+mother; Kloster says they are fearfully kind people, and it's the
+healthiest place, in the heart of the forest, away on the edge of a
+thing they call the Haff, which is water.  He says that in a week I
+shall be leaping about like a young roe on the hill side; and he tries
+to lash me to enthusiasm by talking of all the wild strawberries there
+are there, and all the cream.
+
+  My heart's love, darling mother.
+    Your confused and rather hustled Chris.
+
+
+  _Oberforsterei, Schuppenfelde, July 11th, 1914_.
+
+My own little mother,
+
+Here I am, and it is lovely.  I must just tell you about it before I go
+to bed.  We're buried in forest, eight miles from the nearest station,
+and that's only a Kleinbahn station, a toy thing into which a small
+train crawls twice a day, having been getting to it for more than three
+hours from Stettin.  The Oberforster met me in a high yellow carriage,
+drawn by two long-tailed horses who hadn't been worried with much drill
+judging from their individualistic behaviour, and we lurched over
+forest tracks that were sometimes deep sand and sometimes all roots,
+and the evening air was so delicious after the train, so full of
+different scents and freshness, that I did nothing but lift up my nose
+and sniff with joy.
+
+The Oberforster thought I had a cold, without at the same time having a
+handkerchief; and presently, after a period of uneasiness on my behalf,
+offered me his.  "It is not quite clean," he said, "but it is better
+than none." And he shouted, because I was a foreigner and therefore
+would understand better if he shouted.
+
+I explained as well as I could, which was not very, that my sniffs were
+sniffs of exultation.
+
+"_Ach so_," he said, indulgent with the indulgence one feels towards a
+newly arrived guest, before one knows what they are really like.
+
+We drove on in silence after that.  Our wheels made hardly any noise on
+the sandy track, and I suddenly discovered how long it is since I've
+heard any birds.  I wish you had come with me here, little mother; I
+wish you had been on that drive this evening.  There were jays, and
+magpies, and woodpeckers, and little tiny birds like finches that kept
+on repeating in a monotonous sweet pipe the opening bar of the
+Beethoven C minor Symphony No. 5.  We met nobody the whole way except a
+man with a cartload of wood, who greeted the Oberforster with immense
+respect, and some dilapidated little children picking wild
+strawberries.  I wanted to remark on their dilapidation, which seemed
+very irregular in this well-conducted country, but thought I had best
+leave reasoned conversation alone till I've had time to learn more
+German, which I'm going to do diligently here, and till the Oberforster
+has discovered he needn't shout in order to make me understand.
+Sitting so close to my ear, when he shouted into it it was exactly as
+though some one had hit me, and hurt just as much.
+
+He is a huge rawboned man, with the flat-backed head and protruding
+ears so many Germans have.  What is it that is left out of their heads,
+I wonder?  His moustache is like the Kaiser's, and he looks rather a
+fine figure of a man in his grey-green forester's uniform and becoming
+slouch hat with a feather stuck in it.  Without his hat he is less
+impressive, because of his head.  I suppose he has to have a head, but
+if he didn't have to he'd be very good-looking.
+
+This is such a sweet place, little mother.  I've got the dearest little
+clean bare bedroom, so attractive after the grim splendours of my
+drawingroom-bedroom at Frau Berg's.  You can't think how lovely it is
+being here after the long hot journey.  It's no fun travelling alone in
+Germany if you're a woman.  I was elbowed about and pushed out of the
+way at stations by any men and boys there were as if I had been an
+ownerless trunk.  Either that, or they stared incredibly, and said
+things.  One little boy--he couldn't have been more than ten--winked at
+me and whispered something about kissing.  The station at Stettin was
+horrible, much worse than the Berlin one.  I don't know where they all
+came from, the crowds of hooligan boys, just below military age, and
+extraordinarily disreputable and insolent.  To add to the confusion on
+the platform there were hundreds of Russians and Poles with their
+families and bundles--I asked my porter who they were, and he told
+me--being taken from one place where they had been working in the
+fields to another place, shepherded by a German overseer with a fierce
+dog and a revolver; very poor and ragged, all of them, but gentle, and,
+compared to the Germans, of beautiful manners; and there were a good
+many officers--it was altogether the most excited station I've seen, I
+think--and they stared too, but I'm certain that if I had been in a
+difficulty and wanted help they would have walked away.  Kloster told
+me Germans divide women into two classes: those they want to kiss, and
+those they want to kick, who are all those they don't want to kiss.
+One can be kissed and kicked in lots of ways besides actually, I think,
+and I felt as if I had been both on that dreadful platform at Stettin.
+So you can imagine how heavenly it was to get into this beautiful
+forest, away from all that, into the quiet, the _holiness_.  Frau
+Bornsted, who learned English at school, told me all the farms,
+including hers, are worked by Russians and Poles who are fetched over
+every spring in thousands by German overseers.  "It is a good
+arrangement," she said.  "In case of war we would not permit their
+departure, and so would our fields continue to be tilled."  In case of
+war!  Always that word on their tongues.  Even in this distant corner
+of peace.
+
+The Oberforsterei is a low white house with a clearing round it in
+which potatoes have been planted, and a meadow at the back going down
+to a stream, and a garden in front behind a low paling, full of pinks
+and larkspurs and pansies.  A pair of antlers is nailed over the door,
+proud relic of an enormous stag the Oberforster shot on an unusually
+lucky day, and Frau Bornsted was sewing in the porch beneath
+honeysuckle when we arrived.  It was just like the Germany one had in
+one's story books in the schoolroom days.  It seemed too good to be
+true after the Lutzowstrasse.  Frau Bornsted is quite a pretty young
+woman, flat rather than slender, tall, with lovely deep blue eyes and
+long black eyelashes.  She would be very pretty if it occurred to her
+that she is pretty, but evidently it doesn't, or else it isn't proper
+to be pretty here; I think this is the real explanation of the way her
+hair is scraped hack into a little hard knob, and her face shows signs
+of being scrubbed every day with the same soap and the same energy she
+uses for the kitchen table.  She has no children, and isn't, I suppose,
+more than twenty five, but she looks as thirty five, or even forty,
+looks in England.
+
+I love it all.  It is really just like a story book.  We had supper out
+in the porch, prepared, spread, and fetched by Frau Bornsted, and it
+was a milk soup--very nice and funny, and I lapped it up like a thirsty
+kitten--and cold meat, and fried potatoes, and curds and whey, and wild
+strawberries and cream.  They have an active cow who does all the curds
+and whey and cream and butter and milk-soup, besides keeping on having
+calves without a murmur,--"She is an example," said Frau Bornsted, who
+wants to talk English all the time, which will play havoc, I'm afraid,
+with my wanting to talk German.
+
+She took me to a window and showed me the cow, pasturing, like David,
+beside still waters.  "And without rebellious thoughts unsuited to her
+sex," said Frau Bornsted, turning and looking at me.  She showed what
+she was thinking of by adding, "I hope you are not a suffragette?"
+
+The Oberforster put on a thin green linen coat for supper, which he
+left unbuttoned to mark that he was off duty, and we sat round the
+table till it was starlight.  Owls hooted in the forest across the
+road, and bats darted about our heads.  Also there were mosquitoes.  A
+great _many_ mosquitoes.  Herr Bornsted told me I wouldn't mind them
+after a while.  "_Herrlich_," I said, with real enthusiasm.
+
+And now I'm going to bed.  Kloster was right to send me here.  I've
+been leaning out of my window.  The night tonight is the most beautiful
+thing, a great dark cave of softness.  I'm at the back of the house
+where the meadow is and the good cow, and beyond the meadow there's
+another belt of forest, and then just over the tops of the pines, which
+are a little more softly dark than the rest of the soft darkness,
+there's a pale line of light that is the star-lit water of the Haff.
+Frogs are croaking down by the stream, every now and then an owl hoots
+somewhere in the distance, and the air comes up to my face off the long
+grass cool and damp.  I can't tell you the effect the blessed silence,
+the blessed peace has on me after the fret of Berlin.  It feels like
+getting back to God.  It feels like being home again in heaven after
+having been obliged to spend six weeks in hell.  And yet here, even
+here in the very lap of peace, as we sat in the porch after supper the
+Oberforster talked ceaselessly of Weltpolitik.  The very sound of that
+word now makes me wince; for translated into plain English, what it
+means when you've pulled all the trimmings off and look at it squarely,
+is just taking other people's belongings, beginning with their blood.
+I must learn enough German to suggest that to the Oberforster: Murder,
+as a preliminary to Theft.  I'm afraid he would send me straight back
+in disgrace to Frau Berg.
+
+Good night darling mother.  I'll write oftener now.  My rules don't
+count this fortnight.  Bless you, beloved little mother.
+
+  Your Chris.
+
+
+
+
+  _Schuppenfelde, Monday, July 13th_.
+
+Sweet mother,
+
+I got your letter from Switzerland forwarded on this morning, and like
+to feel you're by so much nearer me than you were a week ago.  At
+least, I try to persuade myself that it's a thing to like, but I know
+in my heart it makes no earthly difference.  If you're only a mile away
+and I mayn't see you, what's the good?  You might as well be a
+thousand.  The one thing that will get me to you again is accomplished
+work.  I want to work, to be quick; and here I am idle, precious days
+passing, each of which not used for working means one day longer away
+from you.  And I'm so well.  There's no earthly reason why I shouldn't
+start practising again this very minute.  A day yesterday in the forest
+has cured me completely.  By the time I've lived through my week of
+promised idleness I shall be kicking my loose box to pieces!  And then
+for another whole week there'll only be two hours of my violin allowed.
+Why, I shall fall on those miserable two hours like a famished beggar
+on a crust.
+
+Well, I'm not going to grumble.  It's only that I love you so, and miss
+you so very much.  You know how I always missed you on Sunday in
+Berlin, because then I had time to feel, to remember; and here it is
+all Sundays.  I've had two of them already, yesterday and today, and I
+don't know what it will be like by the time I've had the rest.  I
+walked miles yesterday, and the more beautiful it was the more I missed
+you.  What's the good of having all this loveliness by oneself?  I want
+somebody with me to see it and feel it too.  If you were here how happy
+we should be!
+
+I wish you knew Herr von Inster, for I know you'd like him.  I do think
+he's unusual, and you like unusual people.  I had a letter from him
+today, sent with a book he thought I'd like, but I've read it,--it is
+Selma Lagerlof's Jerusalem; do you remember our reading it together
+that Easter in Cornwall?  But wasn't it very charming of him to send
+it?  He says he is coming this way the end of the week and will call on
+me and renew his acquaintance with the Oberforster, with whom he says
+he has gone shooting sometimes when he has been staying at Koseritz.
+His Christian name is Bernd.  Doesn't it sound nice and _honest_.
+
+I suppose by the end of the week he means Saturday, which is a very
+long way off.  Saturdays used to seem to come rushing on to the very
+heels of Mondays in Berlin when I was busy working.  Little mother, you
+can take it from me, from your wise, smug daughter, that work is the
+key to every happiness.  Without it happiness won't come unlocked.
+What do people do who don't do anything, I wonder?
+
+Koseritz is only five miles away, and as he'll stay there, I suppose,
+with his relations, he won't have very far to come.  He'll ride over, I
+expect.  He looks so nice on a horse.  I saw him once in the
+Thiergarten, riding.  I'd love to ride on these forest roads,--the
+sandy ones are perfect for riding; but when I asked the Oberforster
+today, after I got Herr von Inster's letter, whether he could lend me a
+horse while I was here, what do you think I found out?  That Kloster,
+suspecting I might want to ride, had written him instructions on no
+account to allow me to.  Because I might tumble off, if you please, and
+sprain either of my precious wrists.  Did you ever.  I believe Kloster
+regards me only as a vessel for carrying about music to other people,
+not as a human being at all.  It is like the way jockeys are kept,
+strict and watched, before a race.
+
+Frau Bornsted gazed at me with her large serious eyes, and said, "Do
+you play the violin, then, so well?"
+
+"No," I snapped.  "I don't."  And I drummed with my fingers on the
+windowpane and felt as rebellious as six years old.
+
+But of course I'm going to be good.  I won't do anything that may delay
+my getting home to you.
+
+The Bornsteds say Koseritz is a very beautiful place, on the very edge
+of the Haff.  They talk with deep respectfulness of the Herr Graf, and
+the Frau Grafin, and the _junge_ Komtesse.  It's wonderful how
+respectful Germans are towards those definitely above them.  And so
+uncritical.  Kloster says that it is drill does it.  You never get over
+the awe, he says, for the sergeant, for the lieutenant, for whoever, as
+you rise a step, is one step higher.  I told the Bornsteds I had met
+the Koseritzes in Berlin, and they looked at me with a new interest,
+and Frau Bornsted, who has been very prettily taking me in hand and
+endeavouring to root out the opinions she takes for granted that I
+hold, being an _Englanderin_, came down for a while more nearly to my
+level, and after having by questioning learned that I had lunched with
+the Koseritzes, and having endeavoured to extract, also by questioning,
+what we had had to eat, which I couldn't remember except the whipped
+cream I spilt on the floor, she remarked, slowly nodding her head, "It
+must have been very agreeable for you to be with the _grafliche
+Familie_."
+
+"And for them to be with me," I said, moved to forwardness by being
+full of forest air, which goes to my head.
+
+I suppose this was what they call disrespectful without being funny,
+for Frau Bornsted looked at me in silence, and Herr Bornsted, who
+doesn't understand English, asked in German, seeing his wife solemn,
+"What does she say?"  And when she told him he said, "_Ach_," and
+showed his disapproval by absorbing himself in the _Deutsche
+Tageszeitzing_.
+
+It's wonderful how easy it is to be disrespectful in Germany.  You've
+only got to be the least bit cheerful and let some of it out, and
+you've done it.
+
+"Why are the English always so like that?" Frau Bornsted asked
+presently, after having marked her regret at my behaviour by not saying
+anything for five minutes.
+
+"Like what?"
+
+"So--so without reverence.  And yet you are a religious people.  You
+send out missionaries."
+
+"Yes, and support bishops," I said.  "You haven't got any bishops."
+
+"You are the first nation in the world as regards missionaries," she
+said, gazing at me thoughtfully and taking no notice of the bishops.
+"My father"--her father is a pastor--"has a great admiration for your
+missionaries.  How is it you have so many missionaries and at the same
+time so little reverence ?"
+
+"Perhaps that _is_ why," I said; and started off explaining, while she
+looked at me with beautiful uncomprehending eyes, that the reaction
+from the missionaries and from the kind of spirit that prompts their
+raising and export might conceivably produce a desire to be irreverent
+and laugh, and that life more and more seemed to me like a pendulum,
+and that it needs must swing both ways.
+
+Frau Bornsted sat twisting her wedding ring on her finger till I was
+quiet again.  She does this whenever I emit anything that can be called
+an idea.  It reminds her that she is married, and that I, as she says,
+am _nur ein junges Madchen_, and therefore not to be taken seriously.
+
+When I had finished about the pendulum, she said, "All this will be
+cured when you have a husband."
+
+There was a tea party here yesterday afternoon.  At least, it was
+coffee.  I thought there were no neighbours, and when I came back late
+from having been all day in the forest, missing with an indifference
+that amazed Frau Bornsted the lure of her Sunday dinner, and taking
+some plum-cake and two Bibles with me, English and German, because I'm
+going to learn German that way among other ways while I'm here, and I
+think it's a very good way, and it immensely impressed Frau Bornsted to
+see me take two Bibles out for a walk,--when I got back about five,
+untidy and hot and able to say off a whole psalm in perfect Lutheran
+German, I found several high yellow carriages, like the one I was
+fetched in on Saturday, in front of the paling, with nosebags and rugs
+on the horses, and indoors in the parlour a number of other foresters
+and their wives, besides Frau Bornsted's father and mother and younger
+sister, and the local doctor and his wife, and the Herr Lehrer, a tall
+young man in spectacles who teaches in the village school two miles
+away.
+
+I was astonished, for I imagined complete isolation here.  Frau
+Bornsted says, though, that this only happens on Sundays.  They were
+sitting round the remnants of coffee and cake, the men smoking and
+talking together apart from the women, the women with their
+bonnet-strings untied and hanging over their bosoms, of which there
+seemed to be many and much, telling each other, while they fanned
+themselves with immense handkerchiefs, what they had had for their
+Sunday dinner.
+
+I would have slunk away when I heard the noise of voices, and gone
+round to the peaceful company of the cow, but Frau Bornsted saw me
+coming up the path and called me in.
+
+I went in reluctantly, and on my appearing there was a dead silence,
+which would have unnerved me if I hadn't still had my eyes so full of
+sunlight that I hardly saw anything in the dark room, and stood there
+blinking.
+
+"_Unsere junge Englanderin," said Frau Bornsted, presenting me.
+"Schuhlerin von_ Kloster--_grosses Talent_,--" I heard her adding,
+handing round the bits of information as though it was cake.
+
+They all said _Ach so_, and _Wirklich_, and somebody asked if I liked
+Germany, and I said, still not seeing much, "_Es ist wundervoll_,"
+which provoked a murmur of applause, as the newspapers say.
+
+I found I was expected to sit in a corner with Frau Bornsted's sister,
+who with the Lehrer and myself, being all of us unmarried, represented
+what the others spoke of as _die Jugend_, and that I was to answer
+sweetly and modestly any question I was asked by the others, but not to
+ask any myself, or indeed not to speak at all unless in the form of
+answering.  I gathered this from the behaviour of Frau Bornsted's
+sister; but I do find it very hard not to be natural, and it's natural
+to me, as you know to your cost, don't you, little mother, to ask what
+things mean and why.
+
+There was a great silence while I was given a cup of coffee and some
+cake by Frau Bornsted, helped by her sister.  The young man, the third
+in our trio of youth, sat motionless in the chair next to me while this
+was done.  I wanted to fetch my cup myself, rather than let Frau
+Bornsted wait on me, but she pressed me down into my chair again with
+firmness and the pained look of one who is witnessing the committing of
+a solecism.  "_Bitte_--take place again," she said, her English giving
+way in the stress of getting me to behave as I should.
+
+The women looked on with open interest and curiosity, examining my
+clothes and hair and hands and the Bibles I was clutching and the
+flowers I had stuck in where the Psalms are, because I never can find
+the Psalms right off.  The men looked too, but with caution.  I was
+fearfully untidy.  You would have been shocked.  But I don't know how
+one is to lie about on moss all day and stay neat, and nobody told me I
+was going to tumble into the middle of a party.
+
+The first to disentangle himself from the rest and come and speak to me
+was Frau Bornsted's father, Pastor Wienicke.  He came and stood in
+front of me, his legs apart and a cigar in his mouth, and he took the
+cigar out to tell me, what I already knew, that I was English.  "_Sie
+sind englisch_," said Herr Pastor Wienicke.
+
+"Ja," said I, as modestly as I could, which wasn't very.
+
+There was something about the party that made me sit up on the edge of
+my chair with my feet neatly side by side, and hold my cup as carefully
+as if I had been at a school treat and expecting the rector every
+minute.  "England," said the pastor, while everybody else listened,--he
+spoke in German--"is, I think I may say, still a great country."
+
+"_Ja_?" said I politely, tilting up the _ja_ a little at its end, which
+was meant to suggest not only a deferential, "If you say so it must be
+so" attitude, but also a courteous doubt as to whether any country
+could properly be called great in a world in which the standard of
+greatness was set by so splendid an example of it as his own country.
+
+And it did suggest this, for he said, "_Oh doch_," balancing himself on
+his heels and toes alternately, as though balancing himself into exact
+justice.  "_Oh doch._  I think one may honestly say she still is a
+great country, But--" and he raised his voice and his forefinger at
+me,--"let her beware of her money bags.  That is my word to England:
+Beware of thy money bags."
+
+There was a sound of approval in the room, and they all nodded their
+heads.
+
+He looked at me, and as I supposed he might be expecting an answer I
+thought I had better say _ja_ again, so I did.
+
+"England," he then continued, "is our cousin, our blood-relation.
+Therefore is it that we can and must tell her the truth, even if it is
+unpalatable."
+
+"_Ja_," I said, as he paused again; only there were several little
+things I would have liked to have said about that, if I had been able
+to talk German properly.  But I had nothing but my list of exclamations
+and the psalms I had learnt ready.  So I said _Ja_, and tried to look
+modest and intelligent.
+
+"Her love of money, her materialism--these are her great dangers," he
+said.  "I do not like to contemplate, and I ask my friends here--" he
+turned slowly round on his heels and back again--"whether they would
+like to contemplate a day when the sun of the British Empire, that
+Empire which, after all, has upheld the cause of religion with
+faithfulness and persistence for so long, shall be seen at last
+descending, to rise no more, in an engulfing ocean of over-indulged
+appetites."
+
+"_Ja_," I said; and then perceiving it was the wrong word, hastily
+amended in English, "I mean _nein_."
+
+He looked at me for a moment more carefully.  Then deciding that all
+was well he went on.
+
+"England," he said, "is our natural ally.  She is of the same blood,
+the same faith, and the same colour.  Behold the other races of the
+world, and they are either partly, chiefly, or altogether black.  The
+blonde races are, like the dawn, destined to drive away the darkness.
+They must stand together shoulder to shoulder in any discord that may,
+in the future, gash the harmony of the world."
+
+"_Ja_," I said, as one who should, at the conclusion of a Psalm, be
+saying Selah.
+
+"We live in serious times," he said.  "They may easily become more
+serious.  Round us stand the Latins and the Slavs, armed to the teeth,
+bursting with envy of our goods, of our proud calm, and watching for
+the moment when they can fall upon us with criminal and murderous
+intent.  Is it not so, my Fraulein?"
+
+"_Ja_" said I, forced to agree because of my unfortunate emptiness of
+German.
+
+The only thing I could have reeled off at him was the Psalm I had
+learnt, and I did long to, because it was the one asking why the
+heathen so furiously rage together; but you see, little mother, though
+I longed to I couldn't have followed it up, and having fired it off I'd
+have sat there defenceless while he annihilated me.
+
+But I don't know what they all mean by this constant talk of envious
+nations crouching ready to spring at them.  They talk and talk about
+it, and their papers write and write about it, till they inflame each
+other into a fever of pugnaciousness.  I've never been anywhere in the
+least like it in my life.  In England people talked of a thousand
+things, and hardly ever of war.  When we were in Italy, and that time
+in Paris, we hardly heard it mentioned.  Directly my train got into
+Germany at Goch coming from Flushing, and Germans began to get in,
+there in the very train this everlasting talk of war and the
+enviousness of other nations began, and it has never left off since.
+The Archduke's murder didn't start it; it was going on weeks before
+that, when first I came.  It has been going on, Kloster says, growing
+in clamour, for years, ever since the present Kaiser succeeded to the
+throne.  Kloster says the nation thinks it feels all this, but it is
+merely being stage-managed by the group of men at the top, headed by S.
+M.  So well stage-managed is it, so carefully taught by such slow
+degrees, that it is absolutely convinced it has arrived at its opinions
+and judgments by itself.  I wonder if these people are mad.  Is it
+possible for a whole nation to go mad at once?  It is they who seem to
+have the enviousness, to be torn with desire to get what isn't theirs.
+
+"The disastrous crime of Sarajevo," continued Pastor Wienicke, "cannot
+in this connection pass unnoticed.  To smite down a God's Anointed!"
+He held up his hands.  "Not yet, it is true, an actually Anointed, but
+set aside by God for future use.  It is typical of the world outside
+our Fatherland.  Lawlessness and its companion Sacrilege stalk at
+large.  Women emerge from the seclusion God has arranged for them, and
+rear their heads in shameless competition with men.  Our rulers, whom
+God has given us so that they shall guide and lead us and in return be
+reverently taken care of, are blasphemously bombed."  He flung both his
+arms heavenwards.  "Arise, Germany!" he cried.  "Arise and show
+thyself!  Arise in thy might, I say, and let our enemies be scattered!"
+
+Then he wiped his forehead, looked round in recognition of the _sehr
+guts_ and _ausserordentlich schon gesagts_ that were being flung about,
+re-lit his cigar with the aid of the Herr Lehrer, who sprang
+obsequiously forward with a match, and sat down.
+
+Wasn't it a good thing he sat down.  I felt so much happier.  But just
+as it was at the meals at Frau Berg's so it was at the coffee party
+here,--I was singled out and talked to, or at, by the entire company.
+The concentration of curiosity of Germans is terrible.  But it's more
+than curiosity, it's a kind of determination to crush what I'm thinking
+out of me and force what they're thinking into me.  I shall see as they
+do; I shall think as they do; they'll shout at me till I'm forced to.
+That's what I feel.  I don't a bit know if it isn't quite a wrong idea
+I've got, but somehow my very bones feel it.
+
+Would you believe it, they stayed to supper, all of them, and never
+went away till ten o'clock.  Frau Bornsted says one always does that in
+the country here when invited to afternoon coffee.  I won't tell you
+any more of what they said, because it was all on exactly the same
+lines, the older men singling me out one by one and very loudly telling
+me variations of Pastor Wienicke's theme, the women going for me in
+twos and threes, more definitely bloodthirsty than the men, more like
+Frau Berg on the subject of blood-letting, more openly greedy.  They
+were all disconcerted and uneasy because nothing more has been heard of
+the Austrian assassination.  The silence from Vienna worries them, I
+gather, very much.  They are afraid, actually they are afraid, Austria
+may be going to do nothing except just punish the murderers, and so
+miss the glorious opportunity for war.  I wonder if you can the least
+realize, you sane mother in a sane place, the state they're in here,
+the sort of boiling and straining.  I'm sure the whole of Germany is
+the same,--lashed by the few behind the scenes into a fury of
+aggressive patriotism.  They call it patriotism, but it is just
+blood-lust and loot-lust.
+
+I helped Frau Bornsted get supper ready, and was glad to escape into
+the peace of the kitchen and stand safely frying potatoes.  She was
+very sweet in her demure Sunday frock of plain black, and high up round
+her ears a little white frill.  The solemnity and youth and quaintness
+of her are very attractive, and I could easily love her if it weren't
+for this madness about Deutschland.  She is as mad as any of them, and
+in her it is much more disconcerting.  We will be discoursing together
+gravely--she is always grave, and never knows how funny we both are
+being really--about amusing things like husbands and when and if I'm
+ever going to get one, and she, full of the dignity and wisdom of the
+married, will be giving me much sage counsel with sobriety and
+gentleness, when something starts her off about Deutschland.  Oh, they
+are _intolerable_ about their Deutschland!
+
+The Oberforster is calling for this--he's driving to the post, so
+good-bye little darling mother, little beloved and precious one.
+
+  Your Chris.
+
+
+
+
+  _Schuppenfelde, Thursday, July 16, 1914_.
+
+My blessed mother,
+
+Here's Thursday evening in my week of nothing to do, and me meaning to
+write every day to you, and I haven't done it since Monday.  It's
+because I've had so much time.  Really it's because I've been in a sort
+of sleep of loveliness.  I've been doing nothing except be happy.  Not
+a soul has been near us since Sunday, and Frau Bornsted says not a soul
+will, till next Sunday.  Each morning I've come down to a perfect
+world, with the sun shining through roses on to our breakfast-table in
+the porch, and after breakfast I've crossed the road and gone into the
+forest and not come back till late afternoon.
+
+Frau Bornsted has been sweet about it, giving me a little parcel of
+food and sending me off with many good wishes for a happy day.  I
+wanted to help her do her housework, but except my room she won't let
+me, having had orders from Kloster that I was to be completely idle.
+And it _is_ doing me good.  I feel so perfectly content these last
+three days.  There's nothing fretful about me any more; I feel
+harmonized, as if I were so much a part of the light and the air and
+the forest that I don't know now where they leave off and I begin.  I
+sit and watch the fine-weather clouds drifting slowly across the
+tree-tops, and wonder if heaven is any better.  I go down to the edge
+of the Haff, and lie on my face in the long grass, and push up my
+sleeves, and slowly stir the shallow golden water about among the
+rushes.  I pick wild strawberries to eat with my lunch, and after lunch
+I lie on the moss and learn the Psalm for the day, first in English and
+then in German.  About five I begin to go home, walking slowly through
+the hot scents of the afternoon forest, feeling as solemn and as
+exulting as I suppose a Catholic does when he comes away, shriven and
+blest, from confession.  In the evening we sit out, and the little
+garden grows every minute more enchanted.  Frau Bornsted rests after
+her labours, with her hands in her lap, and agrees with what the
+Oberforster every now and then takes his pipe out of his mouth to say,
+and I lie back in my chair and stare at the stars, and I think and
+think, and wonder and wonder.  And what do you suppose I think and
+wonder about, little mother?  You and love.  I don't know why I say you
+and love, for it's the same thing.  And so is all this beauty of summer
+in the woods, and so is music, and my violin when it gets playing to
+me; and the future is full of it, and oh, I do so badly want to say
+thank you to some one!
+
+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 him _very_ much, 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 a _junges 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,--the _schone_ Helena 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
+clever _he_ is.
+
+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 little _Englanderin_," he
+said gaily to Frau Bornsted, who listened to his _badinage_ with 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 a
+_junges 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 out _Auf Wiedersehen_
+till 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 the
+_claque_ at 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 ignorant _junges 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 perfect _junges
+Madchen_ was 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 a _junges Madchen_ to
+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 a _junges Madchen_ generally 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 a _junges Madchen_ generally 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 was _listening_; 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 one _used_ to 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 a _fait 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, a _Beethovenkopf_.
+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 the _Tageszeitung_ he 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 of _die Leute_ and what they would
+_sagen_.  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 to _die 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 so _much_
+manners 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 she _possibly_ could.
+
+"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, to _know_ that 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 like _Deutschthum_ and 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 something _seething_.
+
+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 really _for_, these poor creatures bellowing and
+strutting, and waving their hats and handkerchiefs, and even their
+babies, high over their heads whenever a _konigliche Hoheit_ dashes
+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 curiously _innocent_, 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 of _Deutschland uber Alles_, and the _hochs_ and 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 so _much_," 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 a _junges Madchen_ to 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 a _junges
+Madchen_ who 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 the _Ministerium 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 the _Deutschland uber
+Alles_ business 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.
+
+You wrote to me last sitting under a cherry tree, you said, in the
+orchard at the back of your hotel at Glion, and you talked of the
+colour of the lake far down below through the leaves of walnut trees,
+and of the utter peace.  Here day and night, day and night, since
+Wednesday, soldiers in new grey uniforms pass through the Brandenburger
+Thor down the broad road to Charlottenburg.  Their tramp never stops.
+I can see them from my window tramping, tramping away down the great
+straight road; and crowds that don't seem to change or dwindle watch
+them and shout.  Where do the soldiers all come from?  I never dreamed
+there could be so many in the world, let alone in Berlin; and Germany
+isn't even at war!  But it's no use asking questions, or trying to talk
+about it.  I've found the word "Why?" in this house is not only useless
+but improper.  Nobody will talk about anything; I suppose they don't
+need to, for they all seem perfectly to _know_.  They're in the inner
+circle in this house.  They're not the public.  The public is that
+shouting, perspiring mob out there watching the soldiers, and Frau Berg
+and her boarders are the public, and so are the soldiers themselves.
+The public here are all the people who obey, and pay, and don't know;
+an immense multitude of slaves,--abject, greedy, pitiful.  I don't
+think I ever could have imagined a thing so pitiful to see as these
+respectable middle-aged Berlin citizens, fathers of families, careful
+livers on small incomes, clerks, pastors, teachers, professors, drunk
+and mad out there publicly on the pavement, dancing with joy because
+they think the great moment they've been taught to wait for has come,
+and they're going to get suddenly rich, scoop in wealth from Russia and
+France, get up to the top of the world and be able to kick it.  That's
+what I saw over and over again today as I somehow got through to Frau
+Berg's to fetch your letters.  An ordinary person from an ordinary
+country wants to cover these heated elderly gentlemen up, and hide them
+out of sight, so shocking are they to one's sense of respect and
+reverence for human beings.  Imagine decent citizens, paunchy and soft
+with beer and sitting in offices, wearing cheap straw hats and
+carefully mended and brushed black coats, _dancing_ with excitement on
+the pavement; and nobody thinking it anything but fine and creditable,
+at the prospect of their children's blood going to be shed, and
+everybody's children's blood, except the blood of those safe children,
+the children of the Hohenzollerns!
+
+The weather is fiercely hot.  There's a brassy sky without a cloud, and
+all the leaves of the trees in the Thiergarten are shiny and motionless
+as if they were cut out of metal.  A little haze of dust hangs
+perpetually along the Lindens and the road to Charlottenburg,--not much
+of it, because the roads are too well kept, but enough to show that the
+troops never leave off tramping.  And all down where they pass, on each
+side, are the perspiring crowds of people, red and apoplectic with
+excitement and heat, women and children and babies mixed up in one
+heaving, frantic mass.  The windows of the houses on each side of the
+Brandenburger Thor are packed with people all day long, and the noise
+of patriotism doesn't leave off for an instant.
+
+It's a very ugly noise.  The only place where I can get away from
+it--and I do hate noise, it really _hurts_ my ears--is the bathroom
+here, which is a dark cupboard with no window, in the very middle of
+the house.  I thought it a dreadful bathroom when I first saw it, but
+now I'm grateful that it can't be aired.  The house was built years and
+years before Germans began to wash, and it wasn't till the Koseritzes
+came that a bath was wanted.  Then it had to be put in any hole, and
+this hole is the one place where there is silence.  Everywhere else, in
+every room in the house, it is as if one were living next door to a
+dozen public houses in the worst slums of London and it were always
+Saturday night.  I do think the patriotism of an unattacked, aggressive
+country is a hideous thing.
+
+Bernd got me somehow through the crowd to the calmer streets on the way
+to Frau Berg.  He didn't want me to go out at all, but I want to see
+what I can.  The Kaiser rushed through the Brandenburger Thor in his
+car as we went out.  You never saw such a scene as then.  It was
+frightening, like a mob of lunatics let loose.  Every time he is seen
+tearing along the streets there's this wild scene, Bernd says.  He has
+suddenly leaped to the topmost top of popularity, for he's the
+dispenser now of the great lottery in which all the draws are going to
+be prizes.  You know there isn't a German, not the cleverest, not the
+most sober, who doesn't regularly and solemnly buy lottery tickets.
+Aren't they, apart from all the other things they are, the _funniest_
+people.  So immature in wisdom, so top-heavy with dangerous knowledge
+that their youngness in wisdom makes them use wrongly.  If they hadn't
+got the latest things in guns and equipment they would be quiet, and
+wouldn't think of fighting.
+
+Bernd made me promise to wait at Frau Berg's till he could fetch me,
+and as he didn't get back till two o'clock, and Frau Berg very amiably
+said I must be her guest at the well-known mid-day meal, I found myself
+once more in the bosom of the boarders.  Only this time I sat proudly
+on Frau Berg's right, in the place of honour next to Doctor Krummlaut,
+instead of in the obscurity of my old seat at the dark end near the
+door.
+
+It was so queer, and so different.  There was the same Wanda, resting
+her dishes on my left shoulder, which she always used to do, not only
+so as to attract my attention but as a convenience to herself, because
+they were hot and heavy.  There were the same boarders, except the
+red-mouthed bank-clerk and another young man.  Hilda Seeberg was there,
+and the Swede, and Doctor Krummlaut; and of course Frau Berg, massive
+in her tight black dress buttoned up the front without a collar to it,
+the big brooch she fastens it with at the neck half hidden by her
+impressive double chins, which flow down as majestically as a
+patriarch's beard.  We had the same food, the same heat, and I'm sure
+the same flies.  But the nervous tension there used to be, the tendency
+to quarrel, the pugnacious political arguing with me, the gibes at
+England, were gone.  I don't know whether it was because I'm engaged to
+a Prussian officer that they were so very polite--I was tremendously
+congratulated,--but they were certainly different about England.  It
+may of course have been their general happiness--happiness makes one so
+kind all round!--for here too was the content, the satisfaction of
+those who, after painful waiting, get what they want.  It was expressed
+very noisily, not with the restraint of the Koseritzes, but it was the
+same thing really.  The Berg atmosphere was more like the one in the
+streets.  Where the Grafin in her pleasure became only more calm, the
+boarders were abandoned,--excited like savages dancing round the fire
+their victims are to roast at.  Frau Berg rumbled and shook with her
+relief, like some great earthquake, and didn't mind a bit apparently
+about the tremendous rise there has been in prices this week.  What
+will she get, I wonder, by war, except struggle and difficulty and
+departing boarders?  Being a guest, I had to be polite and let them say
+what they liked without protest,--really, the disabilities of guests!
+I couldn't argue, as I would have if I'd still been a boarder, which
+was a pity, for meanwhile I've learned a lot of German and could have
+said a great many things and been as natural as I liked here away from
+the Grafin's gentle smile reminding me that I'm not behaving.  But I
+had to sit and listen smilingly, and of course show none of my horror
+at their attitude, for more muzzling even than being a guest is being
+the betrothed of a Prussian officer.  _They_ don't know what sort of a
+Prussian officer he is, how different, how truly educated, how full of
+dislike for the base things they worship and want; and he, caught by
+birth in the Prussian chains, shall not be betrayed by me who love him.
+Here he is, caught anyhow for the present, and he must do his duty; but
+someday we're going away,--he, and I, and you, little mother darling,
+when there's no war anywhere in sight and therefore no duty to stay
+for, and we'll go and live in America, and he'll take off all those
+buttons and spurs and things, and we'll give ourselves up to freedom,
+and harmlessness, and art, and beauty, and we'll have friends who
+neither intrigue, which is what the class at the top here lives by, nor
+who waste their lives being afraid, which is what all the other classes
+here spend their lives being.
+
+"At last we are going to wipe off old scores against France," Doctor
+Krummlaut spluttered through his soup today at Frau Berg's with shining
+eyes,--I should have thought it was France who had the old scores that
+need wiping--"and Russia, the barbarian Colossus, will topple over and
+choke in its own blood."
+
+
+Then Frau Berg capped that with sentiments even more bloodthirsty.
+
+Then the Swede, who never used to speak, actually raised her voice in
+terms of blood too, and expressed a wish to see a Cossack strung up by
+his heels to every electric-light standard along the Lindens.
+
+Then Hilda Seeberg said if her Papa--that Papa she told me once she
+hadn't at all liked--were only alive, it would be the proudest moment
+of his life when, at the head of his regiment, he would go forth to
+slay President Poincare.  "And if," she said, her eyes flashing, "owing
+to his high years his regiment was no longer able to accept his heroic
+leadership, he would, I know, proceed secretly to France as an
+assassin, and bomb the infamous Poincare,--bomb him in the name of our
+Kaiser, of our Fatherland, and of our God."
+
+"Amen," said Frau Berg, very loud.
+
+I flew to Bernd when he came.  It was as if a door had been flung open,
+and the freshness and sanity of early morning came into the room when
+he did.  I hung on his arm, and looked up into his dear shrewd eyes, so
+clear and kind, so full of wisdom.  The boarders were with one accord
+servile to him; even Doctor Krummlaut, a clever man with far better
+brains probably than Bernd.  Bernd, from habit, stiffened and became
+unapproachable the instant the middle class public in the shape of the
+congratulatory boarders appeared.  He doesn't even know he's like that,
+his training has made it second nature.  You should have seen his
+lofty, complete indifference.  It was dreadfully rude really, and oh
+how they loved him for it!  They simply adored him, and were ready to
+lick his boots.  It was so funny to see them sidling about him, all of
+them wagging their tails.  He was the master, come among the slaves.
+But to think that even Doctor Krummlaut should sidle!
+
+There's a most terrific _extra_ noise going on outside.  I can hardly
+hear myself write.  I don't know whether to run and find out what it
+is, or retreat to the bathroom.  My ears won't stand much more,--I
+shall get deaf, and not be able to play.
+
+
+
+  _Later_.
+
+What has happened is that special editions of the papers have appeared
+announcing that the Kaiser has decreed a state of war for the whole of
+Germany.  Well.  They've done it now.  For I did extract from a very
+cheerful-looking caller I met coming upstairs to the drawingroom that a
+state of war is followed as inevitably by the real thing as a German
+betrothal is followed by marriage.  One is as committal as the other,
+he said.  It is the rarest thing, and produces an immense scandal, for
+an engagement to be broken off; and, explained the caller looking
+extremely pleased,--he was a man-caller, and therefore more willing to
+stop and talk--to proceed backwards from a state of war to the _status
+quo ante_ might produce the unthinkable result of costing the Kaiser
+his throne.
+
+"You can imagine, my most gracious Miss," said the caller, "that His
+Majesty would never permit a calamity so colossal to overtake his
+people, whose welfare he has continually and exclusively in his
+all-highest thoughts.  Therefore you may take it from me as completely
+certain that war is now assured."
+
+"But nobody has done anything to you," I said.
+
+He gazed at me a moment, and then smiled.  "High politics, and little
+heads," he said.  "High politics, and little women's heads,--" and went
+on up the stairs smiling and shaking his own.
+
+I do wish they wouldn't keep on talking as though my head were so
+dreadfully small.  Never in my life have people taken so utterly and
+complacently for granted that I'm stupid.
+
+Well, I feel very sick at heart.  How long will it be before Bernd too
+will be one of that marching column on the Charlottenburger Chaussee.
+He won't go away from me that way, I know.  He's on the Staff, and will
+go more splendidly; but those men in the new grey uniforms tramping day
+and night are symbols each one of them of departing happiness, of a
+closed chapter, of the end of something that can never be the same
+again.
+
+  Your tired Chris.
+
+
+
+
+  Before Breakfast.
+  Berlin, Sat., Aug. 1st, 1914.
+
+My blessed little mother,
+
+I've seen a thing I don't suppose I'll forget.  It was yesterday, after
+the news came that Germany had sent Russia an ultimatum about instantly
+demobilizing, demanding an answer by eleven this morning.  The
+sensation when this was known was tremendous.  The Grafin was shaken
+out of her calm into exclamations of joy and fear,--joy that the step
+had been taken, fear lest Russia should obey, and there be no war after
+all.
+
+We had to shut the windows to be able to hear ourselves talk.  Some
+women friends of the Grafin's who were here--we had no men with
+us--instantly left to drive by back streets to the Schlossplatz to see
+the sight it must be there, and the Grafin, saying that we too must
+witness the greatest history of the world's greatest nation in the
+making, sent for a taxi--her chauffeur has gone--and prepared to
+follow.  We had to wait ages for the taxi, but it was lucky we had to,
+else we might have gone and come back and missed seeing the Kaiser come
+out and speak to the crowd.  We went a long way round, but even so all
+Germany seemed to be streaming towards the Lindens and the part at the
+end where the palace is.  I don't expect we ever would have got there
+if it hadn't been that a cousin of the Grafin's, a very smart young
+officer in the Guards, saw us in the taxi as it was vainly trying to
+cross the Friedrichstrasse, and flicking the obstructing policemen on
+one side with a sort of little kick of his spur, came up all amazement
+and salutes to inquire of his most gracious cousin what in the world
+she was doing in a taxi.  He said it was hopeless to try to get to the
+Schlossplatz in it, but if we would allow him to escort us on foot he
+would be proud--the gracious cousin would permit him to offer her his
+arm, and the young ladies would keep very close behind him.
+
+So we set out, and it was surprising the way he got us through.  If the
+crowd didn't fall apart instantly of itself at his approach, an
+obsequious policeman--one of those same Berlin policemen who are so
+rude to one if one is alone and really in need of help--sprang up from
+nowhere and made it.  It's as far from the Friedrichstrasse to the
+Schlossplatz as it is from here to the Friedrichstrasse, but we did it
+very much quicker than we did the first half in the taxi, and when we
+reached it there they all were, the drunken crowds--that's the word
+that most exactly describes them--yelling, swaying, cursing the ones in
+their way or who trod on their feet, shouting hurrahs and bits of
+patriotic songs, every one of them decently dressed, obviously
+respectable people in ordinary times.  That's what is so constantly
+strange to me,--these solid burghers and their families behaving like
+drunken hooligans.  Somehow a spectacled professor with a golden chain
+across his blackwaistcoated and impressive front, just roaring
+incoherently, just opening his mouth and hurling any sort of noise out
+of it till the veins on his neck and forehead look as though they would
+burst, is the strangest sight in the world to me.  I can imagine
+nothing stranger, nothing that makes one more uncomfortable and
+ashamed.  It is what will always jump up before my eyes in the future
+at the words German patriotism.  And to see a stout elderly lady, who
+ought to be presiding with slow dignity in some ordered home, hoarse
+with shouting, tear the feathered hat she otherwise only uses tenderly
+on Sundays off her respectable grey head and wave it frantically,
+screaming _hochs_ every time a prince is seen or a general or one of
+the ministers, makes one want to cry with shame at the indignity put
+upon poor human beings, at the exploiting of their passions, in the
+interests of one family.
+
+The Grafin's smart cousin got us on to some steps and stood with us, so
+that we should not be pushed off them instantly again, as we would have
+been if he had left us.  I think they were the steps of a statue, or
+fountain, or something like that, but the whole whatever it was was so
+covered with people, encrusted with them just like one of those sticky
+fly-sticks is black with flies, that I don't know what it was really.
+I only know that it wasn't a house, and that we were quite close to the
+palace, and able to look down at the sea beneath us, the heaving,
+roaring sea of distorted red faces, all with their mouths wide open,
+all blistering and streaming in the sun.
+
+The Grafin, who had recovered her calm in the presence of her inferiors
+of the middle classes, put up her eyeglasses and examined them with
+interest and indulgence.  Helena stared.  The cousin twisted his little
+moustache, standing beside us protectingly, very elegant and slender
+and nonchalant, and remarked at intervals, "_Fabelhafte Enthusiasmus,
+was_?"
+
+It came into my mind that Beerbohm Tree must sometimes look on like
+that at a successful dress rehearsal of his well-managed stage crowds,
+with the same nonchalant satisfaction at the excellent results, so well
+up to time, of careful preparation.
+
+Of course I said "_Colossal_" to the cousin, when he expressed his
+satisfaction more particularly to me.
+
+"_Dreckiges Yolk, die Russen_" he remarked, twisting his little
+moustache's ends up.  "_Werden lernen was es heisst, frech sein gegen
+uns.  Wollen sie blau und schwartz dreschen_."
+
+You know German, so I needn't take its peculiar flavour out by
+transplanting the young man's remarks.
+
+"_Oh pardon--aber meine Gnadigste--tausendmal pardon--" he protested
+the next minute in a voice of tremendous solicitude, having been pushed
+rather hard and suddenly against me by a little boy who had scrambled
+down off whatever it was he was hanging on to; and he turned on the
+little boy, who I believe had tumbled off rather than scrambled, with
+his hand flashing to his sword, ready to slash at whoever it was had
+dared push against him, an officer; and seeing it was a child and
+therefore not _satisfactionsfahig_ as they say, he merely called him an
+_infame_ and _verfluchte Bengel_ and smacked his face so hard that he
+would have been knocked down if there had been room to fall in.
+
+As it was, he was only hurled violently against the side of a man in a
+black coat and straw hat who looked like an elderly confidential clerk,
+so respectable and complete with his short grey beard and spectacles,
+who was evidently the father, for he instantly on his own account
+smacked the boy on his other ear, and sweeping off his hat entreated
+the Herr Leutnant to forgive the boy on account of his extreme youth.
+
+The cousin, whom by now I didn't like, was beginning very severely to
+advise the parent jolly well to see to it, or German words to that
+effect, that his idiotic boy didn't repeat such insolences, or by hell,
+etc., etc., when there was such a blast of extra noise and hurrahing
+that the rest of his remarks were knocked out of his mouth.  It was the
+Kaiser, come out on the balcony of the palace.
+
+The cousin became rigid, and stood at the salute.  The air seemed full
+of hats and handkerchiefs and delirious shrieking.  The Kaiser put up
+his hand.
+
+"Majestat is going to speak," exclaimed the Grafin, her calm fluttered
+into fragments.
+
+There was an immense instantaneous hush, uncanny after all the noise.
+Only the little boy with the boxed ears continued to call out, but not
+patriotically.  His father, efficient and Prussian, put a stop to that
+by seizing his head, buttoning it up inside his black coat, and holding
+his arm tightly over it, so that no struggles of suffocation could get
+it free.  There was no more noise, but the little boy's legs,
+desperately twitching, kicked their dusty little boots against the
+cousin's shins, and he, standing at the salute with his body rigidly
+turned towards Majestat, was unable to take the steps his outraged
+honour, let alone the pain in his shins, called for.
+
+I was so much interested in this situation, really absorbed by it, for
+the little boy unconsciously was getting quite a lot of his own back,
+his little boots being sturdy and studded with nails, and the father,
+all eyes and ears for Majestat, not aware of what was happening, that
+positively I missed the first part of the speech.  But what I did hear
+was immensely impressive.  I had seen the Kaiser before, you remember;
+that time he was in London with the Kaiserin, in 1912 or 1913 I think
+it was, and we were staying with Aunt Angela in Wilton Crescent and we
+saw him driving one afternoon in a barouche down Birdcage Walk.  Do you
+remember how cross he looked, hardly returning the salutations he got?
+We said he and she must have been quarrelling, he looked so sulky.  And
+do you remember how ordinary he looked in his top hat and black coat,
+just like any cross and bored middle-class husband?  There was nothing
+royal about him that day except the liveries on the servants, and they
+were England's.  Yesterday things were very different.  He really did
+look like the royal prince of a picture book, a real War
+Lord,--impressive and glittering with orders flashing in the sun.  We
+were near enough to see him perfectly.  There wasn't much crossness or
+boredom about him this time.  He was, I am certain, thoroughly enjoying
+himself,--unconsciously of course, but with that immense thrilled
+enjoyment all leading figures at leading moments must have: Sir
+Galahad, humbly glorying in his perfect achievement of negations;
+Parsifal, engulfed in an ecstasy of humble gloating over his own
+worthiness as he holds up the Grail high above bowed, adoring heads;
+Beerbohm Tree--I can't get away from theatrical analogies--coming
+before the curtain on his most successful first night, meek with
+happiness.  Hasn't it run through the ages, this great humility at the
+moment of supreme success, this moved self-depreciation of the man who
+has pulled it off, the "Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us"
+attitude,--quite genuine at the moment, and because quite genuine so
+extraordinarily moving and impressive?  Really one couldn't wonder at
+the people.  The Empress was there, and a lot of officers and princes
+and people, but it was the Emperor alone that we looked at.  He came
+and stood by himself in front of the others.  He was very grave, with a
+real look of solemn exaltation.  Here was royalty in all its most
+impressive trappings, a prince of the fairy-tales, splendidly dressed,
+dilated of nostril, flashing of eye, the defender of homes, the leader
+to glory, the object of the nation's worship and belief and prayers
+since each of its members was a baby, become visible and audible to
+thousands who had never seen him before, who had worshipped him by
+faith only.  It was as though the people were suddenly allowed to look
+upon God.  There was a profound awe in the hush.  I believe if they
+hadn't been so tightly packed together they would all have knelt down.
+
+Well, it is easy to stir a mob.  One knows how easily one is moved
+oneself by the cheapest emotions, by something that catches one on the
+sentimental side, on that side of one that through all the years has
+still stayed clinging to one's mother's knee.  We've often talked of
+this, you and I, little mother.  You know the sort of thing, and have
+got that side yourself,--even you, you dear objective one.  The three
+things up to now that have got me most on that side, got me on the very
+raw of it--I'll tell you now, now that I can't see your amused eyes
+looking at me with that little quizzical questioning in them--the three
+things that have broken my heart each time I've come across them and
+made me only want to sob and sob, are when Kurwenal, mortally wounded,
+crawls blindly to Tristan's side and says, "_Schilt mich nicht dass der
+Treue auch mitkommt_" and Siegfried's dying "_Brunnhild, heilige
+Braut_," and Tannhauser's dying "_Heilige Elisabeth, bitte fur mich_."
+All three German things, you see.  All morbid things.  Most of the
+sentimentality seems to have come from Germany, an essentially brutal
+place.  But of course sentimentality is really diluted morbidness, and
+therefore first cousin to cruelty.  And I have a real and healthy
+dislike for that Tannhauser opera.
+
+But seeing how the best of us--which is you--have these little hidden
+swamps of emotionalness, you can imagine the effect of the Kaiser
+yesterday at such a moment in their lives on a people whose swamps are
+carefully cultivated by their politicians.  Even I, rebellious and
+hostile to the whole attitude, sure that the real motives beneath all
+this are base, and constitutionally unable to care about Kaisers, was
+thrilled.  Thrilled by him, I mean.  Oh, there was enough to thrill one
+legitimately and tragically about the poor people, so eager to offer
+themselves, their souls and bodies, to be an unreasonable sacrifice and
+satisfaction for the Hohenzollerns.  His speech was wonderfully suited
+to the occasion.  Of course it would be.  If he were not able to
+prepare it himself his officials would have seen to it that some
+properly eloquent person did it for him; but Kloster says he speaks
+really well on cheap, popular lines.  All the great reverberating words
+were in it, the old big words ambitious and greedy rulers have conjured
+with since time began,--God, Duty, Country, Hearth and Home, Wives,
+Little Ones, God again--lots of God.
+
+Perhaps you'll see the speech in the papers.  What you won't see is
+that enormous crowd, struck quiet, struck into religious awe, crying
+quietly, men and women like little children gathered to the feet of,
+positively, a heavenly Father.  "Go to your homes," he said, dismissing
+them at the end with uplifted hand,--"go to your homes, and pray."
+
+And we went.  In dead silence.  That immense crowd.  Quietly, like
+people going out of church; moved, like people coming away from
+communion.  I walked beside Helena, who was crying, with my head very
+high and my chin in the air, trying not to cry too, for then they would
+have been more than ever persuaded that I'm a promising little German,
+but I did desperately want to.  I could hardly not cry.  These cheated
+people!  Exploited and cheated, led carefully step by step from
+babyhood to a certain habit of mind necessary to their exploiters, with
+certain passions carefully developed and encouraged, certain ancient
+ideas, anachronisms every one of them, kept continually before their
+eyes,--why, if they _did_ win in their murderous attack on nations who
+have done nothing to them, what are they going to get individually?
+Just wind; the empty wind of big words.  They'll be told, and they'll
+read it in the newspapers, that now they're great, the mightiest people
+in the world, the one best able to crush and grind other nations.  But
+not a single happiness _really_ will be added to the private life of a
+single citizen belonging to the vast class that pays the bill.  For the
+rest of their lives this generation will be poorer and sadder, that's
+all.  Nobody will give them back the money they have sacrificed, or the
+ruined businesses, and nobody can give them back their dead sons.
+There'll be troops of old miserable women everywhere, who were young
+and content before all the glory set in, and troops of dreary old men
+who once had children, and troops of cripples who used to look forward
+and hope.  Yes, I too obeyed the Kaiser and went home and prayed; but
+what I prayed was that Germany should be beaten--so beaten, so punished
+for this tremendous crime, that she will be jerked by main force into
+line with modern life, dragged up to date, taught that the world is too
+grown up now to put up with the smashings and destructions of a greedy
+and brutal child.  It is queer to think of the fear of God having to be
+kicked into anybody, but I believe with Prussians it's the only way.
+They understand kicks.  They respect brute strength exercised brutally.
+I can hear their roar of derision, if Christ were to come among them
+today with His gentle, "Little children, love one another."
+
+  Your Chris.
+
+
+
+
+  _Berlin, Sunday, August 2nd, 1914_.
+
+My precious mother,
+
+Just think,--when I had my lesson yesterday Kloster wouldn't talk
+either about the war or the Kaiser.  For a long time I thought he was
+ill; but he wasn't, he just wouldn't talk.  I told him about Friday,
+and the Kaiser's "_Geht nach Hause und betet_," and how I had felt
+about it and the whole thing, and I expected a flood of illuminating
+and instructive and fearless comment from him; and instead he was dumb.
+And not only dumb, but he fidgeted while I talked, and at last stopped
+me altogether and bade me go on playing.
+
+Then I asked him if he were ill, and he said, "No, why should I be ill?"
+
+"Because you're different,--you don't talk," I said.
+
+And he said, "It is only women who always talk."
+
+So then I got on with my playing, and just wondered in silence.
+
+I ran against Frau Kloster in the passage as I was coming out, and
+asked her if there was anything wrong, and she too said, "No, what
+should there be wrong?"
+
+"Because the Master's different," I said.  "He won't talk."
+
+And she said, "My dear Mees Chrees, these are great days we live in,
+and one cannot be as usual."
+
+"But the Master--" I said.  "Just these great days--you'd think he'd be
+pouring out streams of all the things that most need saying--"
+
+And she shrugged her shoulders and merely repeated, "One is not as
+usual."
+
+So I came away, greatly puzzled.  I had expected bread, and here I was
+going off with nothing but an unaccountable stone.  Kloster and Bernd
+are the two solitary sane and wise people I know here in this place of
+fever, the two I trust, to whom I say what I really think and feel, and
+I went to Kloster yesterday athirst for wisdom, for that detached,
+critical picking out one by one of the feathers of the imperial bird,
+the Prussian eagle, that I find so wholesome, so balance-restoring, so
+comforting, in what is now a very great isolation of spirit.  And he
+was dumb.  I can't get over it.
+
+I've not seen Bernd since, as he is frightfully busy and wasn't able to
+come yesterday at all, but he's coming to lunch today, and perhaps
+he'll be able to explain Kloster.  I've been practising all the
+morning,--it will seem to you an odd thing to have done while Rome is
+burning, but I did it savagely, with a feeling of flinging defiance at
+this topsy-turvy world, of slitting its ugliness in spite of itself
+with bright spears of music, insisting on intruding loveliness on its
+preoccupation, the loveliness created by its own brains in the days
+before Prussia got the upper hand.  All the morning I practised the
+Beethoven violin concerto, and the naked, slender radiance of it
+without the orchestra to muffle it up in a background, enchanted me
+into forgetting.
+
+The crowds down there are soberer since Friday, and I didn't have to go
+into the bathroom to play.  Now that war is upon them the women seem to
+have started thinking a little what it may really mean, and the men
+aren't quite so ready incoherently to roar.  They keep on going to
+church,--the churches have been having services at unaccustomed moments
+throughout yesterday, of course by order, and are going on like that
+today too, for the churches are very valuable to Authority in
+nourishing the necessary emotions in the people at a time like this.
+The people were told by the Kaiser to pray, and so they do pray.  It is
+useful to have them praying, it quiets them and gets them out of the
+streets and helps the authorities.  Berlin is really the most godless
+place.  Religion is the last thing anybody thinks of.  Nobody dreams of
+going to church unless there is going to be special music there or a
+prince, and as for the country, my two Sundays there might have been
+week-days except for the extra food.  It is true on each of them I saw
+a pastor, but each time he came to the family I was with, they didn't
+go to him, to his church.  Now there's suddenly this immense
+recollection of God, turned on by Authority just as one turns on an
+electric light switch and says "Let there be light," and there is
+light.  So I picture the Kaiser, running his finger down his list of
+available assets and coming to God.  Then he rings for an official, and
+says, "Let there be God"; and there is God.
+
+I'm not really being profane.  It isn't really God at all I'm talking
+about.  It's what German Authority finds convenient to turn on and off,
+according as it suits what it wishes to obtain.  It isn't God.  It's
+just a tap.
+
+
+
+  _Later_.
+
+Bernd came to lunch, but also unfortunately so did his chief.  They
+both arrived together after we had begun,--there's a tremendous _aller
+et venir_ all day in the house, and sometimes the traffic on the stairs
+to the drawingroom gets so congested that nothing but a London
+policeman could deal with it.  I could only say ordinary things to
+Bernd, and he went away, swept off by his Colonel, directly afterwards.
+He did manage to whisper he would try to come in to dinner tonight and
+get here early, but he hasn't come yet and it's nearly half past seven.
+
+The Graf was at lunch, and two other men who ate their food as if they
+had to catch a train, and they talked so breathlessly while they ate
+that I can't think why they didn't choke; and there was great triumph
+and excitement because the Germans crossed into Luxembourg this morning
+on their way to France, marching straight through the expostulations
+and entreaties of the Grand Duchess, blowing her aside, I gather, like
+so much rather amusing thistledown.  It seemed to tickle the Graf, whom
+I have not before seen tickled and hadn't imagined ever could be; but
+this idea of a _junges Madchen_--("Sie soll ganz niedlich sein_," threw
+in one of the gobbling men.  "_Ja ganz appetitlich_," threw in the
+other; "_Na, es geht_," said the Colonel with a shrug--)--motoring out
+to bar the passage of a mighty army, trying to stop thousands of
+bayonets by lifting up one little admonitory kitten's paw, shook him
+out of his gravity into a weird, uncanny chuckling.
+
+The Colonel, who was as genial and hilarious as ever, rather more so
+than ever, said all the Luxembourg railways would be in German hands by
+tonight.  "It works out as easily and inevitably as a simple
+arithmetical problem," he laughed; and I heard him tell the Graf German
+cavalry was already in France at several points.
+
+"_Ja, ja_" he said, apparently addressing me, for he looked at me and
+smiled, "when we Germans make war we do not wait till the next day.
+Everything thought of; everything ready; plenty of oil in the machine;
+_und dann los_."
+
+He raised his glass.  "Delightful young English lady," he said, "I
+drink to your charming eyes."
+
+There's dinner.  I must leave off.
+
+
+
+  _Eleven p. m_.
+
+You'll never believe it, but Kloster has been given the Order of the
+Red Eagle 1st Class, and made a privy councillor and an excellency by
+the Kaiser this very day.  And his most intimate friends, the cleverest
+talkers among his set, two or three who used to hold forth particularly
+brilliantly in his rooms on Socialism and the slavish stupidity of
+Germans, have each had an order and an advancement of some sort.
+Kloster was at the palace this afternoon.  He knew about it yesterday
+when I was having my lesson.  _Kloster_.  Of all men.  I feel sick.
+
+Bernd didn't come to dinner, but was able to be with me for half an
+hour afterwards, half an hour of comfort I badly needed, for where can
+one's feet be set firmly and safely in this upheaving world?  The
+Colonel was at dinner; he comes to nearly every meal; and it was he who
+started talking about Kloster's audience with Majestat this afternoon.
+
+I jumped as though some one had hit me.  "That _can't_ be true," I
+exclaimed, exactly as one calls out quickly if one is suddenly struck.
+
+They all looked at me.  Somehow I saw that they had known about it
+beforehand, and Bernd told me tonight it was the Graf who had drawn the
+authorities' attention to the desirability of having tongues like
+Kloster's on the side of the Hohenzollerns.
+
+"Dear child," said the Grafin gently, "we Germans do not permit our
+great to go unhonoured."
+
+"But he would never--" I began; then remembered my lesson yesterday and
+his silence.  So that's what it was.  He already had his command to
+attend at the palace and be decorated in his pocket.
+
+I sat staring straight before me.  Kloster bought?  Kloster for sale?
+And the Government at such a crisis finding time to bother about him?
+
+"_Ja, ja_," said the Colonel gaily, as though answering my
+thoughts--and I found I had been staring, without seeing him, straight
+into his eyes, "_ja, ja_, we think of everything here."
+
+"Not," gently amended the Grafin, "that it was difficult to think of
+honouring so great a genius as our dear Kloster.  He has been in
+Majestat's thoughts for years."
+
+"I expect he has," I said; for Kloster has often told me how they hated
+him at court, him and his friends, but that he was too well known all
+over the world for them to be able to interfere with him; something
+like, I expect, Tolstoi and the Russian court.
+
+The Grafin looked at me quickly.
+
+"And so has Majestat been in his," I continued.
+
+"Kloster," said the Grafin very gently, "is a most amusing talker, and
+sometimes cannot resist saying the witty things that occur to him,
+however undesirable they may be.  We all know they mean nothing.  We
+all understand and love our Kloster.  And nobody, as you see, dear
+child, more than Majestat, with his ever ready appreciation of genius."
+
+I could only sit silent, staring at my plate.  Kloster gone.  Kloster
+allowing himself to be gagged by a decoration.  I wanted to push the
+intolerable thought away from me and cry out, "No, it _can't_ be."
+
+Why, who can one believe in now?  Who is left?  There's Bernd, my
+beloved, my heart's own mate; and as I sat there dumb, and they all
+triumphed on with their self-congratulations and satisfactions, and
+Majestat this, and Deutschland that, for an awful moment my faith in
+Bernd himself began to shake.  Suppose he too, he with his Prussian
+blood and upbringing, fell away and went over in spirit to the side of
+life that decorates a man in return for the absolute control of his
+thoughts, rewards him for the disposal of his soul?  Kloster, that
+freest of critics, had gone over, his German blood after all unable to
+resist the call to slavery.  I never could have believed it.  I never
+_would_ have believed it without actual proof.  And Bernd?  What about
+Bernd?  For I haven't more believed in Kloster than I do in Bernd.  Oh,
+little mother, I was cold with fear.
+
+Then he came.  My dear one came for a blessed half hour.  And because
+we, thank God, are betrothed, and so have the right to be alone
+together, we got rid of those smug triumphant others; and if he had
+happened not to be able to come, and I had had to wait till tomorrow,
+all night long thinking of Kloster, I believe I'd have gone mad.  For
+you see one believes so utterly in a person one _does_ believe in.  At
+least, I do.  I can't manage caution in belief, I can't give prudently,
+carefully, holding back part, as I'm told a woman does if she is really
+clever, in either faith or love.  And how is one to get on without
+faith and love?  Bernd comforted me.  And he comforted me most by my
+finding how greatly he needed to be comforted himself.  He was every
+bit as profoundly shaken and shocked as I was.  Oh, the relief of
+discovering that!
+
+We clung to each other, and comforted each other like two hurt
+children.  Kloster has been so much to us both.  More, perhaps, here in
+this place of hypocrisy and self-deceptions, than he would have been
+anywhere else.  He stood for fearlessness, for freedom, for beauty, for
+all the great things.  And now he has gone; silent, choked by the _Rote
+Adler Orden Erste Klasse_.  It is an order with three classes.  We
+wondered bitterly whether he couldn't have been had cheaper,--whether
+second, or even third class, wouldn't have done it.  He is now a
+_Wirkliche Geheimrath mit dem Pradikat Excellenz_.  God rest his soul.
+
+  Chris.
+
+
+
+
+  _Berlin, Monday, August 3rd, 1914_.
+
+Darling own mother,
+
+It's only a matter of hours now before Bernd will have to go, and when
+he goes I'm coming back to you.
+
+Your Chris.
+
+
+
+
+  _Berlin, Monday August 3rd, evening_.
+
+Precious mother,
+
+I want to come back to you--directly Bernd has gone I'm coming back to
+you, and if he doesn't go soon but is used in Berlin at the Staff Head
+Quarters, as he says now perhaps he may be for a while, I won't stay
+with the Koseritzes, but go back to Frau Berg's for as long as Bernd is
+in Berlin, and the day he leaves I start for Switzerland.
+
+I don't know what is happening, but the Koseritzes have suddenly turned
+different to me.  They're making me feel more and more uncomfortable
+and strange.  And there's a gloom about them and the people who have
+been here today that sets me wondering whether their war plans after
+all are rolling along quite as smoothly as they thought.  I never did
+quite believe the Koseritzes liked me, any of them, and now I'm sure
+they don't.  Tonight at dinner the Graf's face was a thunder-cloud, and
+actually the Colonel, who hasn't been all day but came in late for
+dinner and went again immediately, didn't speak to me once.  Hardly
+looked at me when he bowed, and his bow was the stiffest thing.  I
+can't ask anybody if there is bad news for Germany, for it would be a
+most dreadful insult even to suggest there _could_ be bad news.
+Besides, I feel as if I somehow were mixed up in whatever it is.  Bernd
+hasn't been since this morning.  I shall go round to Frau Berg tomorrow
+and ask her if I can have my old room.  But oh, little beloved mother,
+I feel torn in two!  I want so dreadfully to get away, to go back to
+you, and the thought of being at Frau Berg's, just waiting, waiting for
+the tiny scraps of moments Bernd can come to me, fills me with horror.
+And yet how can I leave him?  I love him so.  And once he has gone,
+shall I ever see him again?  If it weren't for him I'd have started for
+Switzerland yesterday, the moment I heard about Kloster, for the whole
+reason for my being in Berlin was only Kloster,
+
+And now Kloster says he isn't going to teach me any more.  Darling
+mother, I'm so sorry to have to tell you this, but it's true.  He sent
+round a note this evening saying he regretted he couldn't continue the
+lessons.  Just that.  Not another word.  I can't make anything out any
+more.  I've got nobody but Bernd to ask, and I only see him in briefest
+snatches.  Of course I knew the lessons would be strange and painful
+now, but I thought we could manage, Kloster and I, by excluding
+everything but the bare teaching and learning, to go on and finish what
+we've begun.  He knows how important it is to me.  He knows what this
+journey here has meant to us, to you and me, the difficulty of it, the
+sacrifice.  I'm very unhappy tonight, darling mother, and selfishly
+crying out to you.  I feel almost like leaving Bernd, and starting for
+Glion tomorrow.  And then when I think of him without me--He's as
+spiritually alone in this welter as I am.  I'm the only one he has, the
+only human being who understands.  Today he said, holding me in his
+arms--you should see how we cling to each other now as if we were
+drowning--"When this is over, Chris, when I've paid off my bill of duty
+and settled with them here to the last farthing of me that I've
+promised them, we'll go away for ever.  We'll never come back.  We'll
+never be caught again."
+
+
+
+  _Berlin, Tuesday, August 4th, 1914_.
+
+My beloved mother,
+
+The atmosphere in this house really is intolerable, and I'm going back
+to Frau Berg's tomorrow morning.  I've settled it with her by
+telephone, and I can have my old room.  However lonely I am in it
+without my lessons and Kloster, without the reason there was for being
+there before, I won't have this horrid feeling of being in a place full
+of sudden and unaccountable hostility.  Bernd came this morning, and
+the Grafin told him I was out, and he went away again.  She couldn't
+have thought I was out, for I always tell her when I'm going, so she
+wants to separate us.  But why?  Why?  And oh, it means so much to me
+to see him, it was so cruel to find out by accident that he had been!
+A woman who was at lunch happened to say she had met him coming out of
+the front door as she came in.
+
+"What--was Bernd here?" I exclaimed, half getting up on a sort of
+impulse to run after him and try and catch him in the street.
+
+"Helena thought you had gone out," said the Grafin.
+
+"But you _knew_ I hadn't," I said, turning on Helena.
+
+"Helena knew nothing of the sort," said the Grafin severely.  "She said
+what she believed to be true.  I must request you, Christine, not to
+cast doubts on her word.  We Germans do not lie."
+
+And the Graf muttered, "_Peinlich, peinlich_" and pushed hack his chair
+and left the room.
+
+"You have spoilt my husband's lunch," said the Grafin sternly.
+
+"I am very sorry," I said; and tried to go on with my own, but couldn't
+see it because I was blinded by tears.
+
+After this there was nothing for it but Frau Berg.  I waited till the
+Grafin was alone, and then went and told her I thought it better I
+should go back to the Lutzowstrasse, and would like, if she didn't
+mind, to go tomorrow.  It was very _peinlich_, as they say; for however
+much people want to get rid of you they're always angry if you want to
+go.  I said all I could that was grateful, and there was quite a lot I
+could say by blotting out the last two days from my remembrance.  I
+did, being greatly at sea and perplexed, ask what it was that I had
+done to offend her; though of course she didn't tell me, and was only
+still more offended at being asked.
+
+I'm going to pack now, and write a letter to Bernd telling him about
+it, in case Helena should have a second unfortunate conviction that I'm
+not at home when he comes next.  And I do try to be cheerful, little
+mother, and keep my soul from getting hurt, and when I'm at Frau Berg's
+I shall feel more normal again I expect.  But one has such fears--oh,
+more than just fears, terrors--Well, I won't go on writing in this
+mood.  I'll pack.
+
+  Your own Chris.
+
+
+
+
+  _At Frau Berg's, August 4th, 1914, very late_.
+
+Precious mother,
+
+I'm coming back to you.  Don't be unhappy about me.  Don't think I'm
+coming back mangled, a bleeding thing, because you see, I still have
+Bernd.  I still believe in him--oh, with my whole being.  And as long
+as I do that how can I be anything but happy?  It's strange how, now
+that the catastrophe has come, I'm quite calm, sitting here at Frau
+Berg's in my old room in the middle of the night writing to you.  I
+think it's because the whole thing is so great that I'm like this, like
+somebody who has had a mortal blow, and because it's mortal doesn't
+feel.  But this isn't mortal.  I've got Bernd and you,--only now I must
+have great patience.  Till I see him again.  Till war is over and he
+comes for me, and I shall be with him always.
+
+I'm coming to you, dear mother.  It's finished here.  I'm going to
+describe it all quite calmly to you.  I'm not going to be unworthy of
+Bernd, I won't have less of dignity and patience than he has.  If you'd
+seen him tonight saying good-bye to me, and stopped by the Colonel!
+His look as he obeyed--I shan't forget it.  When next I'm weak and base
+I shall remember it, and it will save me.
+
+At dinner there were only the Grafin and Helena and me, and they didn't
+speak a word, not only not to me but not to each other, and in the
+middle a servant brought in a note for the Grafin from the Graf, he
+said, and when she had looked at it she got up and went out.  We
+finished our dinner in dead silence, and I was going up to my room when
+the Grafin's maid came after me and said would I go to her mistress.
+She was alone in the drawingroom, sitting at her writing table, though
+she wasn't writing, and when I came in she said, without turning round,
+that she must ask me to leave her house at once, that very evening.
+She said that apart from her private feelings, which were all in favour
+of my going--she would be quite frank, she said--there were serious
+political reasons why I shouldn't stay even as long as till tomorrow.
+The Graf's career, his position in the ministry, their social position,
+Majestat,--I really don't remember all she said, and it matters so
+little, so little.  I listened, trying to understand, trying to give
+all my attention to it and disentangle it, while my heart was thumping
+so because of Bernd.  For I was being turned out in disgrace, and I am
+his betrothed, and so I am his honour, and whatever of shame there is
+for me there is of shame for him.
+
+The Grafin got more and more unsteady in her voice as she went on.  She
+was trying hard to keep calm, but she was evidently feeling so acutely,
+so violently, that it was distressing to, have to watch her.  I was so
+sorry.  I wanted to put my arms round her and tell her not to mind so
+much, that of course I'd go, but if only she wouldn't mind so much
+whatever it was.  Then at last she began to lose her hold on herself,
+and got up and walked about the room saying things about England.  So
+then I knew.  And I knew the answer to everything that has been
+perplexing me.  They'd been afraid of it the last two days, and now
+they knew it.  England isn't going to fold her arms and look on.  Oh,
+how I loved England then!  Standing in that Berlin drawingroom in the
+heart of the Junker-military-official set, all by myself in what I
+think and feel,--how I loved her!  My heart was thumping five minutes
+before for fear of shame, now it thumped so that I couldn't have said
+anything if I'd wanted to for gladness and pride.  I was a bit of
+England.  I think to know how much one loves England one has to be in
+Germany.  I forgot Bernd for a moment, my heart was so full of that
+other love, that proud love for one's country when it takes its stand
+on the side of righteousness.  And presently the Grafin said it all,
+tumbled it all out,--that England was going to declare war, and under
+circumstances so shameful, so full of the well-known revolting
+hypocrisy, that it made an honest German sick.  "Belgium!" she cried,
+"What is Belgium?  An excuse, a pretence, one more of the sickening,
+whining phrases with which you conceal your gluttonous opportunism--"
+And so she continued, while I stood silent.
+
+Oh well, all that doesn't matter now,--I'm in a hurry, I want to get
+this letter off to you tonight.  Luckily there's a letter-box a few
+yards away, so I won't have to face much of those awful streets that
+are yelling now for England's blood.
+
+I went up and got my things together.  I knew Bernd would get the
+letter I posted to him this morning telling him I was going to Frau
+Berg's tomorrow, so I felt safe about seeing him, even if he didn't
+come in to the Koseritzes before I left.  But he did come in.  He came
+just as I was going downstairs carrying my violin-case--how foolish and
+outside of life that music business seems now--and he seized my hand
+and took me into the drawingroom.
+
+"Not in here, not in here!" cried the Grafin, getting up excitedly.
+"Not again, not ever again does an Englishwoman come into my
+drawingroom--"
+
+Bernd went to her and drew her hand through his arm and led her
+politely to the door, which he shut after her.  Then he came back to
+me.  "You know, Chris," he said, "about England?"
+
+"Of course--just listen," I answered, for in the street newsboys were
+yelling _Kriegserklarung Englands_, and there was a great dull roaring
+as of a multitude of wild beasts who have been wounded.
+
+"You must go to your mother at once--tomorrow," he said.  "Before
+you're noticed, before there's been time to make your going difficult."
+
+I told him the Grafin had asked me to leave, and I was coming here
+tonight.  He wasted no words on the Koseritzes, but was anxious lest
+Frau Berg mightn't wish to take me in now.  He said he would come with
+me and see that she did, and place me under her care as part of
+himself.  "And tomorrow you run.  You run to Switzerland, without
+telling Frau Berg or a soul where you are going," he said.  "You just
+go out, and don't come back.  I'll settle with Frau Berg afterwards.
+You go to the Anhalter station--on your feet, Chris, as though you were
+going for a walk--and get into the first train for Geneva, Zurich,
+Lausanne, anywhere as long as it's Switzerland.  You'll want all your
+intelligence.  Have you money enough?"
+
+"Yes, yes," I said, feeling every second was precious and shouldn't be
+wasted; but he opened my violin-case and put a lot of banknotes into it.
+
+"And have you courage enough?" he asked, taking my face in his hands
+and looking into my eyes.
+
+Oh the blessedness, the blessedness of being near him, of hearing and
+seeing him.  What couldn't I and wouldn't I be and do for Bernd?
+
+I told him I had courage enough, for I had him, and I wouldn't fail in
+it, nor in patience.
+
+"We shall want both, my Chris," he said, his face against mine, "oh, my
+Chris--!"
+
+And then the Colonel walked in.
+
+"Herr Leutnant?" he said, in a raucous voice, as though he were
+ordering troops about.
+
+At the sound of it Bernd instantly became rigid and stood at
+attention,--the perfect automaton, except that I was hanging on his arm.
+
+"_Zur Befehl_, Herr Oberst," he said.
+
+"Take that woman's hand off your arm, Herr Leutnant," said the Colonel
+sharply.
+
+Bernd gently put my hand off, and I put it back again.
+
+"We are going to be married," I said to the Colonel, "and perhaps I may
+not see Bernd for a long while after tonight."
+
+"No German officer marries an alien enemy," snapped out the Colonel.
+"Remove the woman's hand, Herr Leutnant."
+
+Again Bernd gently took my hand, but I held on.  "This is good-bye,
+then?" I said, looking up at him and clinging to him.
+
+He was facing the Colonel, rigid, his profile to me; but he did at that
+turn his head and look at me.  "Remember--" he breathed.
+
+"I forbid all talking, Herr Leutnant," snapped the Colonel.
+
+"Never mind him," I whispered.  "What does _he_ matter?  Remember what,
+my Bernd, my own beloved?"
+
+"Remember courage--patience--" he murmured quickly, under his breath.
+
+"Silence!" shouted the Colonel.  "Take that woman's hand off your arm,
+Herr Leutnant.  _Kreutzhimmeldonnerwetter nochmal_.  Instantly."
+
+Bernd took my hand, and raising it to his face kissed it slowly and
+looked at me.  I shall not forget that look.
+
+The Colonel, who was very red and more like an infuriated machine than
+a human being, stepped on one side and pointed to the door.  "Precede
+me," he said.  "On the instant.  March."
+
+And Bernd went out as if on parade.
+
+When shall we see each other again?  Only a fortnight, one fortnight
+and two days, have we been lovers.  But such things can't be measured
+by time.  They are of eternity.  They are for always.  If he is killed,
+and the rest of my years are empty, we still will have had the whole of
+life.
+
+And now there's tomorrow, and my getting away.  You won't be anxious,
+dear mother.  You'll wait quietly and patiently till I come.  I'll
+write to you on the way if I can.  It may take several days to get to
+Switzerland, and it may be difficult to get out of Germany.  I think I
+shall say I'm an American.  Frau Berg, poor thing, will be relieved to
+find me gone.  She only took me in tonight because of Bernd.  While she
+was demurring on the threshold, when at last I got to her after a
+terrifying walk through the crowds,--for I was afraid they would notice
+me and see, as they always do, that I'm English,--his soldier servant
+brought her a note from him which just turned the scale for me.  I'm
+afraid humanity wouldn't have done it, nor pity, for patriotism and
+pity don't go well together here.
+
+I wonder if you'll believe how calmly I'm going to bed and to sleep
+tonight, on the night of what might seem to be the ruin of my
+happiness.  I'm glad I've written everything down that has happened
+this evening.  It has got it so clear to me.  I don't want ever to
+forget one word or look of Bernd's tonight.  I don't want ever to
+forget his patience, his dear look of untouchable dignity, when the
+Colonel, because he is in authority and can be cruel, at such a moment
+in the lives of two poor human beings was so unkind.
+
+God bless and keep you, my mother,--my dear sweet mother.
+
+  Your Chris.
+
+
+
+
+  _Halle, Wednesday night, August 5th, 1914_.
+
+I've got as far as this, and hope to get on in an hour or two.  We've
+been stopped to let troop trains pass.  They go rushing by one after
+the other, packed with waving, shouting soldiers, all of them with
+flowers stuck about them, in their buttonholes and caps.  I've been
+watching them.  There's no end to them.  And the enthusiasm of the
+crowds on the platform as they go by never slackens.  I'm making for
+Zurich.  I tried for Bale.  but couldn't get into Switzerland that
+way,--it is _abgesperrt_.  I hadn't much difficulty getting a ticket in
+Berlin.  There was such confusion and such a rush at the ticket office
+that the man just asked me why I wanted to go; and I said I was
+American and rejoining my mother, and he flung me the ticket, only too
+glad to get rid of me.  Don't expect me till you see me, for we shall
+be held up lots of times, I'm sure.
+
+I'm all right, mother darling.  It was fearfully hot all day, squeezed
+tight in a third class carriage--no other class to be had.  It's cold
+and draughty in this station by comparison, and I wish I had my coat.
+I've brought nothing away with me, except my fiddle and what would go
+into its case, which was handkerchiefs.  Bernd will see that my things
+get sent on, I expect.  I locked everything up in my trunk,--your
+letters, and all my precious things.  An official came along the train
+at Wittenberg, and after eyeing us all in my compartment suddenly held
+out his hand to me and said, "_Ihre Papiere_."  As I haven't got any I
+told him about being an American, and as much family history not till
+then known to me as I could put into German.  The other passengers
+listened eagerly, but not unfriendly.  I think if you're a woman, not
+being old helps one in Germany.
+
+Now I'm going to get some hot coffee, for it has turned cold, I think,
+and post this.  The one thing in life now that seems of desperate
+importance is to get to you.  Oh, little mother, the moment when I
+reach you!  It will be like getting to heaven, like getting at last,
+after many wanderings, and batterings, to the feet of God.
+
+We _ought_ to be at Waldshut, on the frontier, tomorrow morning, but
+nobody can say for certain, because we may be held up for hours
+anywhere on the way.
+
+  Your Chris.
+
+It's a good thing being too tired to think.
+
+
+
+
+  _Wursburg, Thursday, August 6th, 1914, 4 p. m_.
+
+I've only got as far as this.  I was held up this time, not the train.
+It went on without me.  Well, it doesn't matter really; it only keeps
+me a little longer from you.
+
+We stopped here about ten o'clock this morning, and I was so tired and
+stiff after the long night wedged in tight in the railway carriage that
+I got out to get some air and unstiffen myself, instinctively clutching
+my fiddle-case; and a Bavarian officer on the platform, watching the
+train with some soldiers, saw me and came over to me at once and
+demanded to see my papers.
+
+"You are English," he said; and when I said I was American he made a
+sound like Tcha.
+
+I can't tell you how horrid he was.  He kept me standing for two hours
+in the blazing sun.  You can imagine what I felt like when I saw my
+train going away without me.  I asked if I mightn't go into the shade,
+into the waiting-room, anywhere out of the terrible sun, for I was
+positively dripping after the first half hour of it, and his answer to
+that and to anything else I said in protest was always the same:
+"_Krieg ist Krieg.  Mund halten_."
+
+There was no _reason_ why I shouldn't be in the shade, except that he
+had power to prevent it.  Well, he was very young, and I don't suppose
+had ever had so much power before, so I suppose it was natural, he
+being German.  But it was a most ridiculous position.  I tried to see
+it from that side and be amused, but I wasn't amused.  While he went
+and telephoned to his superiors for instructions he put a soldier to
+guard me, and of course the people waiting on the platform for trains
+crowded to look.  They decided that I was no doubt a spy, and certainly
+and manifestly one of the swinish English, they said.  I wished then I
+couldn't understand German.  I stood there doing my best to think it
+was all very funny, but I was too tired to succeed, and hadn't had any
+breakfast, and they were too rude.  Then I tried to think it was just a
+silly dream, and that I had really got to Glion, and would wake up in a
+minute in a cool bedroom with the light coming through green shutters,
+and there'd be the lake, and the mountains opposite with snow on them,
+and you, my blessed, blessed little mother, calling me to breakfast.
+But it was too hot and distinct and horribly consistent to be a dream.
+And my clothes were getting wetter and wetter with the heat, and
+sticking to me.
+
+I want to get to you.  That's all I think of now.  There isn't a train
+till tonight, and then only as far as Stuttgart.  I expect this letter
+will get to you long before I do, because I may be kept at Stuttgart.
+
+Another officer, higher up than the first one, let me go.  He was more
+decent.  He came and questioned me, and said that as he couldn't prove
+I wasn't American he preferred to risk believing that I was, rather
+than inconvenience a lady belonging to a friendly nation, or something
+like that.  I don't know what he said really, for by that time I was
+stupid because of the sun beating down so.  But he let me go, and I
+came here to the restaurant to get something to drink.  He came after
+me, to see that I was not further inconvenienced, he said, so I thought
+I'd tell him I was going to marry one of his fellow-officers.  He
+changed completely then, when I told him Bernd's name and regiment, and
+was really polite and really saw that I wasn't further inconvenienced.
+Dear Bernd!  Even just his name saves me.
+
+I went to sleep on the bench in the waiting room after I had drunk a
+great deal of iced milk.  My fiddle-case was the pillow.  Poor fiddle.
+It seems such a useless, futile thing now.
+
+It was so nice lying down flat, and not having to do anything.  The
+waiter says there's a place I can wash in, and I suppose I'd better go
+and wash after I've posted this, but I don't want to particularly.  I
+don't want to do anything, particularly, except shut my eyes and wait
+till I get to you.  But I think I'll go out into the sun and warm
+myself up again, for it's cold in here.  Dear mother, I'm a great deal
+nearer to you than I've been for weeks.  Won't you borrow a map, and
+see where Wurzburg is?
+
+  Your Chris.
+
+          *          *          *          *          *
+
+
+Transcriber's note:  The following is my attempt to convert the music
+                     found earlier in this book into Lilypond format.
+                     Search for "G minor Bach".
+
+                       {
+                       \clef treble \key b \major \time 4/4
+                       r8 d8 d8[ d8]
+                       \bar "|"
+                       d8[ c8[ b16]] c8[ a8]
+                       \bar "|"
+                       b8
+                       }
+
+                     This was produced by a combination of examining
+                     other Lilypond files and on-line research.  I
+                     know little of music reading or theory, so any
+                     errors are mine.  I have made no attempt to
+                     create any Lilypond "wrapper" components that
+                     may be required.
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12683 ***
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+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
+the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org.
+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
+jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize
+this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright
+status under the laws that apply to them.
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+++ b/README.md
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #12683 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12683)
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Christine, by Alice Cholmondeley
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Christine
+
+Author: Alice Cholmondeley
+
+Release Date: June 22, 2004  [eBook #12683]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: US-ASCII
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHRISTINE***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Al Haines
+
+
+
+CHRISTINE
+
+BY
+
+ALICE CHOLMONDELEY
+
+1917
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHRISTINE
+
+My daughter Christine, who wrote me these letters, died at a hospital
+in Stuttgart on the morning of August 8th, 1914, of acute double
+pneumonia. I have kept the letters private for nearly three years,
+because, apart from the love in them that made them sacred things in
+days when we each still hoarded what we had of good, they seemed to me,
+who did not know the Germans and thought of them, as most people in
+England for a long while thought, without any bitterness and with a
+great inclination to explain away and excuse, too extreme and sweeping
+in their judgments.  Now, as the years have passed, and each has been
+more full of actions on Germany's part difficult to explain except in
+one way and impossible to excuse, I feel that these letters, giving a
+picture of the state of mind of the German public immediately before
+the War, and written by some one who went there enthusiastically ready
+to like everything and everybody, may have a certain value in helping
+to put together a small corner of the great picture of Germany which it
+will be necessary to keep clear and naked before us in the future if
+the world is to be saved.
+
+I am publishing the letters just as they came to me, leaving out
+nothing.  We no longer in these days belong to small circles, to
+limited little groups.  We have been stripped of our secrecies and of
+our private hoards.  We live in a great relationship.  We share our
+griefs; and anything there is of love and happiness, any smallest
+expression of it, should be shared too.  This is why I am leaving out
+nothing in the letters.
+
+The war killed Christine, just as surely as if she had been a soldier
+in the trenches.  I will not write of her great gift, which was
+extraordinary.  That too has been lost to the world, broken and thrown
+away by the war.
+
+I never saw her again.  I had a telegram saying she was dead.  I tried
+to go to Stuttgart, but was turned back at the frontier.  The two last
+letters, the ones from Halle and from Wurzburg, reached me after I knew
+that she was dead.
+
+  ALICE CHOLMONDELEY,
+  London, May, 1917.
+
+
+
+
+Publishers' Note
+
+The Publishers have considered it best to alter some of the personal
+names in the following pages.
+
+
+
+
+CHRISTINE
+
+
+  _Lutzowstrasse 49, Berlin,
+  Thursday, May 28th, 1914_.
+
+My blessed little mother,
+
+Here I am safe, and before I unpack or do a thing I'm writing you a
+little line of love.  I sent a telegram at the station, so that you'll
+know at once that nobody has eaten me on the way, as you seemed rather
+to fear.  It is wonderful to be here, quite on my own, as if I were a
+young man starting his career.  I feel quite solemn, it's such a great
+new adventure, Kloster can't see me till Saturday, but the moment I've
+had a bath and tidied up I shall get out my fiddle and see if I've
+forgotten how to play it between London and Berlin.  If only I can be
+sure you aren't going to be too lonely!  Beloved mother, it will only
+be a year, or even less if I work fearfully hard and really get on, and
+once it is over a year is nothing.  Oh, I know you'll write and tell me
+you don't mind a bit and rather like it, but you see your Chris hasn't
+lived with you all her life for nothing; she knows you very well
+now,--at least, as much of your dear sacred self that you will show
+her.  Of course I know you're going to be brave and all that, but one
+can be very unhappy while one is being brave, and besides, one isn't
+brave unless one is suffering.  The worst of it is that we're so poor,
+or you could have come with me and we'd have taken a house and set up
+housekeeping together for my year of study.  Well, we won't be poor for
+ever, little mother.  I'm going to be your son, and husband, and
+everything else that loves and is devoted, and I'm going to earn both
+our livings for us, and take care of you forever.  You've taken care of
+me till now, and now it's my turn.  You don't suppose I'm a great
+hulking person of twenty two, and five foot ten high, and with this
+lucky facility in fiddling, for nothing?  It's a good thing it is
+summer now, or soon will be, and you can work away in your garden, for
+I know that is where you are happiest; and by the time it's winter
+you'll be used to my not being there, and besides there'll be the
+spring to look forward to, and in the spring I come home, finished.
+Then I'll start playing and making money, and we'll have the little
+house we've dreamed of in London, as well as our cottage, and we'll be
+happy ever after.  And after all, it is really a beautiful arrangement
+that we only have each other in the world, because so we each get the
+other's concentrated love.  Else it would be spread out thin over a
+dozen husbands and brothers and people.  But for all that I do wish
+dear Dad were still alive and with you.
+
+This pension is the top fiat of a four-storied house, and there isn't a
+lift, so I arrived breathless, besides being greatly battered and all
+crooked after my night sitting up in the train; and Frau Berg came and
+opened the door herself when I rang, and when she saw me she threw up
+two immense hands and exclaimed, "_Herr Gott_!"
+
+"_Nicht wahr_?" I said, agreeing with her, for I knew I must be looking
+too awful.
+
+She then said, while I stood holding on to my violin-case and umbrella
+and coat and a paper bag of ginger biscuits I had been solacing myself
+with in the watches of the night, that she hadn't known when exactly to
+expect me, so she had decided not to expect me at all, for she had
+observed that the things you do not expect come to you, and the things
+you do expect do not; besides, she was a busy woman, and busy women
+waste no time expecting anything in any case; and then she said, "Come
+in."
+
+"_Seien Sie willkommen, mein Fraulein_," she continued, with a sort of
+stern cordiality, when I was over the threshold, holding out both her
+hands in massive greeting; and as both mine were full she caught hold
+of what she could, and it was the bag of biscuits, and it burst.
+
+"_Herr Gott_!" cried Frau Berg again, as they rattled away over the
+wooden floor of the passage, "_Herr Gott, die schonen Kakes_!" And she
+started after them; so I put down my things on a chair and started
+after them too, and would you believe it the biscuits came out of the
+corners positively cleaner than when they went in.  The floor cleaned
+the biscuits instead of, as would have happened in London, the biscuits
+cleaning the floor, so you can be quite happy about its being a clean
+place.
+
+It is a good thing I learned German in my youth, for even if it is so
+rusty at present that I can only say things like _Nicht wahr_, I can
+understand everything, and I'm sure I'll get along very nicely for at
+least a week on the few words that somehow have stuck in my memory.
+I've discovered they are:
+
+  _Nicht wahr,
+  Wundervoll,
+  Naturlich,
+  Herrlich,
+  Ich gratuliere,
+    and
+  Doch_.
+
+And the only one with the faintest approach to contentiousness, or
+acidity, or any of the qualities that don't endear the stranger to the
+indigenous, is _doch_.
+
+My bedroom looks very clean, and is roomy and comfortable, and I shall
+be able to work very happily in it, I'm sure.  I can't tell you how
+much excited I am at getting here and going to study under the great
+Kloster!  You darling one, you beloved mother, stinting yourself,
+scraping your own life bare, so as to give me this chance.  _Won't_ I
+work.  And _work_.  _And_ work.  And in a year--no, we won't call it a
+year, we'll say in a few months--I shall come back to you for good,
+carrying my sheaves with me.  Oh, I hope there will be sheaves,--big
+ones, beautiful ones, to lay at your blessed feet!  Now I'll run down
+and post this.  I saw a letter-box a few yards down the street.  And
+then I'll have a bath and go to bed for a few hours, I think.  It is
+still only nine o'clock in the morning, so I have hours and hours of
+today before me, and can practise this afternoon and write to you again
+this evening.  So good-bye for a few hours, my precious mother.
+
+  Your happy Chris.
+
+
+
+  _May 28th.  Evening_.
+
+It's very funny here, but quite comfortable.  You needn't give a
+thought to my comforts, mother darling.  There's a lot to eat, and if
+I'm not in clover I'm certainly in feathers,--you should see the
+immense sackful of them in a dark red sateen bag on my bed!  As you
+have been in Germany trying to get poor Dad well in all those
+_Kurorten_, you'll understand how queer my bedroom looks, like a very
+solemn and gloomy drawingroom into which it has suddenly occurred to
+somebody to put a bed.  It is a tall room: tall of ceiling, which is
+painted at the corners with blue clouds and pink cherubim--unmistakable
+Germans--and tall of door, of which there are three, and tall of
+window, of which there are two.  The windows have long dark curtains of
+rep or something woolly, and long coffee-coloured lace curtains as
+well; and there's a big green majolica stove in one corner; and there's
+a dark brown wall-paper with gilt flowers on it; and an elaborate
+chandelier hanging from a coloured plaster rosette in the middle of the
+ceiling, all twisty and gilt, but it doesn't light,--Wanda, the maid of
+all work, brings me a petroleum lamp with a green glass shade to it
+when it gets dusk.  I've got a very short bed with a dark red sateen
+quilt on to which my sheet is buttoned a11 round, a pillow propped up
+so high on a wedge stuck under the mattress that I shall sleep sitting
+up almost straight, and then as a crowning glory the sack of feathers,
+which will do beautifully for holding me down when I'm having a
+nightmare.  In a corner, with an even greater air of being an
+afterthought than the bed, there's a very tiny washstand, and pinned on
+the wall behind it over the part of the wallpaper I might splash on
+Sunday mornings when I'm supposed really to wash, is a strip of grey
+linen with a motto worked on it in blue wool:
+
+  Eigener Heerd
+  Ist Goldes Werth
+
+which is a rhyme if you take it in the proper spirit, and isn't if you
+don't.  But I love the sentiment, don't you?  It seems peculiarly sound
+when one is in a room like this in a strange country.  And what I'm
+here for and am going to work for _is_ an _eigener Heerd_, with you and
+me one each side of it warming our happy toes on our very own fender.
+Oh, won't it be too lovely, mother darling, to be together again in our
+very own home!  Able to shut ourselves in, shut our front door in the
+face of the world, and just say to the world, "There now."
+
+There's a little looking-glass on a nail up above the _eigener Heerd_
+motto, so high that if it hadn't found its match in me I'd only be able
+to see my eyebrows in it.  As it is, I do see as far as my chin.  What
+goes on below that I shall never know while I continue to dwell in the
+Lutzowstrasse.  Outside, a very long way down, for the house has high
+rooms right through and I'm at the top, trams pass almost constantly
+along the street, clanging their bells.  They sound much more
+aggressive than other trams I have heard, or else it is because my ears
+are tired tonight.  There are double windows, though, which will shut
+out the noise while I'm practising--and also shut it in.  I mean to
+practise eight hours every day if Kloster will let me,--twelve if needs
+be, so I've made up my mind only to write to you on Sundays; for if I
+don't make a stern rule like that I shall be writing to you every day,
+and then what would happen to the eight hours?  I'm going to start them
+tomorrow, and try and get as ready as I can for the great man on
+Saturday.  I'm fearfully nervous and afraid, for so much depends on it,
+and in spite of knowing that somehow from somewhere I've got a kind of
+gift for fiddling.  Heaven knows where that little bit of luck came
+from, seeing that up to now, though you're such a perfect listener, you
+haven't developed any particular talent for playing anything, have you
+mother darling; and poor Dad positively preferred to be in a room where
+music wasn't.  Do you remember how he used to say he couldn't think
+which end of a violin the noises came out of, and whichever it was he
+wished they wouldn't?  But what a mercy, what a real mercy and solution
+of our difficulties, that I've got this one thing that perhaps I shall
+be able to do really well, I do thank God on my knees for this.
+
+There are four other boarders here,--three Germans and one Swede, and
+the Swede and two of the Germans are women; and five outside people
+come in for the midday dinner every day, all Germans, and four of them
+are men.  They have what they call _Abonnementskarten_ for their
+dinners, so much a month.  Frau Berg keeps an Open Midday Table--it is
+written up on a board on the street railing--and charges 1 mark 25
+pfennigs a dinner if a month's worth of them is taken, and 1 mark 50
+pfennigs if they're taken singly.  So everybody takes the month's
+worth, and it is going to be rather fun, I think.  Today I was solemnly
+presented to the diners, first collectively by Frau Berg as _Unser
+junge englische Gast_, Mees--no, I can't write what she made of
+Cholmondeley, but some day I'll pronounce it for you; and really it is
+hard on her that her one English guest, who might so easily have been
+Evans, or Dobbs, or something easy, should have a name that looks a
+yard long and sounds an inch short--and then each of them to me singly
+by name.  They all made the most beautiful stiff bows.  Some of them
+are students, I gathered; some, I imagine, are staying here because
+they have no homes,--wash-ups on the shores of life; some are clerks
+who come in for dinner from their offices near by; and one, the oldest
+of the men and the most deferred to, is a lawyer called Doctor
+something.  I suppose my being a stranger made them silent, for they
+were all very silent and stiff, but they'll get used to me quite soon I
+expect, for didn't you once rebuke me because everybody gets used to me
+much too soon?  Being the newest arrival I sat right at the end of the
+table in the darkness near the door, and looking along it towards the
+light it was really impressive, the concentration, the earnestness, the
+thoroughness, the skill, with which the two rows of guests dealt with
+things like gravy on their plates,--elusive, mobile things that are not
+caught without a struggle.  Why, if I can manage to apply myself to
+fiddling with half that skill and patience I shall be back home again
+in six months!
+
+I'm so sleepy, I must leave off and go to bed.  I did sleep this
+morning, but only for an hour or two; I was too much excited, I think,
+at having really got here to be able to sleep.  Now my eyes are
+shutting, but I do hate leaving off, for I'm not going to write again
+till Sunday, and that is two whole days further ahead, and you know my
+precious mother it's the only time I shall feel near you, when I'm
+talking to you in letters.  But I simply can't keep my eyes open any
+longer, so goodnight and good-bye my own blessed one, till Sunday.  All
+my heart's love to you.
+
+  Your Chris.
+
+We have supper at eight, and tonight it was cold herrings and fried
+potatoes and tea.  Do you think after a supper like that I shall be
+able to dream of anybody like you?
+
+
+
+  _Sunday, May 31st, 1914.
+
+Precious mother,
+
+I've been dying to write you at least six times a day since I posted my
+letter to you the day before yesterday, but rules are rules, aren't
+they, especially if one makes them oneself, because then the poor
+little things are so very helpless, and have to be protected.  I
+couldn't have looked myself in the face if I'd started off by breaking
+my own rule, but I've been thinking of you and loving you all the
+time--oh, so much!
+
+Well, I'm _very_ happy.  I'll say that first, so as to relieve your
+darling mind.  I've seen Kloster, and played to him, and he was
+fearfully kind and encouraging.  He said very much what Ysaye said in
+London, and Joachim when I was little and played my first piece to him
+standing on the dining-room table in Eccleston Square and staring
+fascinated, while I played, at the hairs of his beard, because I'd
+never been as close as that to a beard before.  So I've been walking on
+clouds with my chin well in the air, as who wouldn't?  Kloster is a
+little round, red, bald man, the baldest man I've ever seen; quite
+bald, with hardly any eyebrows, and clean-shaven as well.  He's the
+funniest little thing till you join him to a violin, and then--!  A
+year with him ought to do wonders for me.  He says so too; and when I
+had finished playing--it was the G minor Bach--you know,--the one with
+the fugue beginning:
+
+[Transcriber's note:  A Lilypond rendition of the music fragment can be
+found at the end of this e-text.]
+
+he solemnly shook hands with me and said--what do you think he
+said?--"My Fraulein, when you came in I thought, 'Behold yet one more
+well-washed, nice-looking, foolish, rich, nothing-at-all English Mees,
+who is going to waste my time and her money with lessons.'  I now
+perceive that I have to do with an artist.  My Fraulein _ich
+gratuliere_."  And he made me the funniest little solemn bow.  I
+thought I'd die of pride.
+
+I don't know why he thought me rich, seeing how ancient all my clothes
+are, and especially my blue jersey, which is what I put on because I
+can play so comfortably in it; except that, as I've already noticed,
+people here seem persuaded that everybody English is rich,--anyhow that
+they have more money than is good for them.  So I told him of our
+regrettable financial situation, and said if he didn't mind looking at
+my jersey it would convey to him without further words how very
+necessary it is that I should make some money.  And I told him I had a
+mother in just such another jersey, only it is a black one, and
+therefore somebody had to give her a new one before next winter, and
+there wasn't anybody to do it except me.
+
+He made me another little bow--(he talks English, so I could say a lot
+of things)--and he said, "My Fraulein, you need be in no anxiety.  Your
+Frau Mamma will have her jersey.  Those fingers of yours are full of
+that which turns instantly into gold."
+
+So now.  What do you think of that, my precious one?  He says I've got
+to turn to and work like a slave, practise with a _sozusagen
+verteufelte Unermudlichkeit_, as he put it, and if I rightly develop
+what he calls my unusual gift,--(I'm telling you exactly, and you know
+darling mother it isn't silly vainness makes me repeat these
+things,--I'm past being vain; I'm just bewildered with gratitude that I
+should happen to be able to fiddle)--at the end of a year, he declares,
+I shall be playing all over Europe and earning enough to make both you
+and me never have to think of money again.  Which will be a very
+blessed state to get to.
+
+You can picture the frame of mind in which I walked down his stairs and
+along the Potsdamerstrasse home.  I felt I could defy everybody now.
+Perhaps that remark will seem odd to you, but having given you such
+glorious news and told you how happy I am, I'll not conceal from you
+that I've been feeling a little forlorn at Frau Berg's.  Lonely.  Left
+out.  Darkly suspecting that they don't like me.
+
+You see, Kloster hadn't been able to have me go to him till yesterday,
+which was Saturday, and not then till the afternoon, so that I had had
+all Friday and most of Saturday to be at a loose end in, except for
+practising, and though I had got here prepared to find everybody very
+charming and kind it was somehow gradually conveyed to me, though for
+ages I thought it must be imagination, that Frau Berg and the other
+boarders and the _Mittagsgaste_ dislike me.  Well, I would have
+accepted it with a depressed resignation as the natural result of being
+unlikeable, and have tried by being pleasanter and pleasanter--wouldn't
+it have been a dreadful sight to see me screwing myself up more and
+more tightly to an awful pleasantness--to induce them to like me, but
+the people in the streets don't seem to like me either.  They're not
+friendly.  In fact they're rude.  And the people in the streets can't
+really personally dislike me, because they don't know me, so I can't
+imagine why they're so horrid.
+
+Of course one's ideal when one is in the streets is to be invisible,
+not to be noticed at all.  That's the best thing.  And the next best is
+to be behaved to kindly, with the patient politeness of the London
+policemen, or indeed of anybody one asks one's way of in England or
+Italy or France.  The Berlin man as he passes mutters the word
+_Englanderin_ as though it were a curse, or says into one's ear--they
+seem fond of saying or rather hissing this, and seem to think it both
+crushing and funny,--"_Ros bif_," and the women stare at one all over
+and also say to each other _Englanderin_.
+
+You never told me Germans were rude; or is it only in Berlin that they
+are, I wonder.  After my first expedition exploring through the
+Thiergarten and down Unter den Linden to the museums last Friday
+between my practisings, I preferred getting lost to asking anybody my
+way.  And as for the policemen, to whom I naturally turned when I
+wanted help, having been used to turning to policemen ever since I can
+remember for comfort and guidance, they simply never answered me at
+all.  They just stood and stared with a sort of mocking.  And of course
+they understood, for I got my question all ready beforehand.  I longed
+to hit them,--I who don't ever want to hit anybody, I whom you've so
+often reprimanded for being too friendly.  But the meekest lamb, a lamb
+dripping with milk and honey, would turn into a lion if its polite
+approaches were met with such wanton rudeness.  I was so indignantly
+certain that these people, any of them, policemen or policed, would
+have answered the same question with the most extravagant politeness if
+I had been an officer, or with an officer.  They grovel if an officer
+comes along; and a woman with an officer might walk on them if she
+wanted to.  They were rude simply because I was alone and a woman.  And
+that being so, though I spoke with the tongue of angels, as St.  Paul
+saith, and as I as a matter of fact did, if what that means is immense
+mellifluousness, it would avail me nothing.
+
+So when I was out, and being made so curiously to feel conspicuous and
+disliked, the knowledge that the only alternative was to go back to the
+muffled unfriendliness at Frau Berg's did make me feel a little
+forlorn.  I can tell you now, because of the joy I've had since.  I
+don't mind any more.  I'm raised up and blessed now.  Indeed I feel
+I've got much more by a long way than my share of good things, and with
+what Kloster said hugged secretly to my heart I'm placed outside the
+ordinary toiling-moiling that life means for most women who have got to
+wring a living out of it without having anything special to wring with.
+It's the sheerest, wonderfullest, most radiant luck that I've got this.
+Won't I just work.  Won't this funny frowning bedroom of mine become a
+temple of happiness.  I'm going to play Bach to it till it turns
+beautiful.
+
+I don't know why I always think of Bach first when I write about music.
+I think of him first as naturally when I think of music as I think of
+Wordsworth first when I think of poetry.  I know neither of them is the
+greatest, though Bach is the equal of the greatest, but they are the
+ones I love best.  What a world it is, my sweetest little mother!  It
+is so full of beauty.  And then there's the hard work that makes
+everything taste so good.  You have to have the hard work; I've found
+that out.  I do think it's a splendid world,--full of glory created in
+the past and lighting us up while we create still greater glory.  One
+has only got to shut out the parts of the present one doesn't like, to
+see this all clear and feel so happy.  I shut myself up in this
+bedroom, this ugly dingy bedroom with its silly heavy trappings, and
+get out my violin, and instantly it becomes a place of light, a place
+full of sound,--shivering with light and sound, the light and sound of
+the beautiful gracious things great men felt and thought long ago.  Who
+cares then about Frau Berg's boarders not speaking to one, and the
+Berlin streets and policemen being unkind?  Actually I forget the long
+miles and hours I am away from you, the endless long miles and hours
+that reach from me here to you there, and am happy, oh happy,--so happy
+that I could cry out for joy.  And so I would, I daresay, if it
+wouldn't spoil the music.
+
+There's Wanda coming to tell me dinner is ready.  She just bumps the
+soup-tureen against my door as she carries it down the passage to the
+diningroom, and calls out briefly, "_Essen_."
+
+I'll finish this tonight.
+
+
+  _Bedtime_.
+
+I just want to say goodnight, and tell you, in case you shouldn't have
+noticed it, how much your daughter loves you.  I mayn't practise on
+Sundays, because of the _Hausruhe_, Frau Berg says, and so I have time
+to think; and I'm astonished, mother darling, at the emptiness of life
+without you.  It is as though most of me had somehow got torn off, and
+I have to manage as best I can with a fragment.  What a good thing I
+feel it so much, for so I shall work all the harder to shorten the
+time.  Hard work is the bridge across which I'll get back to you.  You
+see, you're the one human being I've got in the world who loves me, the
+only one who is really, deeply, interested in me, who minds if I am
+hurt and is pleased if I am happy.  That's a watery word,--pleased; I
+should have said exults.  It is so wonderful, your happiness in my
+being happy,--so touching.  I'm all melted with love and gratitude when
+I think of it, and of the dear way you let me do this, come away here
+and realize my dream of studying with Kloster, when you knew it meant
+for you such a long row of dreary months alone.  Forgive me if I sound
+sentimental.  I know you will, so I needn't bother to ask.  That's what
+I so love about you,--you always understand, you never mind.  I can
+talk to you; and however idiotic I am, and whatever sort of a
+fool,--blind, unkind, ridiculous, obstinate or wilful--take your
+choice, little sweet mother, you'll remember occasions that were
+fitted by each of these--you look at me with those shrewd sweet eyes
+that always somehow have a laugh in them, and say some little thing
+that shows you are brushing aside all the ugly froth of nonsense,
+and are intelligently and with perfect detachment searching for the
+reason. And having found the reason you understand and forgive; for
+of course there always _is_ a reason when ordinary people, not born
+fiends, are disagreeable.  I'm sure that's why we've been so happy
+together,--because you've never taken anything I've done or said that
+was foolish or unkind personally.  You've always known it was just so
+much irrelevant rubbish, just an excrescence, a passing sickness;
+never, never your real Chris who loves you.
+
+Good-bye, my own blessed mother.  It's long past bedtime.  Tomorrow I'm
+to have my first regular lesson with Kloster.  And tomorrow I ought to
+get a letter from you.  You will take care of yourself, won't you?  You
+wouldn't like me to be anxious all this way off, would you?  Anxious,
+and not sure?
+
+  Your Chris.
+
+
+
+
+  _Berlin, Tuesday, June 2nd, 1914_.
+
+Darling mother, I've just got your two letters, two lovely long ones at
+once, and I simply can't wait till next Sunday to tell you how I
+rejoiced over them, so I'm going to squander 20 pfennigs just on that.
+I'm not breaking my rule and writing on a day that isn't Sunday,
+because I'm not really writing.  This isn't a letter, it's a kiss.  How
+glad I am you're so well and getting on so comfortably.  And I'm well
+and happy too, because I'm so busy,--you can't think how busy.  I'm
+working harder than I've ever done in my life, and Kloster is pleased
+with me.  So now that I've had letters from you there seems very little
+left in the world to want, and I go about on the tips of my toes.
+Good-bye my beloved one, till Sunday.
+
+  Chris.
+
+
+Oh, I must just tell you that at my lesson yesterday I played the Ernst
+F sharp minor concerto,---the virtuoso, firework thing, you know, with
+Kloster putting in bits of the orchestra part on the piano every now
+and then because he wanted to see what I could do in the way of
+gymnastics.  He laughed when I had finished, and patted my shoulder,
+and said, "Very good acrobatics.  Now we will do no more of them.  We
+will apply ourselves to real music."  And he said I was to play him
+what I could of the Bach Chaconne.
+
+I was so happy, little mother.  Kloster leading me about among the
+wonders of Bach, was like being taken by the hand by some great angel
+and led through heaven.
+
+
+
+  _Berlin, Sunday, June 7th, 1914_.
+
+On Sunday mornings, darling mother, directly I wake I remember it is my
+day for being with you.  I can hardly be patient with breakfast, and
+the time it takes to get done with those thick cups of coffee that are
+so thick that, however deftly I drink, drops always trickle down what
+would be my beard if I had one.  And I choke over the rolls, and I
+spill things in my hurry to run away and talk to you.  I got another
+letter from you yesterday, and Hilda Seeberg, a girl boarding here and
+studying painting, said when she met me in the passage after I had been
+reading it in my room, "You have had a letter from your _Frau Mutter,
+nicht_?"  So you see your letters shine in my face.
+
+Don't be afraid I won't take enough exercise.  I go for an immense walk
+directly after dinner every day, a real quick hot one through the
+Thiergarten.  The weather is fine, and Berlin I suppose is at its best,
+but I don't think it looks very nice after London.  There's no mystery
+about it, no atmosphere; it just blares away at you.  It has everything
+in it that a city ought to have,--public buildings, statues, fountains,
+parks, broad streets; and it is about as comforting and lovable as the
+latest thing in workhouses.  It looks disinfected; it has just that
+kind of rather awful cleanness.
+
+At dinner they talk of its beauty and its perfections till I nearly go
+to sleep.  You know how oddly sleepy one gets when one isn't
+interested.  They've left off being silent now, and have gone to the
+other extreme, and from not talking to me at all have jumped to talking
+to me all together.  They tell me over and over again that I'm in the
+most beautiful city in the world.  You never knew such eagerness and
+persistence as these German boarders have when it comes to praising
+what is theirs, and also when it comes to criticizing what isn't
+theirs.  They're so funny and personal.  They say, for instance, London
+is too hideous for words, and then they look at me defiantly, as though
+they had been insulting some personal defect of mine and meant to
+brazen it out.  They point out the horrors of the slums to me as though
+the slums were on my face.  They tell me pityingly what they look like,
+what terrible blots and deformities they are, and how I--they say
+England, but no one could dream from their manner that it wasn't
+me--can never hope to be regarded as fit for self-respecting European
+society while these spots and sore places are not purged away.
+
+The other day they assured me that England as a nation is really unfit
+for any decent other nation to know politically, but they added, with
+stiff bows in my direction, that sometimes the individual inhabitant of
+that low-minded and materialistic country is not without amiability,
+especially if he or she is by some miracle without the lofty,
+high-nosed manner that as a rule so regrettably characterizes the
+unfortunate people.  "_Sie sind so hochnasig_," the bank clerk who sits
+opposite me had shouted out, pointing an accusing finger at me; and for
+a moment I was so startled that I thought something disastrous had
+happened to my nose, and my anxious hand flew up to it.  Then they
+laughed; and it was after that that they made the speech conceding
+individual amiability here and there.
+
+I sit neatly in my chair while this sort of talk goes on--and it goes
+on at every meal now that they have got over the preliminary stage of
+icy coldness towards me--and I try to be sprightly, and bandy my six
+German words about whenever they seem appropriate.  Imagine your poor
+Chris trying to be sprightly with eleven Germans--no, ten Germans, for
+the eleventh is a Swede and doesn't say anything.  And the ten Germans,
+including Frau Berg, all fix their eyes reproachfully on me while as
+one man they tell me how awful my country is.  Do people in London
+boarding houses tell the German boarders how awful Germany is, I
+wonder?  I don't believe they do.  And I wish they would leave me alone
+about the Boer war.  I've tried to explain my extreme youth at the time
+it was going on, but they still appear to hold me directly responsible
+for it.  The fingers that have been pointed at me down that table on
+account of the Boer war!  They raise them at me, and shake them, and
+tell me of the terrible things the English did, and when I ask them how
+they know, they say it was in the newspapers; and when I ask them what
+newspapers, they say theirs; and when I ask them how they know it was
+true, they say they know because it was in the newspapers.  So there we
+are, stuck.  I take to English when the worst comes to the worst, and
+they flounder in after me.
+
+It is the funniest thing, their hostility to England, and the queer,
+reluctant, and yet passionate admiration that goes With it.  It is like
+some girl who can't get a man she admires very much to notice her.  He
+stays indifferent, while she gets more exasperated the more indifferent
+he stays; exasperated with the bitterness of thwarted love.  One day at
+dinner, when they had all been thumping away at me, this flashed across
+me as the explanation, and I exclaimed in English, "Why, you're in love
+with us!"
+
+Twenty round eyes stared at me, sombrely at first, not understanding,
+and then with horror slowly growing in them.
+
+"In love with you?  In love with England?" cried Frau Berg, the carving
+knife suspended in the air while she stared at me.  "_Nein, aber so
+was_!"  And she let down her heavy fists, knife and all, with a thud on
+the table.
+
+I thought I had best stand up to them, having started off so
+recklessly, and tried to lash myself into bravery by remembering how
+full I was of the blood of all the Cholmondeleys, let alone those
+relations of yours alleged to have fought alongside the Black Prince;
+so though I wished there were several of me rather than only one, I
+said with courage and obstinacy, "Passionately."
+
+You can't think how seriously they took it.  They all talked at once,
+very loud.  They were all extremely angry.  I wished I had kept quiet,
+for I couldn't elaborate my idea in my limping German, and it was quite
+difficult to go on smiling and behaving as though they were all not
+being rude, for I don't think they mean to be rude, and I was afraid,
+if I showed a trace of thinking they were that they might notice they
+were, and then they would have felt so uncomfortable, and the situation
+would have become, as they say, _peinlich_.
+
+Four of the Daily Dinner Guests are men, and one of the boarders is a
+man; and these five men and Frau Berg were the vociferous ones.  They
+exclaimed things like "_Nein, so was_!" and, "_Diese englische
+Hochmut_!" and single words like _unerhort_; and then one of them
+called Herr Doctor Krummlaut, who is a lawyer and a widower and much
+esteemed by the rest, detached himself from them and made me a
+carefully patient speech, in which he said how sorry they all were to
+see so young and gifted a lady,--(he bowed, and I bowed)--oh yes, he
+said, raising his hand as though to ward off any modest objections I
+might be going to make, only I wasn't going to make any, he had heard
+that I was undoubtedly gifted, and not only gifted but also, he would
+not be deterred from saying, and he felt sure his colleagues at the
+table would not be deterred from saying either if they were in his
+place, a lady of personal attractions,--(he bowed and I bowed,)--how
+sorry they all were to see a young Fraulein with these advantages,
+filled at the same time with opinions and views that were not only
+highly unsuitable to her sex but were also, in any sex, so terribly
+wrong.  Every lady, he said, should have some knowledge of history, and
+sufficient acquaintance with the three kinds of politics,--_Politik_,
+_Weltpolitik_, and _Realpolitik_, to enable her to avoid wrong and
+frivolous conclusions such as the one the young Fraulein had just
+informed them she had reached, and to listen intelligently to her
+husband or son when they discuss these matters.  He said a great deal
+more, about a woman knowing these things just enough but not too well,
+for her intelligence must not be strained because of her supreme
+function of being the cradle of the race; and the cradle part of her, I
+gather, isn't so useful if she is allowed to develop the other part of
+her beyond what is necessary for making an agreeable listener.
+
+It was no use even trying to explain what I had meant about Germany
+really being in love with England, because I hadn't got words enough;
+but that is exactly the impression I've received from my brief
+experiences of one corner of its life.  In this small corner of it,
+anyhow, it behaves exactly like a woman who is so unlucky as to love
+somebody who doesn't care about her.  She naturally, I imagine,--for I
+can only guess at these enslavements,--is very much humiliated and
+angry, and all the more because the loved and hated one--isn't it
+possible to love and hate at the same time, little mother?  I can
+imagine it quite well--is so indifferent as to whether she loves or
+hates.  And whichever she does, he is polite,--"Always gentleman," as
+the Germans say.  Which is, naturally, maddening.
+
+
+  _Evening_.
+
+Do you know I wrote to you the whole morning?  I wrote and wrote, with
+no idea how time was passing, and was astonished and indignant, for I
+haven't half told you all I want to, when I was called to dinner.  It
+seemed like shutting a door on you and leaving you outside without any
+dinner, to go away and have it without you.
+
+If it weren't for its being my day with you I don't know what I'd do
+with Sundays.  I would hate them.  I'm not allowed to play on Sundays,
+because practising is forbidden on that day, and, as Frau Berg said,
+how is she to know if I am practising or playing?  Besides, it would
+disturb the others, which of course is true, for they all rest on
+Sundays, getting up late, sleeping after dinner, and not going out till
+they have had coffee about five.  Today, when I hoped they had all gone
+out, I had such a longing to play a little that I muted my strings and
+played to myself in a whisper what I could remember of a very beautiful
+thing of Ravel's that Kloster showed me the other day,--the most
+haunting, exquisite thing; and I hummed the weird harmonies as I went
+along, because they are what is so particularly wonderful about it.
+Well, it really was a whisper, and I had to bend my head right over the
+violin to hear it at all whenever a tram passed, yet in five minutes
+Frau Berg appeared, unbuttoned and heated from her _Mittagsruhe_, and
+requested me to have some consideration for others as well as for the
+day.
+
+I was very much ashamed of myself, besides feeling as though I were
+fifteen and caught at school doing something wicked.  I didn't mind not
+having consideration for the day, because I think Ravel being played on
+it can't do Sunday anything but good, but I did mind having disturbed
+the other people in the flat.  I could only say I was sorry, and
+wouldn't do it again,--just like an apologetic schoolgirl.  But what do
+you think I wanted to do, little mother?  Run to Frau Berg, and put my
+arms round her neck, and tell her I was lonely and wanting you, and
+would she mind just pretending she was fond of me for a moment?  She
+did look so comfortable and fat and kind, standing there filling up the
+doorway, and she wasn't near enough for me to see her eyes, and it is
+her eyes that make one not want to run to her.
+
+But of course I didn't run.  I knew too well that she wouldn't
+understand.  And indeed I don't know why I should have felt such a
+longing to run into somebody's arms.  Perhaps it was because writing to
+you brings you so near to me that I realize how far away you are.
+During the week I work, and while I work I forget; and there's the
+excitement of my lessons, and the joy of hearing Kloster appreciate and
+encourage.  But on Sundays the day is all you, and then I feel what
+months can mean when they have to be lived through each in turn and day
+by day before one gets back to the person one loves.  Why are you so
+dear, my darling mother?  If you were an ordinary mother I'd be so much
+more placid.  I wouldn't mind not being with an ordinary mother.  When
+I look at other people's mothers I think I'd rather like not being with
+them.  But having known what it is to live in love and understanding
+with you, it wants a great deal of persistent courage, the sort that
+goes on steadily with no intervals, to make one able to do without it.
+
+Now please don't think I am fretting, will you, because I'm not.  It's
+only that I love you.  We're such _friends_.  You always understand,
+you are never shocked.  I can say whatever comes into my head to you.
+It is as good as saying one's prayers.  One never stops in those to
+wonder whether one is shocking God, and that is what one loves God
+for,--because we suppose he always understands, and therefore forgives;
+and how much more--is this very wicked?--one loves one's mother who
+understands, because, you see, there she is, and one can kiss her as
+well.  There's a great virtue in kissing, I think; an amazing comfort
+in just _touching_ the person one loves.  Goodnight, most blessed
+little mother, and good-bye for a week.  Your Chris.
+
+
+Perhaps I might write a little note--not a letter, just a little
+note,--on Wednesdays?  What do you think?  It would be nothing more,
+really, than a postcard, except that it would be in an envelope.
+
+
+
+
+_Berlin, Sunday, June 14th, 1914_.
+
+Well, I didn't write on Wednesday, I resisted.  (Good morning, darling
+mother.)  I knew quite well it wouldn't be a postcard, or anything even
+remotely related to the postcard family.  It would be a letter.  A long
+letter.  And presently I'd be writing every day, and staying all soft;
+living in the past, instead of getting on with my business, which is
+the future.  That is what I've got to do at this moment: not think too
+much of you and home, but turn my face away from both those sweet,
+desirable things so that I may get back to them quicker.  It's true we
+haven't got a home, if a home is a house and furniture; but home to
+your Chris is where you are.  Just simply anywhere and everywhere you
+are.  It's very convenient, isn't it, to have it so much concentrated
+and so movable.  Portable, I might say, seeing how little you are and
+how big I am.
+
+But you know, darling mother, it makes it easier for me to harden and
+look ahead with my chin in the air rather than over my shoulder back at
+you when I see, as I do see all day long, the extreme sentimentality of
+the Germans.  It is very surprising.  They're the oddest mixture of
+what really is a brutal hardness, the kind of hardness that springs
+from real fundamental differences from ours in their attitude towards
+life, and a squashiness that leaves one with one's mouth open.  They
+can't bear to let a single thing that has happened to them ever,
+however many years ago, drop away into oblivion and die decently in its
+own dust.  They hold on to it, and dig it out that day year and that
+day every year, for years apparently,--I expect for all their lives.
+When they leave off really feeling about it--which of course they do,
+for how can one go on feeling about a thing forever?--they start
+pretending that they feel.  Conceive going through life clogged like
+that, all one's pores choked with the dust of old yesterdays.  I
+picture the Germans trailing through life more and more heavily as they
+grow old, hauling an increasing number of anniversaries along with
+them, rolling them up as they go, dragging at each remove a lengthening
+chain, as your dear Goldsmith says,--and if he didn't, or it wasn't,
+you'll rebuke me and tell me who did and what it was, for you know I've
+no books here, except those two that are married as securely on one's
+tongue as Tennyson and Browning, or Arnold Bennet and his, I imagine
+reluctant, bride, H. G. Wells,--I mean Shakespeare and the Bible.
+
+
+I went into Hilda Seeberg's room the other day to ask her for some
+pins, and found her sitting in front of a photograph of her father, a
+cross-looking old man with a twirly moustache and a bald head; and she
+had put a wreath of white roses round the frame and tied it with a
+black bow, and there were two candles lit in front of it, and Hilda had
+put on a black dress, and was just sitting there gazing at it with her
+hands in her lap.  I begged her pardon, and was going away again
+quickly, but she called me back.
+
+"I celebrate," she said.
+
+"Oh," said I politely, but without an idea what she meant.
+
+"It is my Papa's birthday today," she said, pointing to the photograph.
+
+"Is it?" I said, surprised, for I thought I remembered she had told me
+he was dead.  "But didn't you say--"
+
+"Yes.  Certainly I told you Papa was dead since five years."
+
+"Then why--?"
+
+"But _liebes Fraulein_, he still continues to have birthdays," she
+said, staring at me in real surprise, while I stared back at her in at
+least equally real surprise.
+
+"Every year," she said, "the day comes round on which Papa was born.
+Shall he, then, merely because he is with God, not have it celebrated?
+And what would people think if I did not?  They would think I had no
+heart."
+
+After that I began to hope there would be a cake, for they have lovely
+birthday cakes here, and it is the custom to give a slice of them to
+every one who comes near you.  So I looked round the room out of the
+corners of my eyes, discreetly, lest I should seem to be as greedy as I
+was, and I lifted my nose a little and waved it cautiously about, but I
+neither saw nor smelt a cake.  Frau Berg had a birthday three days ago,
+and there was a heavenly cake at it, a great flat thing with cream in
+it, that one loved so that first one wanted to eat it and then to sit
+on it and see all the cream squash out at the sides; but evidently the
+cake is the one thing you don't have for your birthday after you are
+dead.  I don't want to laugh, darling mother, and I know well enough
+what it is to lose one's beloved Dad, but you see Hilda had shown me
+her family photographs only the other day, for we are making friends in
+a sort of flabby, hesitating way, and when she got to the one of her
+father she said with perfect frankness that she hadn't liked him, and
+that it had been an immense relief when he died.  "He prevented my
+doing anything," she said, frowning at the photograph, "except that
+which increased his comforts."
+
+I asked Kloster about anniversaries when I went for my lesson on
+Friday.  He is a very human little man, full of sympathy,---the sort of
+comprehending sympathy that laughs and understands together, yet his
+genius seems to detach him from other Germans, for he criticizes them
+with a dispassionate thoroughness that is surprising.  The remarks he
+makes about the Kaiser, for instance, whom he irreverently alludes to
+as S. M.--(short and rude for _Seine Majestat_)--simply make me shiver
+in this country of _lese majeste_.  In England, where we can say what
+we like, I have never heard anybody say anything disrespectful about
+the King.  Here, where you go to prison if you laugh even at officials,
+even at a policeman, at anything whatever in buttons, for that is the
+punishable offence of Beamtenbeleidigung--haven't they got heavenly
+words--Kloster and people I have come across in his rooms say what they
+like; and what they like is very rude indeed about that sacred man the
+Kaiser, who doesn't appear to be at all popular.  But then Kloster
+belongs to the intelligents, and his friends are all people of
+intelligence, and that sort of person doesn't care very much, I think,
+for absolute monarchs.  Kloster says they're anachronisms, that the
+world is too old for them, too grown-up for pretences and decorations.
+And when I went for my lesson on Friday I found his front door wreathed
+with evergreens and paper flowers,--pretences and decorations crawling
+even round Kloster--and I went in very reluctantly, not knowing what
+sort of a memorial celebration I was going to tumble into.  But it was
+only that his wife--I didn't know he had a wife, he seemed altogether
+so happily unmarried--was coming home.  She had been away for three
+weeks; not nearly long enough, you and I and others of our
+self-depreciatory and self-critical country would think, to deserve an
+evergreen garland round our door on coming back.  He laughed when I
+told him I had been afraid to come in lest I should disturb
+retrospective obsequies.
+
+"We are still so near, my dear Mees Chrees," he said, shrugging a fat
+shoulder--he asked me what I was called at home, and I said you called
+me Chris, and he said he would, with my permission, also call me
+Chrees, but with Mees in front of it to show that though he desired to
+be friendly he also wished to remain respectful--"we are still so near
+as a nation to the child and to the savage.  To the clever child, and
+the powerful savage.  We like simple and gross emotions and plenty of
+them; obvious tastes in our food and our pleasures, and a great deal of
+it; fat in our food, and fat in our women.  And, like the child, when
+we mourn we mourn to excess, and enjoy ourselves in that excess; and,
+like the savage, we are afraid, and therefore hedge ourselves about
+with observances, celebrations, cannon, kings.  In no other country is
+there more than one king.  In ours we find three and an emperor
+necessary.  The savage who fears all things does not fear more than we
+Germans.  We fear other nations, we fear other people, we fear public
+opinion to an extent incredible, and tremble before the opinion of our
+servants and tradespeople; we fear our own manners and therefore are
+obliged to preserve the idiotic practice of duelling, in which as often
+as not the man whose honour is being satisfied is the one who is
+killed; we fear all those above us, of whom there are invariably a
+great many; we fear all officials, and our country drips with
+officials.  The only person we do not fear is God."
+
+
+"But--" I began, remembering their motto, bestowed on them by Bismarck,
+
+
+"Yes, yes, I know," he interrupted.  "It is not, however, true.  The
+contrary is the truth.  We Germans fear not God, but everything else in
+the world.  It is only fear that makes us polite, fear of the duel;
+for, like the child and the savage, we have not had time to acquire the
+habit of good manners, the habit which makes manners inevitable and
+invariable, and it is not natural to us to be polite.  We are polite
+only by the force of fear.  Consequently--for all men must have their
+relaxations--whenever we meet the weak, the beneath us, the momentarily
+helpless, we are brutal.  It is an immense relief to be for a moment
+natural.  Every German welcomes even the smallest opportunity."
+
+
+You would be greatly interested in Kloster, I'm certain.  He sits
+there, his fiddle on his fat little knees, his bow punctuating his
+sentences with quivers and raps, his shiny bald head reflecting the
+light from the window behind him, and his eyes coming very much out of
+his face, which is excessively red.  He looks like an amiable prawn;
+not in the least like a person with an active and destructive mind, not
+in the least like a great musician.  He has the very opposite of the
+bushy eyebrows and overhanging forehead and deep set eyes and lots of
+hair you're supposed to have if you've got much music in you.  He came
+over to me the other day after I had finished playing, and stretched
+up--he's a good bit smaller than I am--and carefully drew his finger
+along my eyebrows, each in turn.  I couldn't think what he was doing.
+
+"My finger is clean, Mees Chrees," he said, seeing me draw back.  "I
+have just wiped it, Be not, therefore, afraid.  But you have the real
+Beethoven brow--the very shape--and I must touch it.  I regret if it
+incommodes you, but I must touch it.  I have seen no such resemblance
+to the brow of the Master.  You might be his child."
+
+I needn't tell you, darling mother, that I went back to the boarders
+and the midday guests not minding them much.  If I only could talk
+German properly I would have loved to have leant across the table to
+Herr Mannfried, an unwholesome looking young man who comes in to dinner
+every day from a bank in the Potsdamerstrasse, and is very full of that
+hatred which is really passion for England, and has pale hair and a
+mouth exactly like two scarlet slugs--I'm sorry to be so horrid, but it
+_is_ like two scarlet slugs--and said,--"Have you noticed that I have a
+_Beethovenkopf_?  What do you think of me, an _Englanderin_, having
+such a thing? One of your own great men says so, so it must be true."
+
+We are studying the Bach Chaconne now.  He is showing me a different
+reading of it, his idea.  He is going to play it at the Philarmonie
+here next week.  I wish you could hear him.  He was intending to go to
+London this season and play with a special orchestra of picked players,
+but has changed his mind.  I asked him why, and he shrugged his
+shoulder and said his agent, who arranges these things, seemed to think
+he had better not.  I asked him why again--you know my persistency--for
+I can't conceive why it should be better not for London to have such a
+joy and for him to give it, but he only shrugged his shoulder again,
+and said he always did what his agent told him to do.  "My agent knows
+his business, my dear Mees Chrees," he said.  "I put my affairs in his
+hands, and having done so I obey him.  It saves trouble.  Obedience is
+a comfortable thing."
+
+"Then why--" I began, remembering the things he says about kings and
+masters and persons in authority; but he picked up his violin and began
+to play a bit.  "See," he said, "this is how--"
+
+And when he plays I can only stand and listen.  It is like a spell.
+One stands there, and forgets. . . .
+
+
+  _Evening_.
+
+I've been reading your last darling letter again, so full of love, so
+full of thought for me, out in a corner of the Thiergarten this
+afternoon, and I see that while I'm eagerly writing and writing to you,
+page after page of the things I want to tell you, I forget to tell you
+the things you want to know.  I believe I never answer _any_ of your
+questions!  It's because I'm so all right, so comfortable as far as my
+body goes, that I don't remember to say so.  I have heaps to eat, and
+it is very satisfying food, being German, and will make me grow
+sideways quite soon, I should think, for Frau Berg fills us up daily
+with dumplings, and I'm certain they must end by somehow showing; and I
+haven't had a single cold since I've been here, so I'm outgrowing them
+at last; and I'm not sitting up late reading,--I couldn't if I tried,
+for Wanda, the general servant, who is general also in her person
+rather than particular--aren't I being funny--comes at ten o'clock each
+night on her way to bed and takes away my lamp.
+
+"Rules," said Frau Berg briefly, when I asked if it wasn't a little
+early to leave me in the dark.  "And you are not left in the dark.
+Have I not provided a candle and matches for the chance infirmities of
+the night?"
+
+But the candle is cheap and dim, so I don't sit up trying to read by
+that.  I preserve it wholly for the infirmities.
+
+I've been in the Thiergarten most of the afternoon, sitting in a green
+corner I found where there is some grass and daisies down by a pond and
+away from a path, and accordingly away from the Sunday crowds.  I
+watched the birds, and read the Winter's Tale, and picked some daisies,
+and felt very happy.  The daisies are in a saucer before me at this
+moment.  Everything smelt so good,--so warm, and sweet, and young, with
+the leaves on the oaks still little and delicate.  Life is an admirable
+arrangement, isn't it, little mother.  It is so clever of it to have a
+June in every year and a morning in every day, let alone things like
+birds, and Shakespeare, and one's work.  You've sometimes told me, when
+I was being particularly happy, that there were even greater happiness
+ahead for me,--when I have a lover, you said; when I have a husband;
+when I have a child.  I suppose you know, my wise, beloved mother; but
+the delight of work, of doing the work well that one is best fitted
+for, will be very hard to beat.  It is an exultation, a rapture, that
+manifest progress to better and better results through one's own
+effort.  After all, being obliged on Sundays to do nothing isn't so
+bad, because then I have time to think, to step back a little and look
+at life.
+
+See what a quiet afternoon sunning myself among daisies has done for
+me.  A week ago I was measuring the months to be got through before
+being with you again, in dismay.  Now I feel as if I were very happily
+climbing up a pleasant hill, just steep enough to make me glad I can
+climb well, and all the way is beautiful and safe, and on the top there
+is you.  To get to the top will be perfect joy, but the getting there
+is very wonderful too.  You'll judge, from all this that I've had a
+happy week, that work is going well, and that I'm hopeful and
+confident.  I mustn't be too confident, I know, but confidence is a
+great thing to work on.  I've never done anything good on days of
+dejection.
+
+Goodnight, dear mother.  I feel so close to you tonight, just as if you
+were here in the room with me, and I had only to put out my finger and
+touch Love.  I don't believe there's much in this body business.  It is
+only spirit that matters really; and nothing can stop your spirit and
+mine being together.
+
+  Your Chris.
+
+Still, a body is a great comfort when it comes to wanting to kiss one's
+darling mother.
+
+
+
+
+  _Berlin, Sunday, June 2lst, 1914_.
+
+My precious mother,
+
+The weeks fly by, full of work and _Weltpolitik_.  They talk of nothing
+here at meals but this _Weltpolitik_.  I've just been having a dose of
+it at breakfast.  To say that the boarders are interested in it is to
+speak feebly: they blaze with interest, they explode with it, they
+scorch and sizzle.  And they are so pugnacious!  Not to each other, for
+contrary to the attitude at Kloster's they are knit together by the
+toughest band of uncritical and obedient admiration for everything
+German, but they are pugnacious to the Swede girl and myself.
+Especially to myself.  There is a holy calm about the Swede girl that
+nothing can disturb.  She has an enviable gift for getting on with her
+meals and saying nothing.  I wish I had it.  Directly I have learned a
+new German word I want to say it.  I accumulate German words every day,
+of course, and there's something in my nature and something in the way
+I'm talked at and to at Frau Berg's table that makes me want to say all
+the words I've got as quickly as possible.  And as I can't string them
+into sentences my conversation consists of single words, which produce
+a very odd effect, quite unintended, of detached explosions.  When I've
+come to the end of them I take to English, and the boarders plunge in
+after me, and swim or drown in it according to their several ability.
+
+It's queer, the atmosphere here,--in this house, in the streets,
+wherever one goes.  They all seem to be in a condition of tension--of
+intense, tightly-strung waiting, very like that breathless expectancy
+in the last act of "Tristan" when Isolde's ship is sighted and all the
+violins hang high up on to a shrill, intolerably eager note.  There's a
+sort of fever.  And the big words!  I thought Germans were stolid,
+quiet people.  But how they talk!  And always in capital letters.  They
+talk in tremendous capitals about what they call the _deutscke
+Standpunkt_; and the _deutsche Standpunkt_ is the most wonderful thing
+you ever came across.  Butter wouldn't melt in its mouth.  It is too
+great and good, almost, they give one to understand, for a world so far
+behind in high qualities to appreciate.  No other people has anything
+approaching it.  As far as I can make out, stripped of its decorations
+its main idea is that what Germans do is right and what other people do
+is wrong.  Even when it is exactly the same thing.  And also, that
+wrong becomes right directly it has anything to do with Germans.  Not
+with _a_ German.  The individual German can and does commit every sort
+of wrong, just as other individuals do in other countries, and he gets
+punished for them with tremendous harshness; Kloster says with
+unfairness.  But directly he is in the plural and becomes _Wir
+Deutschen_, as they are forever saying, his crimes become virtues.  As
+a body he purifies, he has a purging quality.  Today they were saying
+at breakfast that if a crime is big enough, if it is on a grand scale,
+it leaves off being a crime, for then it is a success, and success is
+always virtue,--that is, I gather, if it is a German success; if it is
+a French one it is an outrage.  You mustn't rob a widow, for instance,
+they said, because that is stupid; the result is small and you may be
+found out and be cut by your friends.  But you may rob a great many
+widows and it will be a successful business deal.  No one will say
+anything, because you have been clever and successful.
+
+I know this view is not altogether unknown in other countries, but they
+don't hold it deliberately as a whole nation.  Among other things that
+Hilda Seeberg's father did which roused her unforgiveness was just
+this,--to rob too few widows, come to grief over it, and go bankrupt
+for very little.  She told me about it in an outburst of dark
+confidence.  Just talking of it made her eyes black with anger.  It was
+so terrible, she said, to smash for a small amount,--such an
+overwhelming shame for the Seeberg family, whose poverty thus became
+apparent and unhideable.  If one smashes, she said, one does it for
+millions, otherwise one doesn't smash.  There is something so chic
+about millions, she said, that whether you make them or whether you
+lose them you are equally well thought-of and renowned.
+
+"But it is better to--well, disappoint few widows than many," I
+suggested, picking my words.
+
+"For less than a million marks," she said, eyeing me sternly, "it is a
+disgrace to fail."
+
+They're funny, aren't they.  I'm greatly interested.  They remind me
+more and more of what Kloster says they are, clever children.  They
+have the unmoral quality of children.  I listen--they treat me as if I
+were the audience, and they address themselves in a bunch to my
+corner--and I put in one of my words now and then, generally with an
+unfortunate effect, for they talk even louder after that, and then
+presently the men get up and put their heels together and make a stiff
+inclusive bow and disappear, and Frau Berg folds up her napkin and
+brushes the crumbs out of her creases and says, "_Ja, ja_," with a
+sigh, as a sort of final benediction on the departed conversation, and
+then rises slowly and locks up the sugar, and then treads heavily away
+down the passage and has a brief skirmish in the kitchen with Wanda,
+who daily tries to pretend there hadn't been any pudding left over, and
+then treads heavily back again to her bedroom, and shuts herself in
+till four o'clock for her _Mittagsruhe_; and the other boarders drift
+away one by one, and I run out for a walk to get unstiffened after
+having practised all the morning, and as I walk I think over what
+they've been saying, and try to see things from their angle, and simply
+can't.
+
+On Tuesdays and Fridays I have my lesson, and tell Kloster about them.
+He says they're entirely typical of the great bulk of the nation.
+"_Wir Deutschen_," he says, and laughs, "are the easiest people in the
+world to govern, because we are obedient and inflammable.  We have that
+obedience of mind so convenient to Authority, and we are inflammable
+because we are greedy.  Any prospect held out to us of getting
+something belonging to some one else sets us instantly alight.  Dangle
+some one else's sausage before our eyes, and we will go anywhere after
+it.  Wonderful material for S. M."  And he adds a few irreverences.
+
+Last Wednesday was his concert at the Philarmonie.  He played like an
+angel.  It was so strange, the fat, red, more than commonplace-looking
+little bald man, with his quite expressionless face, his wilfully
+stupid face--for I believe he does it on purpose, that blankness, that
+bulgy look of one who never thinks and only eats--and then the heavenly
+music.  It was as strange and arresting as that other mixture, that
+startling one of the men who sell flowers in the London streets and the
+flowers they sell.  What does it look like, those poor ragged men
+shuffling along the kerb, and in their arms, rubbing against their
+dirty shoulders, great baskets of beauty, baskets heaped up with
+charming aristocrats, gracious and delicate purities of shape and
+colour and scent.  The strangest effect of all is when they happen,
+round about Easter, to be selling only lilies, and the unearthly purity
+of the lilies shines on the passersby from close to the seller's
+terrible face.  Christ must often have looked like that, when he sat
+close up to Pharisees.
+
+But although Kloster's music was certainly as beautiful as the lilies,
+he himself wasn't like those tragic sellers.  It was only that he was
+so very ordinary,--a little man compact, apparently, of grossness, and
+the music he was making was so divine.  It was that marvellous French
+and Russian stuff.  I must play it to you, and play it to you, till you
+love it.  It's like nothing there has ever been.  It is of an exquisite
+youth,--untouched, fearless, quite heedless of tradition, going its own
+way straight through and over difficulties and prohibitions that for
+centuries have been supposed final.  People like Wagner and Strauss and
+the rest seem so much sticky and insanitary mud next to these exquisite
+young ones, and so very old; and not old and wonderful like the great
+men, Beethoven and Bach and Mozart, but uglily old like a noisy old
+lady in a yellow wig.
+
+The audience applauded, but wasn't quite sure.  Such a master as
+Kloster, and one of their own flesh and blood, is always applauded, but
+I think the irregularity, the utter carelessness of the music, its
+apparently accidental beauty, was difficult for them.  Germans have to
+have beauty explained to them and accounted for,--stamped first by an
+official, authorized, before they can be comfortable with it.  I sat in
+a corner and cried, it was so lovely.  I couldn't help it.  I hid away
+and pulled my hat over my face and tried not to, for there was a German
+in eyeglasses near me, who, perceiving I wanted to hide, instantly
+spent his time staring at me to find out why.  The music held all
+things in it that I have known or guessed, all the beauty, the wonder,
+of life and death and love.  I _recognised_ it.  I almost called out,
+"Yes--of course--_I_ know that too."
+
+Afterwards I would have liked best to go home and to sleep with the
+sound of it still in my heart, but Kloster sent round a note saying I
+was to come to supper and meet some people who would be useful for me
+to know.  One of his pupils, who brought the note, had been ordered to
+pilot me safely to the house, it being late, and as we walked and
+Kloster drove in somebody's car he was there already when we arrived,
+busy opening beer bottles and looking much more appropriate than he had
+done an hour earlier.  I can't tell you how kindly he greeted me, and
+with what charming little elucidatory comments he presented me to his
+wife and the other guests.  He actually seemed proud of me.  Think how
+I must have glowed.
+
+"This is Mees Chrees," he said, taking my hand and leading me into the
+middle of the room.  "I will not and cannot embark on her family name,
+for it is one of those English names that a prudent man avoids.  Nor
+does it matter.  For in ten years--nay, in five--all Europe will have
+learned it by heart."
+
+There were about a dozen people, and we had beer and sandwiches and
+were very happy.  Kloster sat eating sandwiches and staring
+benevolently at us all, more like an amiable and hospitable prawn than
+ever.  You don't know, little mother, how wonderful it is that he
+should say these praising things of me, for I'm told by other pupils
+that he is dreadfully severe and disagreeable if he doesn't think one
+is getting on.  It was immensely kind of him to ask me to supper, for
+there was somebody there, a Grafin Koseritz, whose husband is in the
+ministry, and who is herself very influential and violently interested
+in music.  She pulls most of the strings at Bayreuth, Kloster says,
+more of them even than Frau Cosima now that she is old, and gets one
+into anything she likes if she thinks one is worth while.  She was very
+amiable and gracious, and told me I must marry a German!  Because, she
+said, all good music is by rights, by natural rights, the property of
+Germany.
+
+I wanted to say what about Debussy, and Ravel, and Stravinski, but I
+didn't.
+
+She said how much she enjoyed these informal evenings at Kloster's, and
+that she had a daughter about my age who was devoted, too, to music,
+and a worshipper of Kloster's.
+
+I asked if she was there, for there was a girl away in a corner, but
+she looked shocked, and said "Oh no"; and after a pause she said again,
+"Oh no.  One doesn't bring one's daughter here."
+
+"But I'm a daughter." I said,--I admit tactlessly; and she skimmed away
+over that to things that sounded wise but weren't really, about violins
+and the technique of fiddling.
+
+Not that I haven't already felt it, the cleavage here in the classes;
+but this was my first experience of the real thing, the real Junker
+lady--the Koseritzes are Prussians.  She, being married and mature, can
+dabble if she likes in other sets, can come down as a bright patroness
+from another world and clean her feathers in a refreshing mud bath, as
+Kloster put it, commenting on his supper party at my lesson last
+Friday; but she would carefully keep her young daughter out of it.
+
+They made me play after supper.  Actually Kloster brought out his Strad
+and said I should play on that.  It was evident he thought it important
+for me to play to these particular people, so though I was dreadfully
+taken aback and afraid I was going to disgrace my master, I was so much
+touched by this kindness and care for my future that I obeyed without a
+word.  I played the Kreutzer Sonata, and an officer played the
+accompaniment, a young man who looked so fearfully smart and correct
+and wooden that I wondered why he was there till he began to play, and
+then I knew; and as soon as I started I forgot the people sitting round
+so close to me, so awkwardly and embarrassingly near.  The Strad
+fascinated me.  It seemed to be playing by itself, singing to me,
+telling me strange and beautiful secrets.  I stood there just listening
+to it.
+
+They were all very kind and enthusiastic, and talked eagerly to each
+other of a new star, a _trouvaille_.  Think of your Chris, only the
+other day being put in a corner by you in just expiation of her
+offensiveness--it really feels as if it were yesterday--think of her
+being a new, or anything else, star!  But I won't be too proud, because
+people are always easily kind after supper, and besides they had been
+greatly stirred all the evening at the concert by Kloster's playing.
+He was pleased too, and said some encouraging and delightful things.
+The Junker lady was very kind, and asked me to lunch with her, and I'm
+going tomorrow.  The young man who played the accompaniment bowed,
+clicked his heels together, caught up my hand, and kissed it.  He
+didn't say anything.  Kloster says he is passionately devoted to music,
+and so good at it that he would easily have been a first-rate musician
+if he hadn't happened to have been born a Junker, and therefore has to
+be an officer.  It's a tragedy, apparently, for Kloster says he hates
+soldiering, and is ill if he is kept away long from music.  He went
+away soon after that.
+
+Grafin Koseritz brought me back in her car and dropped me at Frau
+Berg's on her way home.  She lives in the Sommerstrasse, next to the
+Brandenburger Thor, so she isn't very far from me.  She shuddered when
+she looked up at Frau Berg's house.  It did look very dismal.
+
+
+  _Bedtime_.
+
+I'm so sleepy, precious mother, so sleepy that I must go straight to
+bed.  I can't hold my head up or my eyes open.  I think it's the
+weather--it was very hot today.  Good night and bless you, my sweetest
+mother.
+
+  Your own Chris who loves you.
+
+
+
+
+  _Berlin, Sunday, June 28th.  Evening_.
+
+Beloved little mother,
+
+I didn't write this morning, but went for a whole day into the woods,
+because it was such a hot day and I longed to get away from Berlin.
+I've been wandering about Potsdam.  It is only half an hour away in the
+train, and is full of woods and stretches of water, as well as palaces.
+Palaces weren't the mood I was in.  I wanted to walk and walk, and get
+some of the pavement stiffness out of my legs, and when I was tired sit
+down under a tree and eat the bread and chocolate I took with me and
+stare at the sky through leaves.  So I did.
+
+I've had a most beautiful day, the best since I left you.  I didn't
+speak to a soul all day, and found a place up behind Sans Souci on the
+edge of a wood looking out over a ryefield to an old windmill, and
+there I sat for hours; and after I had finished remembering what I
+could of the Scholar Gypsy, which is what one generally does when one
+sits in summer on the edge of a cornfield, I sorted out my thoughts.
+They've been getting confused lately in the rush of work day after day,
+as confused as the drawer I keep my gloves and ribbons in, thrusting
+them in as I take them off and never having time to tidy.  Life tears
+along, and I have hardly time to look at my treasures.  I'm going to
+look at them and count them up on Sundays.  As the summer goes on I'll
+pilgrimage out every Sunday to the woods, as regularly as the pious go
+to church, and for much the same reason,--to consider, and praise, and
+thank.
+
+I took your two letters with me, reading them again in the woods.  They
+seemed even more dear out there where it was beautiful.  You sound so
+content, darling mother, about me, and so full of belief in me.  You
+may be very sure that if a human being, by trying and working, can
+justify your dear belief it's your Chris.  The snapshot of the border
+full of Canterbury bells makes me able to picture you.  Do you wear the
+old garden hat I loved you so in when you garden?  Tell me, because I
+want to think of you _exactly_.  It makes my mouth water, those
+Canterbury bells.  I can see their lovely colours, their pink and blue
+and purple, with the white Sweet Williams and the pale lilac violas you
+write about.  Well, there's nothing of that in the Lutzowstrasse.  No
+wonder I went away from it this morning to go out and look for June in
+the woods.  The woods were a little thin and austere, for there has
+been no rain lately, but how enchanting after the barren dustiness of
+my Berlin street!  I did love it so.  And I felt so free and glorious,
+coming off on my own for my hard-earned Sunday outing, just like any
+other young man.
+
+The train going down was full of officers, and they all looked very
+smart and efficient and satisfied with themselves and life.  In my
+compartment they were talking together eagerly all the way, talking
+shop with unaffected appetite, as though shop were so interesting that
+even on Sundays they couldn't let it be, and poring together over maps.
+No trace of stolidity.  But where is this stolidity one has heard
+about? Compared to the Germans I've seen, it is we who are stolid;
+stolid, and slow, and bored.  The last thing these people are is bored.
+On the contrary, the officers had that same excitement about them, that
+same strung-upness, that the men boarders at Frau Berg's have.
+
+Potsdam is charming, and swarms with palaces and parks.  If it hadn't
+been woods I was after I would have explored it with great interest.
+Do you remember when you read Carlyle's Frederick to me that winter you
+were trying to persuade me to learn to sew?  And, bribing me to sew,
+you read aloud?  I didn't learn to sew, but I did learn a great deal
+about Potsdam and Hohenzollerns, and some Sunday when it isn't quite so
+fine I shall go down and visit Sans Souci, and creep back into the past
+again.  But today I didn't want walls and roofs, I wanted just to walk
+and walk.  It was very crowded in the train coming back, full of people
+who had been out for the day, and weary little children were crying,
+and we all sat heaped up anyhow.  I know I clutched two babies on my
+lap, and that they showed every sign of having no self-control.  They
+were very sweet, though, and I wouldn't have minded it a bit if I had
+had lots of skirts; but when you only have two!
+
+Wanda was very kind, and brought me some secret coffee and bread and
+butter to my room when I told her I had walked at least ten miles and
+was too tired to go into supper.  She cried out "_Herr Je_!"--which I'm
+afraid is short for Lord Jesus, and is an exclamation dear to her--and
+seized the coffee pot at once and started heating it up.  I remembered
+afterwards that German miles are three times the size of English ones,
+so no wonder she said _Herr Je_.  But just think: I haven't seen a
+single boarder for a whole day.  I do feel so much refreshed.
+
+You know I told you in my last letter I was going to lunch with the
+Koseritzes on Monday, and so I did, and the chief thing that happened
+there, was that I was shy.  Imagine it.  So shy that I blushed and
+dropped things.  For years I haven't thought of what I looked like when
+I've been with other people, because for years other people have been
+so absorbingly interesting that I forgot I was there too; but at the
+Koseritzes I suddenly found myself remembering, greatly to my horror,
+that I have a face, and that it goes about with me wherever I go, and
+that parts of it are--well, I don't like them.  And I remembered that
+my hair had been done in a hurry, and that the fingers of my left hand
+have four hard lumps on their tips where they press the strings of my
+fiddle, and that they're very ugly, but then one can't have things both
+ways, can one.  Also I became aware of my clothes, and we know how
+fatal that is when they are weak clothes like mine, don't we, little
+mother?  You used to exhort me to put them on with care and
+concentration, and then leave them to God.  Such sound advice!  And
+I've followed it so long that I do completely forget them; but last
+Monday I didn't.  They were urged on my notice by Grafin Koseritz's
+daughter, whose eyes ran over me from head to foot and then back again
+when I came in.  She was the neatest thing--_aus dem Ei gegossen_, as
+they express perfect correctness of appearance.  I suddenly knew, what
+I have always suspected, that I was blowsy,--blowsy and loose-jointed,
+with legs that are too long and not the right sort of feet.  I hated my
+_Beethovenkopf_ and all its hair.  I wanted to have less hair, and for
+it to be drawn neatly high off my face and brushed and waved in
+beautiful regular lines.  And I wanted a spotless lacy blouse, and a
+string of pearls round my throat, and a perfectly made blue serge skirt
+without mud on it,--it was raining, and I had walked.  Do you know what
+I felt like?  A _goodnatured_ thing.  The sort of creature people say
+generously about afterwards, "Oh, but she's so goodnatured."
+
+Grafin Koseritz was terribly kind to me, and that made me shyer than
+ever, for I knew she was trying to put me at my ease, and you can
+imagine how shy _that_ made me.  I blushed and dropped things, and the
+more I blushed and dropped things the kinder she was.  And all the time
+my contemporary, Helena, looked at me with the same calm eyes.  She has
+a completely emotionless face.  I saw no trace of a passion for music
+or for anything else in it.  She made no approaches of any sort to me,
+she just calmly looked at me.  Her mother talked with the extreme
+vivacity of the hostess who has a difficult party on hand.  There was a
+silent governess between two children.  Junkerlets still in the
+school-room, who stared uninterruptedly at me and seemed unsuccessfully
+endeavouring to place me; there was a young lady cousin who talked
+during the whole meal in an undertone to Helena; and there was Graf
+Koseritz, an abstracted man who came in late, muttered something vague
+on being introduced to me and told I was a new genius Kloster had
+unearthed, sat down to his meal from which he did not look up again,
+and was monosyllabic when his wife tried to draw him in and make the
+conversation appear general.  And all the time, while lending an ear to
+her cousin's murmur of talk, Helena's calm eyes lingered on one portion
+after the other of your poor vulnerable Chris.
+
+Actually I found myself hoping hotly that I hadn't forgotten to wash my
+ears that morning in the melee of getting up.  I have to wash myself in
+bits, one at a time, because at Frau Berg's I'm only given a very small
+tin tub, the bath being used for keeping extra bedding in.  It is
+difficult and distracting, and sometimes one forgets little things like
+ears, little extra things like that; and when Helena's calm eyes, which
+appeared to have no sort of flicker in them, or hesitation, or blink,
+settled on one of my ears and hung there motionless, I became so much
+unnerved that I upset the spoon out of the whipped-cream dish that was
+just being served to me, on to the floor.  It was a parquet floor, and
+the spoon made such a noise, and the cream made such a mess.  I was so
+wretched, because I had already upset a pepper thing earlier in the
+meal, and spilt some water.  The white-gloved butler advanced in a sort
+of stately goose-step with another spoon, which he placed on the dish
+being handed to me, and a third menial of lesser splendour but also
+white-gloved brought a cloth and wiped up the mess, and the Grafin
+became more terribly and volubly kind than ever.  Helena's eyes never
+wavered.  They were still on my ear.  A little more and I would have
+reached that state the goaded shy get to when they suddenly in their
+agony say more striking things than the boldest would dream of saying,
+but Herr von Inster came in.
+
+He is the young man I told you about who played my accompaniment the
+other night.  We had got to the coffee, and the servants were gone, and
+the Graf had lit a cigar and was gazing in deep abstraction at the
+tablecloth while the Grafin assured me of his keen interest in music
+and its interpretation by the young and promising, and Helena's eyes
+were resting on a spot there is on my only really nice blouse,--I can't
+think how it got there, mother darling, and I'm fearfully sorry, and
+I've tried to get it out with benzin and stuff, but it is better to
+wear a blouse with spots on it than not to wear a blouse at all, isn't
+it.  I had pinned some flowers on it too, to hide it, and so they did
+at first, but they were fading and hanging down, and there was the
+spot, and Helena found it.  Well, Herr von Inster came in, and put us
+all right.  He looks like nothing but a smart young officer, very
+beautiful and slim in his Garde-Uhlan uniform, but he is really a lot
+of other things besides.  He is the Koseritz's cousin, and Helena says
+_Du_ to him.  He was very polite, said the right things to everybody,
+explained he had had his luncheon, but thought, as he was passing, he
+would look in.  He would not deny, be said, that he had heard I was
+coming--he made me a little bow across the table and smiled--and that
+he had hopes I might perhaps be persuaded to play.
+
+Not having a fiddle I couldn't do that.  I wish I could have, for I'm
+instantly natural and happy when I get playing; but the Grafin said she
+hoped I would play to some of her friends one evening as soon as she
+could arrange it,--friends interested in youthful geniuses, as she put
+it.
+
+I said I would love to, and that it was so kind of her, but privately I
+thought I would inquire of Kloster first; for if her friends are all as
+deeply interested in music as the Graf and Helena, then I would be
+doing better and more profitably by going to bed at ten o'clock as
+usual, rather than emerge bedizened from my lair to go and flaunt in
+these haunts of splendid virtue.
+
+After Herr von Inster came I began faintly to enjoy myself, for he
+talked all round, and greatly and obviously relieved his aunt by doing
+so.  Helena let go of my ear and looked at him.  Once she very nearly
+smiled.  The other girl left off murmuring, and talked about things I
+could talk about too, such as England and Germany--they're never tired
+of that--and Strauss and Debussy.  Only the Graf sat mute, his eyes
+fixed on the tablecloth.
+
+"My husband is dying to hear you play," said the Grafin, when he got up
+presently to go back to his work.  "Absolutely _dying_," she said,
+recklessly padding out the leanness of his very bald good-bye to me.
+
+He said nothing even to that.  He just went.  He didn't seem to be
+dying.
+
+Herr von luster walked back with me.  He is very agreeable-looking,
+with kind eyes that are both shrewd and sad.  He talks English very
+well, and so did everybody at the Koseritzes who talked at all.  He is
+pathetically keen on music.  Kloster says he would have been a really
+great player, but being a Junker settles him for ever.  It is tragic to
+be forced out of one's natural bent, and he says he hates soldiering.
+People in the street were very polite, and made way for me because I
+was with an officer.  I wasn't pushed off the pavement once.
+
+Good night my own mother.  I've had a happy week.  I put my arms round
+you and kiss you with all that I have of love.
+
+  Your Chris.
+
+
+
+Wanda came in in great excitement to fetch my tray just now, and said a
+prince has been assassinated.  She heard the _Herrschaften_ saying so
+at supper.  She thought they said it was an Austrian, but whatever
+prince it was it was _Majestatsbeleidigung_ to get killing him, and she
+marvelled how any one had dared.  Then Frau Berg herself came to tell
+me.  By this time I was in bed,--pig-tailed, and ready to go to sleep.
+She was tremendously excited, and I felt a cold shiver down my back
+watching her.  She was so much excited that I caught it from her and
+was excited too.  Well, it is very dreadful the way these king-people
+get bombed out of life.  She said it was the Austrian heir to the
+throne and his wife, both of them.  But of course you'll know all about
+it by the time you get this.  She didn't know any details, but there
+had been extra editions of the Sunday papers, and she said it would
+mean war.
+
+"War?" I echoed.
+
+"War," she repeated; and began to tread heavily about the room saying,
+"War.  War."
+
+"But who with?" I asked, watching her fascinated, sitting up in bed
+holding on to my knees.
+
+"It will come," said Frau Berg, treading about like some huge Judaic
+prophetess who sniffs blood.  "It must come.  There will be no quiet in
+the world till blood has been let."
+
+"But what blood?" I asked, rather tremulously, for her voice and
+behaviour curdled me.
+
+"The blood of all those evil-doers who are responsible," she said; and
+she paused a moment at the foot of my bed and folded her arms across
+her chest--they could hardly reach, and the word chest sounds much too
+flat--and added, "Of whom there are many."
+
+Then she began to walk about again, and each time a foot went down the
+room shook.  "All, all need punishing," she said as she walked.  "There
+will be, there must be, punishment for this.  Great and terrible.
+Blood will, blood must flow in streams before such a crime can be
+regarded as washed out.  Such evil-doers must be emptied of all their
+blood."
+
+And then luckily she went away, for I was beginning to freeze to the
+sheets with horror.
+
+I got out of bed to write this.  You'll be shocked too, I know.  The
+way royalties are snuffed out one after the other!  How glad I am I'm
+not one and you're not one, and we can live safely and fruitfully
+outside the range of bombs.  Poor things.  It is very horrible.  Yet
+they never seem to abdicate or want not to be royalties, so that I
+suppose they think it worth it on the whole.  But Frau Berg was
+terrible.  What a bloodthirsty woman.  I wonder if the other boarders
+will talk like that.  I do pray not, for I hate the very word blood.
+And why does she say there'll be war?  They will catch the murderers
+and punish them as they've done before, and there'll be an end of it.
+There wasn't war when the Empress of Austria was killed, or the King
+and Queen of Servia.  I think Frau Berg wanted to make me creep.  She
+has a fixed idea that English people are every one of them much too
+comfortable, and should at all costs be made to know what being
+uncomfortable is like.  For their good, I suppose.
+
+
+
+
+  _Berlin, Tuesday, June 30th, 1914_.
+
+Darling mother,
+
+How splendid that you're going to Switzerland next month with the
+Cunliffes.  I do think it is glorious, and it will make you so strong
+for the winter.  And think how much nearer you'll be to me!  I always
+suspected Mrs. Cunliffe of being secretly an angel, and now I know it.
+Your letter has just come and I simply had to tell you how glad I am.
+
+  Chris.
+
+This isn't a letter, it's a cry of joy.
+
+
+
+
+  _Berlin, Sunday, July 5th, 1914_.
+
+My blessed little mother,
+
+It has been so hot this week.  We've been sweltering up here under the
+roof.  If you are having it anything like this at Chertsey the sooner
+you persuade the Cunliffes to leave for Switzerland the better.  Just
+the sight of snow on the mountains out of your window would keep you
+cool.  You know I told you my bedroom looks onto the Lutzowstrasse and
+the sun beats on it nearly all day, and flies in great numbers have
+taken to coming up here and listening to me play, and it is difficult
+to practise satisfactorily while they walk about enraptured on my neck.
+I can't swish them away, because both my hands are busy.  I wish I had
+a tail.
+
+Frau Berg says there never used to be flies in this room, and suggests
+with some sternness that I brought them with me,--the eggs, I suppose,
+in my luggage.  She is inclined to deny that they're here at all, on
+the ground chiefly that nothing so irregular as a fly out of its proper
+place, which is, she says, a manure heap, is possible in Germany.  It
+is too well managed, is Germany, she says.  I said I supposed she knew
+that because she had seen it in the newspapers.  I was snappy, you see.
+The hot weather makes me disposed, I'm afraid, to impatience with Frau
+Berg.  She is so large, and she seems to soak up what air there is, and
+whenever she has sat on a chair it keeps warm afterwards for hours.  If
+only some clever American with inventions rioting in his brain would
+come here and adapt her to being an electric fan! I want one so badly,
+and she would be beautiful whirling round, and would make an immense
+volume of air, I'm sure.
+
+Well, darling one, you see I'm peevish.  It's because I'm so hot, and
+it doesn't get cool at night.  And the food is so hot too and so
+greasy, and the pallid young man with the red mouth who sits opposite
+me at dinner melts visibly and continuously all the time, and Wanda
+coming round with the dishes is like the coming of a blast of hot air.
+Kloster says I'm working too much, and wants me to practise less.  I
+said I didn't see that practising less would make Wanda and the young
+man cooler.  I did try it one day when my head ached, and you've no
+idea what a long day it seemed.  So empty.  Nothing to do.  Only
+Berlin.  And one feels more alone in Berlin than anywhere in the world,
+I think.  Kloster says it's because I'm working too much, but I don't
+see how working less would make Berlin more companionable.  Of course
+I'm not a bit alone really, for there is Kloster, who takes a very real
+and lively interest in me and is the most delightful of men, and there
+is Herr von Inster, who has been twice to see me since that day I
+lunched at his aunt's, and everybody in this house talks to me
+now,--more to me, I think, than to any other of the boarders, because
+I'm English and they seem to want to educate me out of it.  And Hilda
+Seeberg has actually got as far in friendship as a cautious invitation
+to have chocolate with her one afternoon some day in the future at
+Wertheim's; and the pallid young man has suggested showing me the
+Hohenzollern museum some Sunday, where he can explain to me, by means
+of relics, the glorious history of that high family, as he put it; and
+Frau Berg, though she looks like some massive Satan, isn't really
+satanic I expect; and Dr. Krummlaut says every day as he comes into the
+diningroom rubbing his hands and passes my chair, "_Na, was macht
+England_?" which is a sign he is being gracious.  It is only a feeling,
+this of being completely alone.  But I've got it, and the longer I'm
+here and the better I know people the greater it becomes.  It's an
+_uneasiness_.  I feel as if my _spirit_ were alone,--the real, ultimate
+and only bit of me that is me and that matters.
+
+If I go on like this you too, my little mother, will begin echoing
+Kloster and tell me that I'm working too much.  Dear England.  Dear,
+dear England.  To find out how much one loves England all one has to do
+is to come to Germany.
+
+Of course they talk of nothing else at every meal here now but the
+Archduke's murder.  It's the impudence of the Servians that chiefly
+makes them gasp.  That they should dare!  Dr. Krummlaut says they never
+would have dared if they hadn't been instigated to this deed of
+atrocious blasphemy by Russia,--Russia bursting with envy of the
+Germanic powers and encouraging every affront to them.  The whole
+table, except the Swede who eats steadily on, sees red at the word
+affront.  Frau Berg reiterates that the world needs blood-letting
+before there can be any real calm again, but it isn't German blood she
+wants to let.  Germany is surrounded by enormously wicked people, I
+gather, all swollen with envy, hatred and malice, and all of gigantic
+size.  In the middle of these monsters browses Germany, very white and
+woolly-haired and loveable, a little lamb among the nations, artlessly
+only wanting to love and be loved, weak physically compared to its
+towering neighbours, but strong in simplicity and the knowledge of its
+_gute Recht_.  And when they say these things they all turn to me for
+endorsement and approval--they've given up seeking response from the
+Swede, because she only eats--and I hastily run over my best words and
+pick out the most suitable one, which is generally _herrlich_, or else
+_ich gratuliere_.  The gigantic, the really cosmic cynicism I fling
+into it glances off their comfortable thick skins unnoticed.
+
+I think Kloster is right, and they haven't grown up yet.  People like
+the Koseritzes, people of the world, don't show how young they are in
+the way these middle-class Germans do, but I daresay they are just the
+same really.  They have the greediness of children too,--I don't mean
+in things to eat, though they have that too, and take the violent
+interest of ten years old in what there'll be for dinner--I mean greed
+for other people's possessions.  In all their talk, all their
+expoundings of _deutsche Idealen_, I have found no trace of
+consideration for others, or even of any sort of recognition that other
+nations too may have rights and virtues.  I asked Kloster whether I
+hadn't chanced on a little group of people who were exceptions in their
+way of looking at life, and he said No, they were perfectly typical of
+the Prussians, and that the other classes, upper and lower, thought in
+the same way, the difference lying only in their manner of expressing
+it.
+
+"All these people, Mees Chrees," he said, "have been drilled.  Do not
+forget that great fact.  Every man of every class has spent some of the
+most impressionable years of his life being drilled.  He never gets
+over it.  Before that, he has had the nursery and the schoolroom:
+drill, and very thorough drill, in another form.  He is drilled into
+what the authorities find it most convenient that he should think from
+the moment he can understand words.  By the time he comes to his
+military service his mind is already squeezed into the desired shape.
+Then comes the finishing off,--the body drilled to match the mind, and
+you have the perfect slave.  And it is because he is a slave that when
+he has power--and every man has power over some one--he is so great a
+bully."
+
+"But you must have been drilled too," I said, "and you're none of these
+things."
+
+He looked at me in silence for a moment, with his funny protruding
+eyes.  Then he said, "I am told, and I believe it, that no man ever
+really gets over having been imprisoned."
+
+
+
+  _Evening_.
+
+I feel greatly refreshed, for what do you think I've been doing since I
+left off writing this morning?  Motoring out into the country,--the
+sweet and blessed country, the home of God's elect, as the hymn says,
+only the hymn meant Jerusalem, and the golden kind of Jerusalem, which
+can't be half as beautiful as just plain grass and daisies.  Herr von
+Inster appeared up here about twelve.  Wanda came to my door and banged
+on it with what sounded like a saucepan, and I daresay was, for she
+wouldn't waste time leaving off stirring the pudding while she went to
+open the front door, and she called out very loud, "_Der Herr Offizier
+ist schon wieder da_."
+
+All the flat must have heard her, and so did Herr von Inster.
+
+"Here I am, _schon meeder da_" he said, clicking his heels together
+when I came into the diningroom where he was waiting among the _debris_
+of the first spasms of Wanda's table-laying; and we both laughed.
+
+He said the Master--so he always speaks of Kloster, and with such
+affection and admiration in his voice--and his wife were downstairs in
+his car, and wanted him to ask me to join them so that he might drive
+us all into the country on such a fine day.
+
+You can imagine how quickly I put on my hat.
+
+"It is doing you good already," he said, looking at me as we went down
+the four nights of stairs,--so Kloster had been telling him, too, that
+story about too much work.
+
+Herr von Inster drove, and we three sat on the back seat, because he
+had his soldier chauffeur with him, so I didn't get as much talk with
+him as I had hoped, for I like him _very_ much, and so would you,
+little mother.  There is nothing of the aggressive swashbuckler about
+him.  I'm sure he doesn't push a woman off the pavement when there
+isn't room for him.
+
+I don't think I've told you about Frau Kloster, but that is because one
+keeps on forgetting she is there.  Perhaps that quality of beneficent
+invisibleness is what an artist most needs in a wife.  She never says
+anything, except things that require no answering.  It's a great
+virtue, I should think, in a wife.  From time to time, when Kloster has
+_lese majestated_ a little too much, she murmurs _Aber_ Adolf; or she
+announces placidly that she has just killed a mosquito; or that the sky
+is blue; and Kloster's talk goes on on the top of this little
+undercurrent without taking the least notice of it.  They seem very
+happy.  She tends him as carefully as one would tend a baby,--one of
+those quite new pink ones that can't stand anything hardly without
+crumpling up,--and competently clears life round him all empty and
+free, so that he has room to work.  I wish I had a wife.
+
+We drove out through Potsdam in the direction of Brandenburg, and
+lunched in the woods at Potsdam by the lake the Marmor Palais is on.
+Kloster stared at this across the water while he ate, and the sight of
+it tinged his speech regrettably.  Herr von Inster, as an officer of
+the King, ought really to have smitten him with the flat side of his
+sword, but he didn't; he listened and smiled.  Perhaps he felt as the
+really religious do about God, that the Hohenzollerns are so high up
+that criticism can't harm them, but I doubt it; or perhaps he regards
+Kloster indulgently, as a gifted and wayward child, but I doubt that
+too.  He happens to be intelligent, and is not to be persuaded that a
+spade is anything but a spade, however much it may be got up to look
+like the Ark of the Covenant or anything else archaic and
+bedizened--God forbid, little mother, that you should suppose I meant
+that dreadful pun.
+
+Frau Kloster had brought food with her, part of which was cherries, and
+they slid down one's hot dry throat like so many cool little blessings.
+I could hardly believe that I had really escaped the Sunday dinner at
+the pension.  We were very content, all of us I think, sitting on the
+grass by the water's edge, a tiny wind stirring our hair--except
+Kloster's, because he so happily hasn't got any, which must be
+delicious in hot weather,--and rippling along the rushes.
+
+"She grows less pale every hour," Kloster said to Herr von Inster,
+fixing his round eyes on me.
+
+Herr von Inster looked at me with his grave shrewd ones, and said
+nothing.
+
+"We brought out a windflower," said Kloster, "and behold we will return
+with a rose.  At present, Mees Chrees, you are a cross between the two.
+You have ceased to be a windflower, and are not yet a rose.  I wager
+that by five o'clock the rose period will have set in."
+
+They were both so kind to me all day, you can't think little mother,
+and so was Frau Kloster, only one keeps on forgetting her.  Herr von
+Inster didn't talk much, but he looked quite as content as the rest of
+us.  It is strange to remember that only this morning I was writing
+about feeling so lonely and by myself in spirit.  And so I was; and so
+I have been all this week.  But I don't feel like that now.  You see
+how the company of one righteous man, far more than his prayers,
+availeth much.  And the company of two of them availeth exactly double.
+Kloster is certainly a righteous man, which I take it means a man who
+is both intelligent and good, and so I am sure is Herr von Inster.  If
+he were not, he, a Junker and an officer, would think being with people
+so outside his world as the Klosters intolerable.  But of course then
+he wouldn't be with them.  It wouldn't interest him.  It is so funny to
+watch his set, regular, wooden profile, and then when he turns and
+looks at one to see his eyes.  The difference just eyes can make!  His
+face is the face of the drilled, of the perfect unthinking machine, the
+correct and well-born Oberleutnant; and out of it look the eyes of a
+human being who knows, or will know I'm certain before life has done
+with him, what exultations are, and agonies, and love, and man's
+unconquerable mind.  He really is very nice.  I'm sure you'd like him.
+
+After lunch, and after Kloster had said some more regrettable things,
+being much moved, it appeared, by the palace facing him and by some
+personal recollections he had of the particular Hohenzollern it
+contained, while I lay looking up along the smooth beech-trunks to
+their bright leaves glancing against the wonderful blue of the sky--oh
+it was so lovely, little mother!--and Frau Kloster sometimes said
+_Aber_ Adolf, and occasionally announced that she had slain another
+mosquito, we motored on towards Brandenburg, along the chain of lakes
+formed by the Havel.  It was like heaven after the Lutzowstrasse.  And
+at four o'clock we stopped at a Gasthaus in the pinewoods and had
+coffee and wild strawberries, and Herr von Inster paddled me out on the
+Havel in an old punt we found moored among the rushes.
+
+It looked so queer to see an officer in full Sunday splendour punting,
+but there are a few things which seem to us ridiculous that Germans do
+with great simplicity.  It was rather like being punted on the Thames
+by somebody in a top hat and a black coat.  He looked like a bright
+dragon-fly in his lean elegance, balancing on the rotten little board
+across the end of the punt; or like Siegfried, made up to date, on his
+journey down the Rhine,--made very much up to date, his gorgeous
+barbaric boat and fine swaggering body that ate half a sheep at a
+sitting and made large love to lusty goddesses wittled away by the
+centuries to this old punt being paddled about slowly by a lean man
+with thoughtful eyes.
+
+I told him he was like Siegfried in the second act of the
+Gotterdammerung, but worn a little thin by the passage of the ages, and
+he laughed and said that he at least had got Brunnhilde safe in the
+boat with him, and wasn't going to have to climb through fire to fetch
+her.  He says he thinks Wagner's music and Strauss's intimately
+characteristic of modern Germany: the noise, the sugary sentimentality
+making the public weep tears of melted sugar, he said, the brutal
+glorification of force, the all-conquering swagger, the exaggeration of
+emotions, the big gloom.  They were the natural expression, he said, of
+the phase Germany was passing through, and Strauss is its latest
+flowering,--even noisier, even more bloody, of a bigger gloom.  In that
+immense noise, he said, was all Germany as it is now, as it will go on
+being till it wakes up from the nightmare dream of conquest that has
+possessed it ever since the present emperor came to the throne.
+
+"I'm sure you're saying things you oughtn't to," I said.
+
+"Of course," he said.  "One always is in Germany.  Everything being
+forbidden, there is nothing left but to sin.  I have yet to learn that
+a multiplicity of laws makes people behave.  Behave, I mean, in the way
+Authority wishes."
+
+"But Kloster says you're a nation of slaves, and that the drilling you
+get _does_ make you behave in the way Authority wishes."
+
+He said it was true they were slaves, but that slaves were of two
+kinds,--the completely cowed, who gave no further trouble, and the
+furtive evaders, who consoled themselves for their outward conformity
+to regulations by every sort of forbidden indulgence in thought and
+speech.  "This is the kind that only waits for an opportunity to flare
+out and free itself," he said.  "Mind, thinking, can't be chained up.
+Authority knows this, and of all things in the world fears thought."
+
+He talked about the Sarajevo assassinations, and said, he was afraid
+they would not be settled very easily.  He said Germany is
+seething,--seething, he said emphatically, with desire to fight; that
+it is almost impossible to have a great army at such a pitch of
+perfection as the German army is now and not use it; that if a thing
+like that isn't used it will fester inwardly and set up endless
+internal mischief and become a danger to the very Crown that created
+it.  To have it hanging about idle in this ripe state, he said, is like
+keeping an unexercised young horse tied up in the stable on full feed;
+it would soon kick the stable to pieces, wouldn't it, he said.
+
+"I hate armies," I said.  "I hate soldiering, and all it stands for of
+aggression, and cruelty, and crime on so big a scale that it's
+unpunishable."
+
+"Great God, and don't I!" He exclaimed, with infinite fervour.
+
+He told me something that greatly horrified me.  He says that children
+kill themselves in Germany.  They commit suicide, schoolchildren and
+even younger ones, in great numbers every year.  He says they're driven
+to it by the sheer cruelty of the way they are overworked and made to
+feel that if they are not moved up in the school at the set time they
+and their parents are for ever disgraced and their whole career
+blasted.  Imagine the misery a wretched child must suffer before it
+reaches the stage of _preferring_ to kill itself!  No other nation has
+this blot on it.
+
+"Yes," he said, nodding in agreement with the expression on my face,
+"yes, we are mad.  It is in this reign that we've gone mad, mad with
+the obsession to get at all costs and by any means to the top of the
+world.  We must outstrip; outstrip at whatever cost of happiness and
+life.  We must be better trained, more efficient, quicker at grabbing
+than other nations, and it is the children who must do it for us.  Our
+future rests on their brains.  And if they fail, if they can't stand
+the strain, we break them.  They're of no future use.  Let them go.
+Who cares if they kill themselves?  So many fewer inefficients, that's
+all.  The State considers that they are better dead."
+
+And all the while, while he was telling me these things, on the shore
+lay Kloster and his wife, neatly spread out side by side beneath a tree
+asleep with their handkerchiefs over their faces.  That's the idea
+we've got in England of Germany,--multitudes of comfortable couples,
+kindly and sleepy, snoozing away the afternoon hours in gardens or pine
+forests.  That's the idea the Government wants to keep before Europe,
+Herr von Inster says, this idea of benevolent, beery harmlessness.  It
+doesn't want other nations to know about the children, the dead, flung
+aside children, the ruthless breaking up of any material that will not
+help in the driving of their great machine of destruction, because then
+the other nations would know, he says, before Germany is ready for it
+to be known, that she will stick at nothing.
+
+Wanda has just taken away my lamp, Good night my own sweet mother.
+
+  Your Chris.
+
+
+
+
+  _Berlin, Wednesday, July 8th, 1914_.
+
+Beloved mother,
+
+Kloster says I'm to go into the country this very week and not come
+back for a whole fortnight.  This is just a line to tell you this, and
+that he has written to a forester's family he knows living in the
+depths of the forests up beyond Stettin.  They take in summer-boarders,
+and have had pupils of his before, and he is arranging with them for me
+to go there this very next Saturday.
+
+Do you mind, darling mother?  I mean, my doing something so suddenly
+without asking you first?  But I'm like the tail being wagged by the
+dog, obliged to wag whether it wants to or not.  I'm very unhappy at
+being shovelled off like this, away from my lessons for two solid
+weeks, but it's no use my protesting.  One can't protest with Kloster.
+He says he won't teach me any more if I don't go.  He was quite angry
+at last when I begged, and said it wouldn't be worth his while to go on
+teaching any one so stale with over-practising when they weren't fit to
+practise, and that if I didn't stop, all I'd ever be able to do would
+be to play in the second row of violins--(not even the first!)--at a
+pantomime.  That shrivelled me up into silence.  Horror-stricken
+silence.  Then he got kind again, and said I had this precious
+gift--God, he said, alone knew why I had got it, I a woman; what, he
+asked, staring prawnishly, is the good of a woman's having such a
+stroke of luck?--and that it was a great responsibility, and I wasn't
+to suppose it was my gift only, to spoil and mess up as I chose, but
+that it belonged to the world.  When he said that, cold shivers
+trickled down my spine.  He looked so solemn, and he made me feel so
+solemn, as though I were being turned, like Wordsworth in The Prelude,
+into a dedicated spirit.
+
+But I expect he is right, and it is time I went where it is cooler for
+a little while.  I've been getting steadily angrier at nothing all the
+week, and more and more fretted by the flies, and one day--would you
+believe it--I actually sat down and cried with irritation because of
+those silly flies.  I've had to promise not to touch a fiddle for the
+first week I'm away, and during the second week not to work more than
+two hours a day, and then I may come back if I feel quite well again.
+He says he'll be at Heringsdorf, which is a seaside place not very far
+away from where I shall be, for ten days himself, and will come over
+and see if I'm being good.  He says the Koseritz's country place isn't
+far from where I shall be, so I shan't feel as if I didn't know a soul
+anywhere.  The Koseritz party at which I was to play never came off.  I
+was glad of that.  I didn't a bit want to play at it, or bother about
+it, or anything else.  The hot weather drove the Grafin into the
+country, Herr von Inster told me, He too seems to think I ought to go
+away.  I saw him this afternoon after being with Kloster, and he says
+he'll go down to his aunt's--that is Grafin Koseritz--while I'm in the
+neighbourhood, and will ride over and see me.  I'm sure you'd like him
+very much.  My address will be:
+
+  _bei Herrn Oberforster Bornsted
+    Schuppenfelde
+      Reg. Bez. Stettin_.
+
+I don't know what Reg. Bez. means.  I've copied it from a card Kloster
+gave me, and I expect you had better put it on the envelope.  I'll
+write and tell you directly I get there.  Don't worry about me, little
+mother; Kloster says they are fearfully kind people, and it's the
+healthiest place, in the heart of the forest, away on the edge of a
+thing they call the Haff, which is water.  He says that in a week I
+shall be leaping about like a young roe on the hill side; and he tries
+to lash me to enthusiasm by talking of all the wild strawberries there
+are there, and all the cream.
+
+  My heart's love, darling mother.
+    Your confused and rather hustled Chris.
+
+
+  _Oberforsterei, Schuppenfelde, July 11th, 1914_.
+
+My own little mother,
+
+Here I am, and it is lovely.  I must just tell you about it before I go
+to bed.  We're buried in forest, eight miles from the nearest station,
+and that's only a Kleinbahn station, a toy thing into which a small
+train crawls twice a day, having been getting to it for more than three
+hours from Stettin.  The Oberforster met me in a high yellow carriage,
+drawn by two long-tailed horses who hadn't been worried with much drill
+judging from their individualistic behaviour, and we lurched over
+forest tracks that were sometimes deep sand and sometimes all roots,
+and the evening air was so delicious after the train, so full of
+different scents and freshness, that I did nothing but lift up my nose
+and sniff with joy.
+
+The Oberforster thought I had a cold, without at the same time having a
+handkerchief; and presently, after a period of uneasiness on my behalf,
+offered me his.  "It is not quite clean," he said, "but it is better
+than none." And he shouted, because I was a foreigner and therefore
+would understand better if he shouted.
+
+I explained as well as I could, which was not very, that my sniffs were
+sniffs of exultation.
+
+"_Ach so_," he said, indulgent with the indulgence one feels towards a
+newly arrived guest, before one knows what they are really like.
+
+We drove on in silence after that.  Our wheels made hardly any noise on
+the sandy track, and I suddenly discovered how long it is since I've
+heard any birds.  I wish you had come with me here, little mother; I
+wish you had been on that drive this evening.  There were jays, and
+magpies, and woodpeckers, and little tiny birds like finches that kept
+on repeating in a monotonous sweet pipe the opening bar of the
+Beethoven C minor Symphony No. 5.  We met nobody the whole way except a
+man with a cartload of wood, who greeted the Oberforster with immense
+respect, and some dilapidated little children picking wild
+strawberries.  I wanted to remark on their dilapidation, which seemed
+very irregular in this well-conducted country, but thought I had best
+leave reasoned conversation alone till I've had time to learn more
+German, which I'm going to do diligently here, and till the Oberforster
+has discovered he needn't shout in order to make me understand.
+Sitting so close to my ear, when he shouted into it it was exactly as
+though some one had hit me, and hurt just as much.
+
+He is a huge rawboned man, with the flat-backed head and protruding
+ears so many Germans have.  What is it that is left out of their heads,
+I wonder?  His moustache is like the Kaiser's, and he looks rather a
+fine figure of a man in his grey-green forester's uniform and becoming
+slouch hat with a feather stuck in it.  Without his hat he is less
+impressive, because of his head.  I suppose he has to have a head, but
+if he didn't have to he'd be very good-looking.
+
+This is such a sweet place, little mother.  I've got the dearest little
+clean bare bedroom, so attractive after the grim splendours of my
+drawingroom-bedroom at Frau Berg's.  You can't think how lovely it is
+being here after the long hot journey.  It's no fun travelling alone in
+Germany if you're a woman.  I was elbowed about and pushed out of the
+way at stations by any men and boys there were as if I had been an
+ownerless trunk.  Either that, or they stared incredibly, and said
+things.  One little boy--he couldn't have been more than ten--winked at
+me and whispered something about kissing.  The station at Stettin was
+horrible, much worse than the Berlin one.  I don't know where they all
+came from, the crowds of hooligan boys, just below military age, and
+extraordinarily disreputable and insolent.  To add to the confusion on
+the platform there were hundreds of Russians and Poles with their
+families and bundles--I asked my porter who they were, and he told
+me--being taken from one place where they had been working in the
+fields to another place, shepherded by a German overseer with a fierce
+dog and a revolver; very poor and ragged, all of them, but gentle, and,
+compared to the Germans, of beautiful manners; and there were a good
+many officers--it was altogether the most excited station I've seen, I
+think--and they stared too, but I'm certain that if I had been in a
+difficulty and wanted help they would have walked away.  Kloster told
+me Germans divide women into two classes: those they want to kiss, and
+those they want to kick, who are all those they don't want to kiss.
+One can be kissed and kicked in lots of ways besides actually, I think,
+and I felt as if I had been both on that dreadful platform at Stettin.
+So you can imagine how heavenly it was to get into this beautiful
+forest, away from all that, into the quiet, the _holiness_.  Frau
+Bornsted, who learned English at school, told me all the farms,
+including hers, are worked by Russians and Poles who are fetched over
+every spring in thousands by German overseers.  "It is a good
+arrangement," she said.  "In case of war we would not permit their
+departure, and so would our fields continue to be tilled."  In case of
+war!  Always that word on their tongues.  Even in this distant corner
+of peace.
+
+The Oberforsterei is a low white house with a clearing round it in
+which potatoes have been planted, and a meadow at the back going down
+to a stream, and a garden in front behind a low paling, full of pinks
+and larkspurs and pansies.  A pair of antlers is nailed over the door,
+proud relic of an enormous stag the Oberforster shot on an unusually
+lucky day, and Frau Bornsted was sewing in the porch beneath
+honeysuckle when we arrived.  It was just like the Germany one had in
+one's story books in the schoolroom days.  It seemed too good to be
+true after the Lutzowstrasse.  Frau Bornsted is quite a pretty young
+woman, flat rather than slender, tall, with lovely deep blue eyes and
+long black eyelashes.  She would be very pretty if it occurred to her
+that she is pretty, but evidently it doesn't, or else it isn't proper
+to be pretty here; I think this is the real explanation of the way her
+hair is scraped hack into a little hard knob, and her face shows signs
+of being scrubbed every day with the same soap and the same energy she
+uses for the kitchen table.  She has no children, and isn't, I suppose,
+more than twenty five, but she looks as thirty five, or even forty,
+looks in England.
+
+I love it all.  It is really just like a story book.  We had supper out
+in the porch, prepared, spread, and fetched by Frau Bornsted, and it
+was a milk soup--very nice and funny, and I lapped it up like a thirsty
+kitten--and cold meat, and fried potatoes, and curds and whey, and wild
+strawberries and cream.  They have an active cow who does all the curds
+and whey and cream and butter and milk-soup, besides keeping on having
+calves without a murmur,--"She is an example," said Frau Bornsted, who
+wants to talk English all the time, which will play havoc, I'm afraid,
+with my wanting to talk German.
+
+She took me to a window and showed me the cow, pasturing, like David,
+beside still waters.  "And without rebellious thoughts unsuited to her
+sex," said Frau Bornsted, turning and looking at me.  She showed what
+she was thinking of by adding, "I hope you are not a suffragette?"
+
+The Oberforster put on a thin green linen coat for supper, which he
+left unbuttoned to mark that he was off duty, and we sat round the
+table till it was starlight.  Owls hooted in the forest across the
+road, and bats darted about our heads.  Also there were mosquitoes.  A
+great _many_ mosquitoes.  Herr Bornsted told me I wouldn't mind them
+after a while.  "_Herrlich_," I said, with real enthusiasm.
+
+And now I'm going to bed.  Kloster was right to send me here.  I've
+been leaning out of my window.  The night tonight is the most beautiful
+thing, a great dark cave of softness.  I'm at the back of the house
+where the meadow is and the good cow, and beyond the meadow there's
+another belt of forest, and then just over the tops of the pines, which
+are a little more softly dark than the rest of the soft darkness,
+there's a pale line of light that is the star-lit water of the Haff.
+Frogs are croaking down by the stream, every now and then an owl hoots
+somewhere in the distance, and the air comes up to my face off the long
+grass cool and damp.  I can't tell you the effect the blessed silence,
+the blessed peace has on me after the fret of Berlin.  It feels like
+getting back to God.  It feels like being home again in heaven after
+having been obliged to spend six weeks in hell.  And yet here, even
+here in the very lap of peace, as we sat in the porch after supper the
+Oberforster talked ceaselessly of Weltpolitik.  The very sound of that
+word now makes me wince; for translated into plain English, what it
+means when you've pulled all the trimmings off and look at it squarely,
+is just taking other people's belongings, beginning with their blood.
+I must learn enough German to suggest that to the Oberforster: Murder,
+as a preliminary to Theft.  I'm afraid he would send me straight back
+in disgrace to Frau Berg.
+
+Good night darling mother.  I'll write oftener now.  My rules don't
+count this fortnight.  Bless you, beloved little mother.
+
+  Your Chris.
+
+
+
+
+  _Schuppenfelde, Monday, July 13th_.
+
+Sweet mother,
+
+I got your letter from Switzerland forwarded on this morning, and like
+to feel you're by so much nearer me than you were a week ago.  At
+least, I try to persuade myself that it's a thing to like, but I know
+in my heart it makes no earthly difference.  If you're only a mile away
+and I mayn't see you, what's the good?  You might as well be a
+thousand.  The one thing that will get me to you again is accomplished
+work.  I want to work, to be quick; and here I am idle, precious days
+passing, each of which not used for working means one day longer away
+from you.  And I'm so well.  There's no earthly reason why I shouldn't
+start practising again this very minute.  A day yesterday in the forest
+has cured me completely.  By the time I've lived through my week of
+promised idleness I shall be kicking my loose box to pieces!  And then
+for another whole week there'll only be two hours of my violin allowed.
+Why, I shall fall on those miserable two hours like a famished beggar
+on a crust.
+
+Well, I'm not going to grumble.  It's only that I love you so, and miss
+you so very much.  You know how I always missed you on Sunday in
+Berlin, because then I had time to feel, to remember; and here it is
+all Sundays.  I've had two of them already, yesterday and today, and I
+don't know what it will be like by the time I've had the rest.  I
+walked miles yesterday, and the more beautiful it was the more I missed
+you.  What's the good of having all this loveliness by oneself?  I want
+somebody with me to see it and feel it too.  If you were here how happy
+we should be!
+
+I wish you knew Herr von Inster, for I know you'd like him.  I do think
+he's unusual, and you like unusual people.  I had a letter from him
+today, sent with a book he thought I'd like, but I've read it,--it is
+Selma Lagerlof's Jerusalem; do you remember our reading it together
+that Easter in Cornwall?  But wasn't it very charming of him to send
+it?  He says he is coming this way the end of the week and will call on
+me and renew his acquaintance with the Oberforster, with whom he says
+he has gone shooting sometimes when he has been staying at Koseritz.
+His Christian name is Bernd.  Doesn't it sound nice and _honest_.
+
+I suppose by the end of the week he means Saturday, which is a very
+long way off.  Saturdays used to seem to come rushing on to the very
+heels of Mondays in Berlin when I was busy working.  Little mother, you
+can take it from me, from your wise, smug daughter, that work is the
+key to every happiness.  Without it happiness won't come unlocked.
+What do people do who don't do anything, I wonder?
+
+Koseritz is only five miles away, and as he'll stay there, I suppose,
+with his relations, he won't have very far to come.  He'll ride over, I
+expect.  He looks so nice on a horse.  I saw him once in the
+Thiergarten, riding.  I'd love to ride on these forest roads,--the
+sandy ones are perfect for riding; but when I asked the Oberforster
+today, after I got Herr von Inster's letter, whether he could lend me a
+horse while I was here, what do you think I found out?  That Kloster,
+suspecting I might want to ride, had written him instructions on no
+account to allow me to.  Because I might tumble off, if you please, and
+sprain either of my precious wrists.  Did you ever.  I believe Kloster
+regards me only as a vessel for carrying about music to other people,
+not as a human being at all.  It is like the way jockeys are kept,
+strict and watched, before a race.
+
+Frau Bornsted gazed at me with her large serious eyes, and said, "Do
+you play the violin, then, so well?"
+
+"No," I snapped.  "I don't."  And I drummed with my fingers on the
+windowpane and felt as rebellious as six years old.
+
+But of course I'm going to be good.  I won't do anything that may delay
+my getting home to you.
+
+The Bornsteds say Koseritz is a very beautiful place, on the very edge
+of the Haff.  They talk with deep respectfulness of the Herr Graf, and
+the Frau Grafin, and the _junge_ Komtesse.  It's wonderful how
+respectful Germans are towards those definitely above them.  And so
+uncritical.  Kloster says that it is drill does it.  You never get over
+the awe, he says, for the sergeant, for the lieutenant, for whoever, as
+you rise a step, is one step higher.  I told the Bornsteds I had met
+the Koseritzes in Berlin, and they looked at me with a new interest,
+and Frau Bornsted, who has been very prettily taking me in hand and
+endeavouring to root out the opinions she takes for granted that I
+hold, being an _Englanderin_, came down for a while more nearly to my
+level, and after having by questioning learned that I had lunched with
+the Koseritzes, and having endeavoured to extract, also by questioning,
+what we had had to eat, which I couldn't remember except the whipped
+cream I spilt on the floor, she remarked, slowly nodding her head, "It
+must have been very agreeable for you to be with the _grafliche
+Familie_."
+
+"And for them to be with me," I said, moved to forwardness by being
+full of forest air, which goes to my head.
+
+I suppose this was what they call disrespectful without being funny,
+for Frau Bornsted looked at me in silence, and Herr Bornsted, who
+doesn't understand English, asked in German, seeing his wife solemn,
+"What does she say?"  And when she told him he said, "_Ach_," and
+showed his disapproval by absorbing himself in the _Deutsche
+Tageszeitzing_.
+
+It's wonderful how easy it is to be disrespectful in Germany.  You've
+only got to be the least bit cheerful and let some of it out, and
+you've done it.
+
+"Why are the English always so like that?" Frau Bornsted asked
+presently, after having marked her regret at my behaviour by not saying
+anything for five minutes.
+
+"Like what?"
+
+"So--so without reverence.  And yet you are a religious people.  You
+send out missionaries."
+
+"Yes, and support bishops," I said.  "You haven't got any bishops."
+
+"You are the first nation in the world as regards missionaries," she
+said, gazing at me thoughtfully and taking no notice of the bishops.
+"My father"--her father is a pastor--"has a great admiration for your
+missionaries.  How is it you have so many missionaries and at the same
+time so little reverence ?"
+
+"Perhaps that _is_ why," I said; and started off explaining, while she
+looked at me with beautiful uncomprehending eyes, that the reaction
+from the missionaries and from the kind of spirit that prompts their
+raising and export might conceivably produce a desire to be irreverent
+and laugh, and that life more and more seemed to me like a pendulum,
+and that it needs must swing both ways.
+
+Frau Bornsted sat twisting her wedding ring on her finger till I was
+quiet again.  She does this whenever I emit anything that can be called
+an idea.  It reminds her that she is married, and that I, as she says,
+am _nur ein junges Madchen_, and therefore not to be taken seriously.
+
+When I had finished about the pendulum, she said, "All this will be
+cured when you have a husband."
+
+There was a tea party here yesterday afternoon.  At least, it was
+coffee.  I thought there were no neighbours, and when I came back late
+from having been all day in the forest, missing with an indifference
+that amazed Frau Bornsted the lure of her Sunday dinner, and taking
+some plum-cake and two Bibles with me, English and German, because I'm
+going to learn German that way among other ways while I'm here, and I
+think it's a very good way, and it immensely impressed Frau Bornsted to
+see me take two Bibles out for a walk,--when I got back about five,
+untidy and hot and able to say off a whole psalm in perfect Lutheran
+German, I found several high yellow carriages, like the one I was
+fetched in on Saturday, in front of the paling, with nosebags and rugs
+on the horses, and indoors in the parlour a number of other foresters
+and their wives, besides Frau Bornsted's father and mother and younger
+sister, and the local doctor and his wife, and the Herr Lehrer, a tall
+young man in spectacles who teaches in the village school two miles
+away.
+
+I was astonished, for I imagined complete isolation here.  Frau
+Bornsted says, though, that this only happens on Sundays.  They were
+sitting round the remnants of coffee and cake, the men smoking and
+talking together apart from the women, the women with their
+bonnet-strings untied and hanging over their bosoms, of which there
+seemed to be many and much, telling each other, while they fanned
+themselves with immense handkerchiefs, what they had had for their
+Sunday dinner.
+
+I would have slunk away when I heard the noise of voices, and gone
+round to the peaceful company of the cow, but Frau Bornsted saw me
+coming up the path and called me in.
+
+I went in reluctantly, and on my appearing there was a dead silence,
+which would have unnerved me if I hadn't still had my eyes so full of
+sunlight that I hardly saw anything in the dark room, and stood there
+blinking.
+
+"_Unsere junge Englanderin," said Frau Bornsted, presenting me.
+"Schuhlerin von_ Kloster--_grosses Talent_,--" I heard her adding,
+handing round the bits of information as though it was cake.
+
+They all said _Ach so_, and _Wirklich_, and somebody asked if I liked
+Germany, and I said, still not seeing much, "_Es ist wundervoll_,"
+which provoked a murmur of applause, as the newspapers say.
+
+I found I was expected to sit in a corner with Frau Bornsted's sister,
+who with the Lehrer and myself, being all of us unmarried, represented
+what the others spoke of as _die Jugend_, and that I was to answer
+sweetly and modestly any question I was asked by the others, but not to
+ask any myself, or indeed not to speak at all unless in the form of
+answering.  I gathered this from the behaviour of Frau Bornsted's
+sister; but I do find it very hard not to be natural, and it's natural
+to me, as you know to your cost, don't you, little mother, to ask what
+things mean and why.
+
+There was a great silence while I was given a cup of coffee and some
+cake by Frau Bornsted, helped by her sister.  The young man, the third
+in our trio of youth, sat motionless in the chair next to me while this
+was done.  I wanted to fetch my cup myself, rather than let Frau
+Bornsted wait on me, but she pressed me down into my chair again with
+firmness and the pained look of one who is witnessing the committing of
+a solecism.  "_Bitte_--take place again," she said, her English giving
+way in the stress of getting me to behave as I should.
+
+The women looked on with open interest and curiosity, examining my
+clothes and hair and hands and the Bibles I was clutching and the
+flowers I had stuck in where the Psalms are, because I never can find
+the Psalms right off.  The men looked too, but with caution.  I was
+fearfully untidy.  You would have been shocked.  But I don't know how
+one is to lie about on moss all day and stay neat, and nobody told me I
+was going to tumble into the middle of a party.
+
+The first to disentangle himself from the rest and come and speak to me
+was Frau Bornsted's father, Pastor Wienicke.  He came and stood in
+front of me, his legs apart and a cigar in his mouth, and he took the
+cigar out to tell me, what I already knew, that I was English.  "_Sie
+sind englisch_," said Herr Pastor Wienicke.
+
+"Ja," said I, as modestly as I could, which wasn't very.
+
+There was something about the party that made me sit up on the edge of
+my chair with my feet neatly side by side, and hold my cup as carefully
+as if I had been at a school treat and expecting the rector every
+minute.  "England," said the pastor, while everybody else listened,--he
+spoke in German--"is, I think I may say, still a great country."
+
+"_Ja_?" said I politely, tilting up the _ja_ a little at its end, which
+was meant to suggest not only a deferential, "If you say so it must be
+so" attitude, but also a courteous doubt as to whether any country
+could properly be called great in a world in which the standard of
+greatness was set by so splendid an example of it as his own country.
+
+And it did suggest this, for he said, "_Oh doch_," balancing himself on
+his heels and toes alternately, as though balancing himself into exact
+justice.  "_Oh doch._  I think one may honestly say she still is a
+great country, But--" and he raised his voice and his forefinger at
+me,--"let her beware of her money bags.  That is my word to England:
+Beware of thy money bags."
+
+There was a sound of approval in the room, and they all nodded their
+heads.
+
+He looked at me, and as I supposed he might be expecting an answer I
+thought I had better say _ja_ again, so I did.
+
+"England," he then continued, "is our cousin, our blood-relation.
+Therefore is it that we can and must tell her the truth, even if it is
+unpalatable."
+
+"_Ja_," I said, as he paused again; only there were several little
+things I would have liked to have said about that, if I had been able
+to talk German properly.  But I had nothing but my list of exclamations
+and the psalms I had learnt ready.  So I said _Ja_, and tried to look
+modest and intelligent.
+
+"Her love of money, her materialism--these are her great dangers," he
+said.  "I do not like to contemplate, and I ask my friends here--" he
+turned slowly round on his heels and back again--"whether they would
+like to contemplate a day when the sun of the British Empire, that
+Empire which, after all, has upheld the cause of religion with
+faithfulness and persistence for so long, shall be seen at last
+descending, to rise no more, in an engulfing ocean of over-indulged
+appetites."
+
+"_Ja_," I said; and then perceiving it was the wrong word, hastily
+amended in English, "I mean _nein_."
+
+He looked at me for a moment more carefully.  Then deciding that all
+was well he went on.
+
+"England," he said, "is our natural ally.  She is of the same blood,
+the same faith, and the same colour.  Behold the other races of the
+world, and they are either partly, chiefly, or altogether black.  The
+blonde races are, like the dawn, destined to drive away the darkness.
+They must stand together shoulder to shoulder in any discord that may,
+in the future, gash the harmony of the world."
+
+"_Ja_," I said, as one who should, at the conclusion of a Psalm, be
+saying Selah.
+
+"We live in serious times," he said.  "They may easily become more
+serious.  Round us stand the Latins and the Slavs, armed to the teeth,
+bursting with envy of our goods, of our proud calm, and watching for
+the moment when they can fall upon us with criminal and murderous
+intent.  Is it not so, my Fraulein?"
+
+"_Ja_" said I, forced to agree because of my unfortunate emptiness of
+German.
+
+The only thing I could have reeled off at him was the Psalm I had
+learnt, and I did long to, because it was the one asking why the
+heathen so furiously rage together; but you see, little mother, though
+I longed to I couldn't have followed it up, and having fired it off I'd
+have sat there defenceless while he annihilated me.
+
+But I don't know what they all mean by this constant talk of envious
+nations crouching ready to spring at them.  They talk and talk about
+it, and their papers write and write about it, till they inflame each
+other into a fever of pugnaciousness.  I've never been anywhere in the
+least like it in my life.  In England people talked of a thousand
+things, and hardly ever of war.  When we were in Italy, and that time
+in Paris, we hardly heard it mentioned.  Directly my train got into
+Germany at Goch coming from Flushing, and Germans began to get in,
+there in the very train this everlasting talk of war and the
+enviousness of other nations began, and it has never left off since.
+The Archduke's murder didn't start it; it was going on weeks before
+that, when first I came.  It has been going on, Kloster says, growing
+in clamour, for years, ever since the present Kaiser succeeded to the
+throne.  Kloster says the nation thinks it feels all this, but it is
+merely being stage-managed by the group of men at the top, headed by S.
+M.  So well stage-managed is it, so carefully taught by such slow
+degrees, that it is absolutely convinced it has arrived at its opinions
+and judgments by itself.  I wonder if these people are mad.  Is it
+possible for a whole nation to go mad at once?  It is they who seem to
+have the enviousness, to be torn with desire to get what isn't theirs.
+
+"The disastrous crime of Sarajevo," continued Pastor Wienicke, "cannot
+in this connection pass unnoticed.  To smite down a God's Anointed!"
+He held up his hands.  "Not yet, it is true, an actually Anointed, but
+set aside by God for future use.  It is typical of the world outside
+our Fatherland.  Lawlessness and its companion Sacrilege stalk at
+large.  Women emerge from the seclusion God has arranged for them, and
+rear their heads in shameless competition with men.  Our rulers, whom
+God has given us so that they shall guide and lead us and in return be
+reverently taken care of, are blasphemously bombed."  He flung both his
+arms heavenwards.  "Arise, Germany!" he cried.  "Arise and show
+thyself!  Arise in thy might, I say, and let our enemies be scattered!"
+
+Then he wiped his forehead, looked round in recognition of the _sehr
+guts_ and _ausserordentlich schon gesagts_ that were being flung about,
+re-lit his cigar with the aid of the Herr Lehrer, who sprang
+obsequiously forward with a match, and sat down.
+
+Wasn't it a good thing he sat down.  I felt so much happier.  But just
+as it was at the meals at Frau Berg's so it was at the coffee party
+here,--I was singled out and talked to, or at, by the entire company.
+The concentration of curiosity of Germans is terrible.  But it's more
+than curiosity, it's a kind of determination to crush what I'm thinking
+out of me and force what they're thinking into me.  I shall see as they
+do; I shall think as they do; they'll shout at me till I'm forced to.
+That's what I feel.  I don't a bit know if it isn't quite a wrong idea
+I've got, but somehow my very bones feel it.
+
+Would you believe it, they stayed to supper, all of them, and never
+went away till ten o'clock.  Frau Bornsted says one always does that in
+the country here when invited to afternoon coffee.  I won't tell you
+any more of what they said, because it was all on exactly the same
+lines, the older men singling me out one by one and very loudly telling
+me variations of Pastor Wienicke's theme, the women going for me in
+twos and threes, more definitely bloodthirsty than the men, more like
+Frau Berg on the subject of blood-letting, more openly greedy.  They
+were all disconcerted and uneasy because nothing more has been heard of
+the Austrian assassination.  The silence from Vienna worries them, I
+gather, very much.  They are afraid, actually they are afraid, Austria
+may be going to do nothing except just punish the murderers, and so
+miss the glorious opportunity for war.  I wonder if you can the least
+realize, you sane mother in a sane place, the state they're in here,
+the sort of boiling and straining.  I'm sure the whole of Germany is
+the same,--lashed by the few behind the scenes into a fury of
+aggressive patriotism.  They call it patriotism, but it is just
+blood-lust and loot-lust.
+
+I helped Frau Bornsted get supper ready, and was glad to escape into
+the peace of the kitchen and stand safely frying potatoes.  She was
+very sweet in her demure Sunday frock of plain black, and high up round
+her ears a little white frill.  The solemnity and youth and quaintness
+of her are very attractive, and I could easily love her if it weren't
+for this madness about Deutschland.  She is as mad as any of them, and
+in her it is much more disconcerting.  We will be discoursing together
+gravely--she is always grave, and never knows how funny we both are
+being really--about amusing things like husbands and when and if I'm
+ever going to get one, and she, full of the dignity and wisdom of the
+married, will be giving me much sage counsel with sobriety and
+gentleness, when something starts her off about Deutschland.  Oh, they
+are _intolerable_ about their Deutschland!
+
+The Oberforster is calling for this--he's driving to the post, so
+good-bye little darling mother, little beloved and precious one.
+
+  Your Chris.
+
+
+
+
+  _Schuppenfelde, Thursday, July 16, 1914_.
+
+My blessed mother,
+
+Here's Thursday evening in my week of nothing to do, and me meaning to
+write every day to you, and I haven't done it since Monday.  It's
+because I've had so much time.  Really it's because I've been in a sort
+of sleep of loveliness.  I've been doing nothing except be happy.  Not
+a soul has been near us since Sunday, and Frau Bornsted says not a soul
+will, till next Sunday.  Each morning I've come down to a perfect
+world, with the sun shining through roses on to our breakfast-table in
+the porch, and after breakfast I've crossed the road and gone into the
+forest and not come back till late afternoon.
+
+Frau Bornsted has been sweet about it, giving me a little parcel of
+food and sending me off with many good wishes for a happy day.  I
+wanted to help her do her housework, but except my room she won't let
+me, having had orders from Kloster that I was to be completely idle.
+And it _is_ doing me good.  I feel so perfectly content these last
+three days.  There's nothing fretful about me any more; I feel
+harmonized, as if I were so much a part of the light and the air and
+the forest that I don't know now where they leave off and I begin.  I
+sit and watch the fine-weather clouds drifting slowly across the
+tree-tops, and wonder if heaven is any better.  I go down to the edge
+of the Haff, and lie on my face in the long grass, and push up my
+sleeves, and slowly stir the shallow golden water about among the
+rushes.  I pick wild strawberries to eat with my lunch, and after lunch
+I lie on the moss and learn the Psalm for the day, first in English and
+then in German.  About five I begin to go home, walking slowly through
+the hot scents of the afternoon forest, feeling as solemn and as
+exulting as I suppose a Catholic does when he comes away, shriven and
+blest, from confession.  In the evening we sit out, and the little
+garden grows every minute more enchanted.  Frau Bornsted rests after
+her labours, with her hands in her lap, and agrees with what the
+Oberforster every now and then takes his pipe out of his mouth to say,
+and I lie back in my chair and stare at the stars, and I think and
+think, and wonder and wonder.  And what do you suppose I think and
+wonder about, little mother?  You and love.  I don't know why I say you
+and love, for it's the same thing.  And so is all this beauty of summer
+in the woods, and so is music, and my violin when it gets playing to
+me; and the future is full of it, and oh, I do so badly want to say
+thank you to some one!
+
+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 him _very_ much, 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 a _junges 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,--the _schone_ Helena 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
+clever _he_ is.
+
+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 little _Englanderin_," he
+said gaily to Frau Bornsted, who listened to his _badinage_ with 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 a
+_junges 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 out _Auf Wiedersehen_
+till 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 the
+_claque_ at 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 ignorant _junges 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 perfect _junges
+Madchen_ was 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 a _junges Madchen_ to
+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 a _junges Madchen_ generally 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 a _junges Madchen_ generally 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 was _listening_; 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 one _used_ to 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 a _fait 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, a _Beethovenkopf_.
+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 the _Tageszeitung_ he 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 of _die Leute_ and what they would
+_sagen_.  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 to _die 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 so _much_
+manners 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 she _possibly_ could.
+
+"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, to _know_ that 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 like _Deutschthum_ and 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 something _seething_.
+
+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 really _for_, these poor creatures bellowing and
+strutting, and waving their hats and handkerchiefs, and even their
+babies, high over their heads whenever a _konigliche Hoheit_ dashes
+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 curiously _innocent_, 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 of _Deutschland uber Alles_, and the _hochs_ and 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 so _much_," 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 a _junges Madchen_ to 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 a _junges
+Madchen_ who 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 the _Ministerium 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 the _Deutschland uber
+Alles_ business 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.
+
+You wrote to me last sitting under a cherry tree, you said, in the
+orchard at the back of your hotel at Glion, and you talked of the
+colour of the lake far down below through the leaves of walnut trees,
+and of the utter peace.  Here day and night, day and night, since
+Wednesday, soldiers in new grey uniforms pass through the Brandenburger
+Thor down the broad road to Charlottenburg.  Their tramp never stops.
+I can see them from my window tramping, tramping away down the great
+straight road; and crowds that don't seem to change or dwindle watch
+them and shout.  Where do the soldiers all come from?  I never dreamed
+there could be so many in the world, let alone in Berlin; and Germany
+isn't even at war!  But it's no use asking questions, or trying to talk
+about it.  I've found the word "Why?" in this house is not only useless
+but improper.  Nobody will talk about anything; I suppose they don't
+need to, for they all seem perfectly to _know_.  They're in the inner
+circle in this house.  They're not the public.  The public is that
+shouting, perspiring mob out there watching the soldiers, and Frau Berg
+and her boarders are the public, and so are the soldiers themselves.
+The public here are all the people who obey, and pay, and don't know;
+an immense multitude of slaves,--abject, greedy, pitiful.  I don't
+think I ever could have imagined a thing so pitiful to see as these
+respectable middle-aged Berlin citizens, fathers of families, careful
+livers on small incomes, clerks, pastors, teachers, professors, drunk
+and mad out there publicly on the pavement, dancing with joy because
+they think the great moment they've been taught to wait for has come,
+and they're going to get suddenly rich, scoop in wealth from Russia and
+France, get up to the top of the world and be able to kick it.  That's
+what I saw over and over again today as I somehow got through to Frau
+Berg's to fetch your letters.  An ordinary person from an ordinary
+country wants to cover these heated elderly gentlemen up, and hide them
+out of sight, so shocking are they to one's sense of respect and
+reverence for human beings.  Imagine decent citizens, paunchy and soft
+with beer and sitting in offices, wearing cheap straw hats and
+carefully mended and brushed black coats, _dancing_ with excitement on
+the pavement; and nobody thinking it anything but fine and creditable,
+at the prospect of their children's blood going to be shed, and
+everybody's children's blood, except the blood of those safe children,
+the children of the Hohenzollerns!
+
+The weather is fiercely hot.  There's a brassy sky without a cloud, and
+all the leaves of the trees in the Thiergarten are shiny and motionless
+as if they were cut out of metal.  A little haze of dust hangs
+perpetually along the Lindens and the road to Charlottenburg,--not much
+of it, because the roads are too well kept, but enough to show that the
+troops never leave off tramping.  And all down where they pass, on each
+side, are the perspiring crowds of people, red and apoplectic with
+excitement and heat, women and children and babies mixed up in one
+heaving, frantic mass.  The windows of the houses on each side of the
+Brandenburger Thor are packed with people all day long, and the noise
+of patriotism doesn't leave off for an instant.
+
+It's a very ugly noise.  The only place where I can get away from
+it--and I do hate noise, it really _hurts_ my ears--is the bathroom
+here, which is a dark cupboard with no window, in the very middle of
+the house.  I thought it a dreadful bathroom when I first saw it, but
+now I'm grateful that it can't be aired.  The house was built years and
+years before Germans began to wash, and it wasn't till the Koseritzes
+came that a bath was wanted.  Then it had to be put in any hole, and
+this hole is the one place where there is silence.  Everywhere else, in
+every room in the house, it is as if one were living next door to a
+dozen public houses in the worst slums of London and it were always
+Saturday night.  I do think the patriotism of an unattacked, aggressive
+country is a hideous thing.
+
+Bernd got me somehow through the crowd to the calmer streets on the way
+to Frau Berg.  He didn't want me to go out at all, but I want to see
+what I can.  The Kaiser rushed through the Brandenburger Thor in his
+car as we went out.  You never saw such a scene as then.  It was
+frightening, like a mob of lunatics let loose.  Every time he is seen
+tearing along the streets there's this wild scene, Bernd says.  He has
+suddenly leaped to the topmost top of popularity, for he's the
+dispenser now of the great lottery in which all the draws are going to
+be prizes.  You know there isn't a German, not the cleverest, not the
+most sober, who doesn't regularly and solemnly buy lottery tickets.
+Aren't they, apart from all the other things they are, the _funniest_
+people.  So immature in wisdom, so top-heavy with dangerous knowledge
+that their youngness in wisdom makes them use wrongly.  If they hadn't
+got the latest things in guns and equipment they would be quiet, and
+wouldn't think of fighting.
+
+Bernd made me promise to wait at Frau Berg's till he could fetch me,
+and as he didn't get back till two o'clock, and Frau Berg very amiably
+said I must be her guest at the well-known mid-day meal, I found myself
+once more in the bosom of the boarders.  Only this time I sat proudly
+on Frau Berg's right, in the place of honour next to Doctor Krummlaut,
+instead of in the obscurity of my old seat at the dark end near the
+door.
+
+It was so queer, and so different.  There was the same Wanda, resting
+her dishes on my left shoulder, which she always used to do, not only
+so as to attract my attention but as a convenience to herself, because
+they were hot and heavy.  There were the same boarders, except the
+red-mouthed bank-clerk and another young man.  Hilda Seeberg was there,
+and the Swede, and Doctor Krummlaut; and of course Frau Berg, massive
+in her tight black dress buttoned up the front without a collar to it,
+the big brooch she fastens it with at the neck half hidden by her
+impressive double chins, which flow down as majestically as a
+patriarch's beard.  We had the same food, the same heat, and I'm sure
+the same flies.  But the nervous tension there used to be, the tendency
+to quarrel, the pugnacious political arguing with me, the gibes at
+England, were gone.  I don't know whether it was because I'm engaged to
+a Prussian officer that they were so very polite--I was tremendously
+congratulated,--but they were certainly different about England.  It
+may of course have been their general happiness--happiness makes one so
+kind all round!--for here too was the content, the satisfaction of
+those who, after painful waiting, get what they want.  It was expressed
+very noisily, not with the restraint of the Koseritzes, but it was the
+same thing really.  The Berg atmosphere was more like the one in the
+streets.  Where the Grafin in her pleasure became only more calm, the
+boarders were abandoned,--excited like savages dancing round the fire
+their victims are to roast at.  Frau Berg rumbled and shook with her
+relief, like some great earthquake, and didn't mind a bit apparently
+about the tremendous rise there has been in prices this week.  What
+will she get, I wonder, by war, except struggle and difficulty and
+departing boarders?  Being a guest, I had to be polite and let them say
+what they liked without protest,--really, the disabilities of guests!
+I couldn't argue, as I would have if I'd still been a boarder, which
+was a pity, for meanwhile I've learned a lot of German and could have
+said a great many things and been as natural as I liked here away from
+the Grafin's gentle smile reminding me that I'm not behaving.  But I
+had to sit and listen smilingly, and of course show none of my horror
+at their attitude, for more muzzling even than being a guest is being
+the betrothed of a Prussian officer.  _They_ don't know what sort of a
+Prussian officer he is, how different, how truly educated, how full of
+dislike for the base things they worship and want; and he, caught by
+birth in the Prussian chains, shall not be betrayed by me who love him.
+Here he is, caught anyhow for the present, and he must do his duty; but
+someday we're going away,--he, and I, and you, little mother darling,
+when there's no war anywhere in sight and therefore no duty to stay
+for, and we'll go and live in America, and he'll take off all those
+buttons and spurs and things, and we'll give ourselves up to freedom,
+and harmlessness, and art, and beauty, and we'll have friends who
+neither intrigue, which is what the class at the top here lives by, nor
+who waste their lives being afraid, which is what all the other classes
+here spend their lives being.
+
+"At last we are going to wipe off old scores against France," Doctor
+Krummlaut spluttered through his soup today at Frau Berg's with shining
+eyes,--I should have thought it was France who had the old scores that
+need wiping--"and Russia, the barbarian Colossus, will topple over and
+choke in its own blood."
+
+
+Then Frau Berg capped that with sentiments even more bloodthirsty.
+
+Then the Swede, who never used to speak, actually raised her voice in
+terms of blood too, and expressed a wish to see a Cossack strung up by
+his heels to every electric-light standard along the Lindens.
+
+Then Hilda Seeberg said if her Papa--that Papa she told me once she
+hadn't at all liked--were only alive, it would be the proudest moment
+of his life when, at the head of his regiment, he would go forth to
+slay President Poincare.  "And if," she said, her eyes flashing, "owing
+to his high years his regiment was no longer able to accept his heroic
+leadership, he would, I know, proceed secretly to France as an
+assassin, and bomb the infamous Poincare,--bomb him in the name of our
+Kaiser, of our Fatherland, and of our God."
+
+"Amen," said Frau Berg, very loud.
+
+I flew to Bernd when he came.  It was as if a door had been flung open,
+and the freshness and sanity of early morning came into the room when
+he did.  I hung on his arm, and looked up into his dear shrewd eyes, so
+clear and kind, so full of wisdom.  The boarders were with one accord
+servile to him; even Doctor Krummlaut, a clever man with far better
+brains probably than Bernd.  Bernd, from habit, stiffened and became
+unapproachable the instant the middle class public in the shape of the
+congratulatory boarders appeared.  He doesn't even know he's like that,
+his training has made it second nature.  You should have seen his
+lofty, complete indifference.  It was dreadfully rude really, and oh
+how they loved him for it!  They simply adored him, and were ready to
+lick his boots.  It was so funny to see them sidling about him, all of
+them wagging their tails.  He was the master, come among the slaves.
+But to think that even Doctor Krummlaut should sidle!
+
+There's a most terrific _extra_ noise going on outside.  I can hardly
+hear myself write.  I don't know whether to run and find out what it
+is, or retreat to the bathroom.  My ears won't stand much more,--I
+shall get deaf, and not be able to play.
+
+
+
+  _Later_.
+
+What has happened is that special editions of the papers have appeared
+announcing that the Kaiser has decreed a state of war for the whole of
+Germany.  Well.  They've done it now.  For I did extract from a very
+cheerful-looking caller I met coming upstairs to the drawingroom that a
+state of war is followed as inevitably by the real thing as a German
+betrothal is followed by marriage.  One is as committal as the other,
+he said.  It is the rarest thing, and produces an immense scandal, for
+an engagement to be broken off; and, explained the caller looking
+extremely pleased,--he was a man-caller, and therefore more willing to
+stop and talk--to proceed backwards from a state of war to the _status
+quo ante_ might produce the unthinkable result of costing the Kaiser
+his throne.
+
+"You can imagine, my most gracious Miss," said the caller, "that His
+Majesty would never permit a calamity so colossal to overtake his
+people, whose welfare he has continually and exclusively in his
+all-highest thoughts.  Therefore you may take it from me as completely
+certain that war is now assured."
+
+"But nobody has done anything to you," I said.
+
+He gazed at me a moment, and then smiled.  "High politics, and little
+heads," he said.  "High politics, and little women's heads,--" and went
+on up the stairs smiling and shaking his own.
+
+I do wish they wouldn't keep on talking as though my head were so
+dreadfully small.  Never in my life have people taken so utterly and
+complacently for granted that I'm stupid.
+
+Well, I feel very sick at heart.  How long will it be before Bernd too
+will be one of that marching column on the Charlottenburger Chaussee.
+He won't go away from me that way, I know.  He's on the Staff, and will
+go more splendidly; but those men in the new grey uniforms tramping day
+and night are symbols each one of them of departing happiness, of a
+closed chapter, of the end of something that can never be the same
+again.
+
+  Your tired Chris.
+
+
+
+
+  Before Breakfast.
+  Berlin, Sat., Aug. 1st, 1914.
+
+My blessed little mother,
+
+I've seen a thing I don't suppose I'll forget.  It was yesterday, after
+the news came that Germany had sent Russia an ultimatum about instantly
+demobilizing, demanding an answer by eleven this morning.  The
+sensation when this was known was tremendous.  The Grafin was shaken
+out of her calm into exclamations of joy and fear,--joy that the step
+had been taken, fear lest Russia should obey, and there be no war after
+all.
+
+We had to shut the windows to be able to hear ourselves talk.  Some
+women friends of the Grafin's who were here--we had no men with
+us--instantly left to drive by back streets to the Schlossplatz to see
+the sight it must be there, and the Grafin, saying that we too must
+witness the greatest history of the world's greatest nation in the
+making, sent for a taxi--her chauffeur has gone--and prepared to
+follow.  We had to wait ages for the taxi, but it was lucky we had to,
+else we might have gone and come back and missed seeing the Kaiser come
+out and speak to the crowd.  We went a long way round, but even so all
+Germany seemed to be streaming towards the Lindens and the part at the
+end where the palace is.  I don't expect we ever would have got there
+if it hadn't been that a cousin of the Grafin's, a very smart young
+officer in the Guards, saw us in the taxi as it was vainly trying to
+cross the Friedrichstrasse, and flicking the obstructing policemen on
+one side with a sort of little kick of his spur, came up all amazement
+and salutes to inquire of his most gracious cousin what in the world
+she was doing in a taxi.  He said it was hopeless to try to get to the
+Schlossplatz in it, but if we would allow him to escort us on foot he
+would be proud--the gracious cousin would permit him to offer her his
+arm, and the young ladies would keep very close behind him.
+
+So we set out, and it was surprising the way he got us through.  If the
+crowd didn't fall apart instantly of itself at his approach, an
+obsequious policeman--one of those same Berlin policemen who are so
+rude to one if one is alone and really in need of help--sprang up from
+nowhere and made it.  It's as far from the Friedrichstrasse to the
+Schlossplatz as it is from here to the Friedrichstrasse, but we did it
+very much quicker than we did the first half in the taxi, and when we
+reached it there they all were, the drunken crowds--that's the word
+that most exactly describes them--yelling, swaying, cursing the ones in
+their way or who trod on their feet, shouting hurrahs and bits of
+patriotic songs, every one of them decently dressed, obviously
+respectable people in ordinary times.  That's what is so constantly
+strange to me,--these solid burghers and their families behaving like
+drunken hooligans.  Somehow a spectacled professor with a golden chain
+across his blackwaistcoated and impressive front, just roaring
+incoherently, just opening his mouth and hurling any sort of noise out
+of it till the veins on his neck and forehead look as though they would
+burst, is the strangest sight in the world to me.  I can imagine
+nothing stranger, nothing that makes one more uncomfortable and
+ashamed.  It is what will always jump up before my eyes in the future
+at the words German patriotism.  And to see a stout elderly lady, who
+ought to be presiding with slow dignity in some ordered home, hoarse
+with shouting, tear the feathered hat she otherwise only uses tenderly
+on Sundays off her respectable grey head and wave it frantically,
+screaming _hochs_ every time a prince is seen or a general or one of
+the ministers, makes one want to cry with shame at the indignity put
+upon poor human beings, at the exploiting of their passions, in the
+interests of one family.
+
+The Grafin's smart cousin got us on to some steps and stood with us, so
+that we should not be pushed off them instantly again, as we would have
+been if he had left us.  I think they were the steps of a statue, or
+fountain, or something like that, but the whole whatever it was was so
+covered with people, encrusted with them just like one of those sticky
+fly-sticks is black with flies, that I don't know what it was really.
+I only know that it wasn't a house, and that we were quite close to the
+palace, and able to look down at the sea beneath us, the heaving,
+roaring sea of distorted red faces, all with their mouths wide open,
+all blistering and streaming in the sun.
+
+The Grafin, who had recovered her calm in the presence of her inferiors
+of the middle classes, put up her eyeglasses and examined them with
+interest and indulgence.  Helena stared.  The cousin twisted his little
+moustache, standing beside us protectingly, very elegant and slender
+and nonchalant, and remarked at intervals, "_Fabelhafte Enthusiasmus,
+was_?"
+
+It came into my mind that Beerbohm Tree must sometimes look on like
+that at a successful dress rehearsal of his well-managed stage crowds,
+with the same nonchalant satisfaction at the excellent results, so well
+up to time, of careful preparation.
+
+Of course I said "_Colossal_" to the cousin, when he expressed his
+satisfaction more particularly to me.
+
+"_Dreckiges Yolk, die Russen_" he remarked, twisting his little
+moustache's ends up.  "_Werden lernen was es heisst, frech sein gegen
+uns.  Wollen sie blau und schwartz dreschen_."
+
+You know German, so I needn't take its peculiar flavour out by
+transplanting the young man's remarks.
+
+"_Oh pardon--aber meine Gnadigste--tausendmal pardon--" he protested
+the next minute in a voice of tremendous solicitude, having been pushed
+rather hard and suddenly against me by a little boy who had scrambled
+down off whatever it was he was hanging on to; and he turned on the
+little boy, who I believe had tumbled off rather than scrambled, with
+his hand flashing to his sword, ready to slash at whoever it was had
+dared push against him, an officer; and seeing it was a child and
+therefore not _satisfactionsfahig_ as they say, he merely called him an
+_infame_ and _verfluchte Bengel_ and smacked his face so hard that he
+would have been knocked down if there had been room to fall in.
+
+As it was, he was only hurled violently against the side of a man in a
+black coat and straw hat who looked like an elderly confidential clerk,
+so respectable and complete with his short grey beard and spectacles,
+who was evidently the father, for he instantly on his own account
+smacked the boy on his other ear, and sweeping off his hat entreated
+the Herr Leutnant to forgive the boy on account of his extreme youth.
+
+The cousin, whom by now I didn't like, was beginning very severely to
+advise the parent jolly well to see to it, or German words to that
+effect, that his idiotic boy didn't repeat such insolences, or by hell,
+etc., etc., when there was such a blast of extra noise and hurrahing
+that the rest of his remarks were knocked out of his mouth.  It was the
+Kaiser, come out on the balcony of the palace.
+
+The cousin became rigid, and stood at the salute.  The air seemed full
+of hats and handkerchiefs and delirious shrieking.  The Kaiser put up
+his hand.
+
+"Majestat is going to speak," exclaimed the Grafin, her calm fluttered
+into fragments.
+
+There was an immense instantaneous hush, uncanny after all the noise.
+Only the little boy with the boxed ears continued to call out, but not
+patriotically.  His father, efficient and Prussian, put a stop to that
+by seizing his head, buttoning it up inside his black coat, and holding
+his arm tightly over it, so that no struggles of suffocation could get
+it free.  There was no more noise, but the little boy's legs,
+desperately twitching, kicked their dusty little boots against the
+cousin's shins, and he, standing at the salute with his body rigidly
+turned towards Majestat, was unable to take the steps his outraged
+honour, let alone the pain in his shins, called for.
+
+I was so much interested in this situation, really absorbed by it, for
+the little boy unconsciously was getting quite a lot of his own back,
+his little boots being sturdy and studded with nails, and the father,
+all eyes and ears for Majestat, not aware of what was happening, that
+positively I missed the first part of the speech.  But what I did hear
+was immensely impressive.  I had seen the Kaiser before, you remember;
+that time he was in London with the Kaiserin, in 1912 or 1913 I think
+it was, and we were staying with Aunt Angela in Wilton Crescent and we
+saw him driving one afternoon in a barouche down Birdcage Walk.  Do you
+remember how cross he looked, hardly returning the salutations he got?
+We said he and she must have been quarrelling, he looked so sulky.  And
+do you remember how ordinary he looked in his top hat and black coat,
+just like any cross and bored middle-class husband?  There was nothing
+royal about him that day except the liveries on the servants, and they
+were England's.  Yesterday things were very different.  He really did
+look like the royal prince of a picture book, a real War
+Lord,--impressive and glittering with orders flashing in the sun.  We
+were near enough to see him perfectly.  There wasn't much crossness or
+boredom about him this time.  He was, I am certain, thoroughly enjoying
+himself,--unconsciously of course, but with that immense thrilled
+enjoyment all leading figures at leading moments must have: Sir
+Galahad, humbly glorying in his perfect achievement of negations;
+Parsifal, engulfed in an ecstasy of humble gloating over his own
+worthiness as he holds up the Grail high above bowed, adoring heads;
+Beerbohm Tree--I can't get away from theatrical analogies--coming
+before the curtain on his most successful first night, meek with
+happiness.  Hasn't it run through the ages, this great humility at the
+moment of supreme success, this moved self-depreciation of the man who
+has pulled it off, the "Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us"
+attitude,--quite genuine at the moment, and because quite genuine so
+extraordinarily moving and impressive?  Really one couldn't wonder at
+the people.  The Empress was there, and a lot of officers and princes
+and people, but it was the Emperor alone that we looked at.  He came
+and stood by himself in front of the others.  He was very grave, with a
+real look of solemn exaltation.  Here was royalty in all its most
+impressive trappings, a prince of the fairy-tales, splendidly dressed,
+dilated of nostril, flashing of eye, the defender of homes, the leader
+to glory, the object of the nation's worship and belief and prayers
+since each of its members was a baby, become visible and audible to
+thousands who had never seen him before, who had worshipped him by
+faith only.  It was as though the people were suddenly allowed to look
+upon God.  There was a profound awe in the hush.  I believe if they
+hadn't been so tightly packed together they would all have knelt down.
+
+Well, it is easy to stir a mob.  One knows how easily one is moved
+oneself by the cheapest emotions, by something that catches one on the
+sentimental side, on that side of one that through all the years has
+still stayed clinging to one's mother's knee.  We've often talked of
+this, you and I, little mother.  You know the sort of thing, and have
+got that side yourself,--even you, you dear objective one.  The three
+things up to now that have got me most on that side, got me on the very
+raw of it--I'll tell you now, now that I can't see your amused eyes
+looking at me with that little quizzical questioning in them--the three
+things that have broken my heart each time I've come across them and
+made me only want to sob and sob, are when Kurwenal, mortally wounded,
+crawls blindly to Tristan's side and says, "_Schilt mich nicht dass der
+Treue auch mitkommt_" and Siegfried's dying "_Brunnhild, heilige
+Braut_," and Tannhauser's dying "_Heilige Elisabeth, bitte fur mich_."
+All three German things, you see.  All morbid things.  Most of the
+sentimentality seems to have come from Germany, an essentially brutal
+place.  But of course sentimentality is really diluted morbidness, and
+therefore first cousin to cruelty.  And I have a real and healthy
+dislike for that Tannhauser opera.
+
+But seeing how the best of us--which is you--have these little hidden
+swamps of emotionalness, you can imagine the effect of the Kaiser
+yesterday at such a moment in their lives on a people whose swamps are
+carefully cultivated by their politicians.  Even I, rebellious and
+hostile to the whole attitude, sure that the real motives beneath all
+this are base, and constitutionally unable to care about Kaisers, was
+thrilled.  Thrilled by him, I mean.  Oh, there was enough to thrill one
+legitimately and tragically about the poor people, so eager to offer
+themselves, their souls and bodies, to be an unreasonable sacrifice and
+satisfaction for the Hohenzollerns.  His speech was wonderfully suited
+to the occasion.  Of course it would be.  If he were not able to
+prepare it himself his officials would have seen to it that some
+properly eloquent person did it for him; but Kloster says he speaks
+really well on cheap, popular lines.  All the great reverberating words
+were in it, the old big words ambitious and greedy rulers have conjured
+with since time began,--God, Duty, Country, Hearth and Home, Wives,
+Little Ones, God again--lots of God.
+
+Perhaps you'll see the speech in the papers.  What you won't see is
+that enormous crowd, struck quiet, struck into religious awe, crying
+quietly, men and women like little children gathered to the feet of,
+positively, a heavenly Father.  "Go to your homes," he said, dismissing
+them at the end with uplifted hand,--"go to your homes, and pray."
+
+And we went.  In dead silence.  That immense crowd.  Quietly, like
+people going out of church; moved, like people coming away from
+communion.  I walked beside Helena, who was crying, with my head very
+high and my chin in the air, trying not to cry too, for then they would
+have been more than ever persuaded that I'm a promising little German,
+but I did desperately want to.  I could hardly not cry.  These cheated
+people!  Exploited and cheated, led carefully step by step from
+babyhood to a certain habit of mind necessary to their exploiters, with
+certain passions carefully developed and encouraged, certain ancient
+ideas, anachronisms every one of them, kept continually before their
+eyes,--why, if they _did_ win in their murderous attack on nations who
+have done nothing to them, what are they going to get individually?
+Just wind; the empty wind of big words.  They'll be told, and they'll
+read it in the newspapers, that now they're great, the mightiest people
+in the world, the one best able to crush and grind other nations.  But
+not a single happiness _really_ will be added to the private life of a
+single citizen belonging to the vast class that pays the bill.  For the
+rest of their lives this generation will be poorer and sadder, that's
+all.  Nobody will give them back the money they have sacrificed, or the
+ruined businesses, and nobody can give them back their dead sons.
+There'll be troops of old miserable women everywhere, who were young
+and content before all the glory set in, and troops of dreary old men
+who once had children, and troops of cripples who used to look forward
+and hope.  Yes, I too obeyed the Kaiser and went home and prayed; but
+what I prayed was that Germany should be beaten--so beaten, so punished
+for this tremendous crime, that she will be jerked by main force into
+line with modern life, dragged up to date, taught that the world is too
+grown up now to put up with the smashings and destructions of a greedy
+and brutal child.  It is queer to think of the fear of God having to be
+kicked into anybody, but I believe with Prussians it's the only way.
+They understand kicks.  They respect brute strength exercised brutally.
+I can hear their roar of derision, if Christ were to come among them
+today with His gentle, "Little children, love one another."
+
+  Your Chris.
+
+
+
+
+  _Berlin, Sunday, August 2nd, 1914_.
+
+My precious mother,
+
+Just think,--when I had my lesson yesterday Kloster wouldn't talk
+either about the war or the Kaiser.  For a long time I thought he was
+ill; but he wasn't, he just wouldn't talk.  I told him about Friday,
+and the Kaiser's "_Geht nach Hause und betet_," and how I had felt
+about it and the whole thing, and I expected a flood of illuminating
+and instructive and fearless comment from him; and instead he was dumb.
+And not only dumb, but he fidgeted while I talked, and at last stopped
+me altogether and bade me go on playing.
+
+Then I asked him if he were ill, and he said, "No, why should I be ill?"
+
+"Because you're different,--you don't talk," I said.
+
+And he said, "It is only women who always talk."
+
+So then I got on with my playing, and just wondered in silence.
+
+I ran against Frau Kloster in the passage as I was coming out, and
+asked her if there was anything wrong, and she too said, "No, what
+should there be wrong?"
+
+"Because the Master's different," I said.  "He won't talk."
+
+And she said, "My dear Mees Chrees, these are great days we live in,
+and one cannot be as usual."
+
+"But the Master--" I said.  "Just these great days--you'd think he'd be
+pouring out streams of all the things that most need saying--"
+
+And she shrugged her shoulders and merely repeated, "One is not as
+usual."
+
+So I came away, greatly puzzled.  I had expected bread, and here I was
+going off with nothing but an unaccountable stone.  Kloster and Bernd
+are the two solitary sane and wise people I know here in this place of
+fever, the two I trust, to whom I say what I really think and feel, and
+I went to Kloster yesterday athirst for wisdom, for that detached,
+critical picking out one by one of the feathers of the imperial bird,
+the Prussian eagle, that I find so wholesome, so balance-restoring, so
+comforting, in what is now a very great isolation of spirit.  And he
+was dumb.  I can't get over it.
+
+I've not seen Bernd since, as he is frightfully busy and wasn't able to
+come yesterday at all, but he's coming to lunch today, and perhaps
+he'll be able to explain Kloster.  I've been practising all the
+morning,--it will seem to you an odd thing to have done while Rome is
+burning, but I did it savagely, with a feeling of flinging defiance at
+this topsy-turvy world, of slitting its ugliness in spite of itself
+with bright spears of music, insisting on intruding loveliness on its
+preoccupation, the loveliness created by its own brains in the days
+before Prussia got the upper hand.  All the morning I practised the
+Beethoven violin concerto, and the naked, slender radiance of it
+without the orchestra to muffle it up in a background, enchanted me
+into forgetting.
+
+The crowds down there are soberer since Friday, and I didn't have to go
+into the bathroom to play.  Now that war is upon them the women seem to
+have started thinking a little what it may really mean, and the men
+aren't quite so ready incoherently to roar.  They keep on going to
+church,--the churches have been having services at unaccustomed moments
+throughout yesterday, of course by order, and are going on like that
+today too, for the churches are very valuable to Authority in
+nourishing the necessary emotions in the people at a time like this.
+The people were told by the Kaiser to pray, and so they do pray.  It is
+useful to have them praying, it quiets them and gets them out of the
+streets and helps the authorities.  Berlin is really the most godless
+place.  Religion is the last thing anybody thinks of.  Nobody dreams of
+going to church unless there is going to be special music there or a
+prince, and as for the country, my two Sundays there might have been
+week-days except for the extra food.  It is true on each of them I saw
+a pastor, but each time he came to the family I was with, they didn't
+go to him, to his church.  Now there's suddenly this immense
+recollection of God, turned on by Authority just as one turns on an
+electric light switch and says "Let there be light," and there is
+light.  So I picture the Kaiser, running his finger down his list of
+available assets and coming to God.  Then he rings for an official, and
+says, "Let there be God"; and there is God.
+
+I'm not really being profane.  It isn't really God at all I'm talking
+about.  It's what German Authority finds convenient to turn on and off,
+according as it suits what it wishes to obtain.  It isn't God.  It's
+just a tap.
+
+
+
+  _Later_.
+
+Bernd came to lunch, but also unfortunately so did his chief.  They
+both arrived together after we had begun,--there's a tremendous _aller
+et venir_ all day in the house, and sometimes the traffic on the stairs
+to the drawingroom gets so congested that nothing but a London
+policeman could deal with it.  I could only say ordinary things to
+Bernd, and he went away, swept off by his Colonel, directly afterwards.
+He did manage to whisper he would try to come in to dinner tonight and
+get here early, but he hasn't come yet and it's nearly half past seven.
+
+The Graf was at lunch, and two other men who ate their food as if they
+had to catch a train, and they talked so breathlessly while they ate
+that I can't think why they didn't choke; and there was great triumph
+and excitement because the Germans crossed into Luxembourg this morning
+on their way to France, marching straight through the expostulations
+and entreaties of the Grand Duchess, blowing her aside, I gather, like
+so much rather amusing thistledown.  It seemed to tickle the Graf, whom
+I have not before seen tickled and hadn't imagined ever could be; but
+this idea of a _junges Madchen_--("Sie soll ganz niedlich sein_," threw
+in one of the gobbling men.  "_Ja ganz appetitlich_," threw in the
+other; "_Na, es geht_," said the Colonel with a shrug--)--motoring out
+to bar the passage of a mighty army, trying to stop thousands of
+bayonets by lifting up one little admonitory kitten's paw, shook him
+out of his gravity into a weird, uncanny chuckling.
+
+The Colonel, who was as genial and hilarious as ever, rather more so
+than ever, said all the Luxembourg railways would be in German hands by
+tonight.  "It works out as easily and inevitably as a simple
+arithmetical problem," he laughed; and I heard him tell the Graf German
+cavalry was already in France at several points.
+
+"_Ja, ja_" he said, apparently addressing me, for he looked at me and
+smiled, "when we Germans make war we do not wait till the next day.
+Everything thought of; everything ready; plenty of oil in the machine;
+_und dann los_."
+
+He raised his glass.  "Delightful young English lady," he said, "I
+drink to your charming eyes."
+
+There's dinner.  I must leave off.
+
+
+
+  _Eleven p. m_.
+
+You'll never believe it, but Kloster has been given the Order of the
+Red Eagle 1st Class, and made a privy councillor and an excellency by
+the Kaiser this very day.  And his most intimate friends, the cleverest
+talkers among his set, two or three who used to hold forth particularly
+brilliantly in his rooms on Socialism and the slavish stupidity of
+Germans, have each had an order and an advancement of some sort.
+Kloster was at the palace this afternoon.  He knew about it yesterday
+when I was having my lesson.  _Kloster_.  Of all men.  I feel sick.
+
+Bernd didn't come to dinner, but was able to be with me for half an
+hour afterwards, half an hour of comfort I badly needed, for where can
+one's feet be set firmly and safely in this upheaving world?  The
+Colonel was at dinner; he comes to nearly every meal; and it was he who
+started talking about Kloster's audience with Majestat this afternoon.
+
+I jumped as though some one had hit me.  "That _can't_ be true," I
+exclaimed, exactly as one calls out quickly if one is suddenly struck.
+
+They all looked at me.  Somehow I saw that they had known about it
+beforehand, and Bernd told me tonight it was the Graf who had drawn the
+authorities' attention to the desirability of having tongues like
+Kloster's on the side of the Hohenzollerns.
+
+"Dear child," said the Grafin gently, "we Germans do not permit our
+great to go unhonoured."
+
+"But he would never--" I began; then remembered my lesson yesterday and
+his silence.  So that's what it was.  He already had his command to
+attend at the palace and be decorated in his pocket.
+
+I sat staring straight before me.  Kloster bought?  Kloster for sale?
+And the Government at such a crisis finding time to bother about him?
+
+"_Ja, ja_," said the Colonel gaily, as though answering my
+thoughts--and I found I had been staring, without seeing him, straight
+into his eyes, "_ja, ja_, we think of everything here."
+
+"Not," gently amended the Grafin, "that it was difficult to think of
+honouring so great a genius as our dear Kloster.  He has been in
+Majestat's thoughts for years."
+
+"I expect he has," I said; for Kloster has often told me how they hated
+him at court, him and his friends, but that he was too well known all
+over the world for them to be able to interfere with him; something
+like, I expect, Tolstoi and the Russian court.
+
+The Grafin looked at me quickly.
+
+"And so has Majestat been in his," I continued.
+
+"Kloster," said the Grafin very gently, "is a most amusing talker, and
+sometimes cannot resist saying the witty things that occur to him,
+however undesirable they may be.  We all know they mean nothing.  We
+all understand and love our Kloster.  And nobody, as you see, dear
+child, more than Majestat, with his ever ready appreciation of genius."
+
+I could only sit silent, staring at my plate.  Kloster gone.  Kloster
+allowing himself to be gagged by a decoration.  I wanted to push the
+intolerable thought away from me and cry out, "No, it _can't_ be."
+
+Why, who can one believe in now?  Who is left?  There's Bernd, my
+beloved, my heart's own mate; and as I sat there dumb, and they all
+triumphed on with their self-congratulations and satisfactions, and
+Majestat this, and Deutschland that, for an awful moment my faith in
+Bernd himself began to shake.  Suppose he too, he with his Prussian
+blood and upbringing, fell away and went over in spirit to the side of
+life that decorates a man in return for the absolute control of his
+thoughts, rewards him for the disposal of his soul?  Kloster, that
+freest of critics, had gone over, his German blood after all unable to
+resist the call to slavery.  I never could have believed it.  I never
+_would_ have believed it without actual proof.  And Bernd?  What about
+Bernd?  For I haven't more believed in Kloster than I do in Bernd.  Oh,
+little mother, I was cold with fear.
+
+Then he came.  My dear one came for a blessed half hour.  And because
+we, thank God, are betrothed, and so have the right to be alone
+together, we got rid of those smug triumphant others; and if he had
+happened not to be able to come, and I had had to wait till tomorrow,
+all night long thinking of Kloster, I believe I'd have gone mad.  For
+you see one believes so utterly in a person one _does_ believe in.  At
+least, I do.  I can't manage caution in belief, I can't give prudently,
+carefully, holding back part, as I'm told a woman does if she is really
+clever, in either faith or love.  And how is one to get on without
+faith and love?  Bernd comforted me.  And he comforted me most by my
+finding how greatly he needed to be comforted himself.  He was every
+bit as profoundly shaken and shocked as I was.  Oh, the relief of
+discovering that!
+
+We clung to each other, and comforted each other like two hurt
+children.  Kloster has been so much to us both.  More, perhaps, here in
+this place of hypocrisy and self-deceptions, than he would have been
+anywhere else.  He stood for fearlessness, for freedom, for beauty, for
+all the great things.  And now he has gone; silent, choked by the _Rote
+Adler Orden Erste Klasse_.  It is an order with three classes.  We
+wondered bitterly whether he couldn't have been had cheaper,--whether
+second, or even third class, wouldn't have done it.  He is now a
+_Wirkliche Geheimrath mit dem Pradikat Excellenz_.  God rest his soul.
+
+  Chris.
+
+
+
+
+  _Berlin, Monday, August 3rd, 1914_.
+
+Darling own mother,
+
+It's only a matter of hours now before Bernd will have to go, and when
+he goes I'm coming back to you.
+
+Your Chris.
+
+
+
+
+  _Berlin, Monday August 3rd, evening_.
+
+Precious mother,
+
+I want to come back to you--directly Bernd has gone I'm coming back to
+you, and if he doesn't go soon but is used in Berlin at the Staff Head
+Quarters, as he says now perhaps he may be for a while, I won't stay
+with the Koseritzes, but go back to Frau Berg's for as long as Bernd is
+in Berlin, and the day he leaves I start for Switzerland.
+
+I don't know what is happening, but the Koseritzes have suddenly turned
+different to me.  They're making me feel more and more uncomfortable
+and strange.  And there's a gloom about them and the people who have
+been here today that sets me wondering whether their war plans after
+all are rolling along quite as smoothly as they thought.  I never did
+quite believe the Koseritzes liked me, any of them, and now I'm sure
+they don't.  Tonight at dinner the Graf's face was a thunder-cloud, and
+actually the Colonel, who hasn't been all day but came in late for
+dinner and went again immediately, didn't speak to me once.  Hardly
+looked at me when he bowed, and his bow was the stiffest thing.  I
+can't ask anybody if there is bad news for Germany, for it would be a
+most dreadful insult even to suggest there _could_ be bad news.
+Besides, I feel as if I somehow were mixed up in whatever it is.  Bernd
+hasn't been since this morning.  I shall go round to Frau Berg tomorrow
+and ask her if I can have my old room.  But oh, little beloved mother,
+I feel torn in two!  I want so dreadfully to get away, to go back to
+you, and the thought of being at Frau Berg's, just waiting, waiting for
+the tiny scraps of moments Bernd can come to me, fills me with horror.
+And yet how can I leave him?  I love him so.  And once he has gone,
+shall I ever see him again?  If it weren't for him I'd have started for
+Switzerland yesterday, the moment I heard about Kloster, for the whole
+reason for my being in Berlin was only Kloster,
+
+And now Kloster says he isn't going to teach me any more.  Darling
+mother, I'm so sorry to have to tell you this, but it's true.  He sent
+round a note this evening saying he regretted he couldn't continue the
+lessons.  Just that.  Not another word.  I can't make anything out any
+more.  I've got nobody but Bernd to ask, and I only see him in briefest
+snatches.  Of course I knew the lessons would be strange and painful
+now, but I thought we could manage, Kloster and I, by excluding
+everything but the bare teaching and learning, to go on and finish what
+we've begun.  He knows how important it is to me.  He knows what this
+journey here has meant to us, to you and me, the difficulty of it, the
+sacrifice.  I'm very unhappy tonight, darling mother, and selfishly
+crying out to you.  I feel almost like leaving Bernd, and starting for
+Glion tomorrow.  And then when I think of him without me--He's as
+spiritually alone in this welter as I am.  I'm the only one he has, the
+only human being who understands.  Today he said, holding me in his
+arms--you should see how we cling to each other now as if we were
+drowning--"When this is over, Chris, when I've paid off my bill of duty
+and settled with them here to the last farthing of me that I've
+promised them, we'll go away for ever.  We'll never come back.  We'll
+never be caught again."
+
+
+
+  _Berlin, Tuesday, August 4th, 1914_.
+
+My beloved mother,
+
+The atmosphere in this house really is intolerable, and I'm going back
+to Frau Berg's tomorrow morning.  I've settled it with her by
+telephone, and I can have my old room.  However lonely I am in it
+without my lessons and Kloster, without the reason there was for being
+there before, I won't have this horrid feeling of being in a place full
+of sudden and unaccountable hostility.  Bernd came this morning, and
+the Grafin told him I was out, and he went away again.  She couldn't
+have thought I was out, for I always tell her when I'm going, so she
+wants to separate us.  But why?  Why?  And oh, it means so much to me
+to see him, it was so cruel to find out by accident that he had been!
+A woman who was at lunch happened to say she had met him coming out of
+the front door as she came in.
+
+"What--was Bernd here?" I exclaimed, half getting up on a sort of
+impulse to run after him and try and catch him in the street.
+
+"Helena thought you had gone out," said the Grafin.
+
+"But you _knew_ I hadn't," I said, turning on Helena.
+
+"Helena knew nothing of the sort," said the Grafin severely.  "She said
+what she believed to be true.  I must request you, Christine, not to
+cast doubts on her word.  We Germans do not lie."
+
+And the Graf muttered, "_Peinlich, peinlich_" and pushed hack his chair
+and left the room.
+
+"You have spoilt my husband's lunch," said the Grafin sternly.
+
+"I am very sorry," I said; and tried to go on with my own, but couldn't
+see it because I was blinded by tears.
+
+After this there was nothing for it but Frau Berg.  I waited till the
+Grafin was alone, and then went and told her I thought it better I
+should go back to the Lutzowstrasse, and would like, if she didn't
+mind, to go tomorrow.  It was very _peinlich_, as they say; for however
+much people want to get rid of you they're always angry if you want to
+go.  I said all I could that was grateful, and there was quite a lot I
+could say by blotting out the last two days from my remembrance.  I
+did, being greatly at sea and perplexed, ask what it was that I had
+done to offend her; though of course she didn't tell me, and was only
+still more offended at being asked.
+
+I'm going to pack now, and write a letter to Bernd telling him about
+it, in case Helena should have a second unfortunate conviction that I'm
+not at home when he comes next.  And I do try to be cheerful, little
+mother, and keep my soul from getting hurt, and when I'm at Frau Berg's
+I shall feel more normal again I expect.  But one has such fears--oh,
+more than just fears, terrors--Well, I won't go on writing in this
+mood.  I'll pack.
+
+  Your own Chris.
+
+
+
+
+  _At Frau Berg's, August 4th, 1914, very late_.
+
+Precious mother,
+
+I'm coming back to you.  Don't be unhappy about me.  Don't think I'm
+coming back mangled, a bleeding thing, because you see, I still have
+Bernd.  I still believe in him--oh, with my whole being.  And as long
+as I do that how can I be anything but happy?  It's strange how, now
+that the catastrophe has come, I'm quite calm, sitting here at Frau
+Berg's in my old room in the middle of the night writing to you.  I
+think it's because the whole thing is so great that I'm like this, like
+somebody who has had a mortal blow, and because it's mortal doesn't
+feel.  But this isn't mortal.  I've got Bernd and you,--only now I must
+have great patience.  Till I see him again.  Till war is over and he
+comes for me, and I shall be with him always.
+
+I'm coming to you, dear mother.  It's finished here.  I'm going to
+describe it all quite calmly to you.  I'm not going to be unworthy of
+Bernd, I won't have less of dignity and patience than he has.  If you'd
+seen him tonight saying good-bye to me, and stopped by the Colonel!
+His look as he obeyed--I shan't forget it.  When next I'm weak and base
+I shall remember it, and it will save me.
+
+At dinner there were only the Grafin and Helena and me, and they didn't
+speak a word, not only not to me but not to each other, and in the
+middle a servant brought in a note for the Grafin from the Graf, he
+said, and when she had looked at it she got up and went out.  We
+finished our dinner in dead silence, and I was going up to my room when
+the Grafin's maid came after me and said would I go to her mistress.
+She was alone in the drawingroom, sitting at her writing table, though
+she wasn't writing, and when I came in she said, without turning round,
+that she must ask me to leave her house at once, that very evening.
+She said that apart from her private feelings, which were all in favour
+of my going--she would be quite frank, she said--there were serious
+political reasons why I shouldn't stay even as long as till tomorrow.
+The Graf's career, his position in the ministry, their social position,
+Majestat,--I really don't remember all she said, and it matters so
+little, so little.  I listened, trying to understand, trying to give
+all my attention to it and disentangle it, while my heart was thumping
+so because of Bernd.  For I was being turned out in disgrace, and I am
+his betrothed, and so I am his honour, and whatever of shame there is
+for me there is of shame for him.
+
+The Grafin got more and more unsteady in her voice as she went on.  She
+was trying hard to keep calm, but she was evidently feeling so acutely,
+so violently, that it was distressing to, have to watch her.  I was so
+sorry.  I wanted to put my arms round her and tell her not to mind so
+much, that of course I'd go, but if only she wouldn't mind so much
+whatever it was.  Then at last she began to lose her hold on herself,
+and got up and walked about the room saying things about England.  So
+then I knew.  And I knew the answer to everything that has been
+perplexing me.  They'd been afraid of it the last two days, and now
+they knew it.  England isn't going to fold her arms and look on.  Oh,
+how I loved England then!  Standing in that Berlin drawingroom in the
+heart of the Junker-military-official set, all by myself in what I
+think and feel,--how I loved her!  My heart was thumping five minutes
+before for fear of shame, now it thumped so that I couldn't have said
+anything if I'd wanted to for gladness and pride.  I was a bit of
+England.  I think to know how much one loves England one has to be in
+Germany.  I forgot Bernd for a moment, my heart was so full of that
+other love, that proud love for one's country when it takes its stand
+on the side of righteousness.  And presently the Grafin said it all,
+tumbled it all out,--that England was going to declare war, and under
+circumstances so shameful, so full of the well-known revolting
+hypocrisy, that it made an honest German sick.  "Belgium!" she cried,
+"What is Belgium?  An excuse, a pretence, one more of the sickening,
+whining phrases with which you conceal your gluttonous opportunism--"
+And so she continued, while I stood silent.
+
+Oh well, all that doesn't matter now,--I'm in a hurry, I want to get
+this letter off to you tonight.  Luckily there's a letter-box a few
+yards away, so I won't have to face much of those awful streets that
+are yelling now for England's blood.
+
+I went up and got my things together.  I knew Bernd would get the
+letter I posted to him this morning telling him I was going to Frau
+Berg's tomorrow, so I felt safe about seeing him, even if he didn't
+come in to the Koseritzes before I left.  But he did come in.  He came
+just as I was going downstairs carrying my violin-case--how foolish and
+outside of life that music business seems now--and he seized my hand
+and took me into the drawingroom.
+
+"Not in here, not in here!" cried the Grafin, getting up excitedly.
+"Not again, not ever again does an Englishwoman come into my
+drawingroom--"
+
+Bernd went to her and drew her hand through his arm and led her
+politely to the door, which he shut after her.  Then he came back to
+me.  "You know, Chris," he said, "about England?"
+
+"Of course--just listen," I answered, for in the street newsboys were
+yelling _Kriegserklarung Englands_, and there was a great dull roaring
+as of a multitude of wild beasts who have been wounded.
+
+"You must go to your mother at once--tomorrow," he said.  "Before
+you're noticed, before there's been time to make your going difficult."
+
+I told him the Grafin had asked me to leave, and I was coming here
+tonight.  He wasted no words on the Koseritzes, but was anxious lest
+Frau Berg mightn't wish to take me in now.  He said he would come with
+me and see that she did, and place me under her care as part of
+himself.  "And tomorrow you run.  You run to Switzerland, without
+telling Frau Berg or a soul where you are going," he said.  "You just
+go out, and don't come back.  I'll settle with Frau Berg afterwards.
+You go to the Anhalter station--on your feet, Chris, as though you were
+going for a walk--and get into the first train for Geneva, Zurich,
+Lausanne, anywhere as long as it's Switzerland.  You'll want all your
+intelligence.  Have you money enough?"
+
+"Yes, yes," I said, feeling every second was precious and shouldn't be
+wasted; but he opened my violin-case and put a lot of banknotes into it.
+
+"And have you courage enough?" he asked, taking my face in his hands
+and looking into my eyes.
+
+Oh the blessedness, the blessedness of being near him, of hearing and
+seeing him.  What couldn't I and wouldn't I be and do for Bernd?
+
+I told him I had courage enough, for I had him, and I wouldn't fail in
+it, nor in patience.
+
+"We shall want both, my Chris," he said, his face against mine, "oh, my
+Chris--!"
+
+And then the Colonel walked in.
+
+"Herr Leutnant?" he said, in a raucous voice, as though he were
+ordering troops about.
+
+At the sound of it Bernd instantly became rigid and stood at
+attention,--the perfect automaton, except that I was hanging on his arm.
+
+"_Zur Befehl_, Herr Oberst," he said.
+
+"Take that woman's hand off your arm, Herr Leutnant," said the Colonel
+sharply.
+
+Bernd gently put my hand off, and I put it back again.
+
+"We are going to be married," I said to the Colonel, "and perhaps I may
+not see Bernd for a long while after tonight."
+
+"No German officer marries an alien enemy," snapped out the Colonel.
+"Remove the woman's hand, Herr Leutnant."
+
+Again Bernd gently took my hand, but I held on.  "This is good-bye,
+then?" I said, looking up at him and clinging to him.
+
+He was facing the Colonel, rigid, his profile to me; but he did at that
+turn his head and look at me.  "Remember--" he breathed.
+
+"I forbid all talking, Herr Leutnant," snapped the Colonel.
+
+"Never mind him," I whispered.  "What does _he_ matter?  Remember what,
+my Bernd, my own beloved?"
+
+"Remember courage--patience--" he murmured quickly, under his breath.
+
+"Silence!" shouted the Colonel.  "Take that woman's hand off your arm,
+Herr Leutnant.  _Kreutzhimmeldonnerwetter nochmal_.  Instantly."
+
+Bernd took my hand, and raising it to his face kissed it slowly and
+looked at me.  I shall not forget that look.
+
+The Colonel, who was very red and more like an infuriated machine than
+a human being, stepped on one side and pointed to the door.  "Precede
+me," he said.  "On the instant.  March."
+
+And Bernd went out as if on parade.
+
+When shall we see each other again?  Only a fortnight, one fortnight
+and two days, have we been lovers.  But such things can't be measured
+by time.  They are of eternity.  They are for always.  If he is killed,
+and the rest of my years are empty, we still will have had the whole of
+life.
+
+And now there's tomorrow, and my getting away.  You won't be anxious,
+dear mother.  You'll wait quietly and patiently till I come.  I'll
+write to you on the way if I can.  It may take several days to get to
+Switzerland, and it may be difficult to get out of Germany.  I think I
+shall say I'm an American.  Frau Berg, poor thing, will be relieved to
+find me gone.  She only took me in tonight because of Bernd.  While she
+was demurring on the threshold, when at last I got to her after a
+terrifying walk through the crowds,--for I was afraid they would notice
+me and see, as they always do, that I'm English,--his soldier servant
+brought her a note from him which just turned the scale for me.  I'm
+afraid humanity wouldn't have done it, nor pity, for patriotism and
+pity don't go well together here.
+
+I wonder if you'll believe how calmly I'm going to bed and to sleep
+tonight, on the night of what might seem to be the ruin of my
+happiness.  I'm glad I've written everything down that has happened
+this evening.  It has got it so clear to me.  I don't want ever to
+forget one word or look of Bernd's tonight.  I don't want ever to
+forget his patience, his dear look of untouchable dignity, when the
+Colonel, because he is in authority and can be cruel, at such a moment
+in the lives of two poor human beings was so unkind.
+
+God bless and keep you, my mother,--my dear sweet mother.
+
+  Your Chris.
+
+
+
+
+  _Halle, Wednesday night, August 5th, 1914_.
+
+I've got as far as this, and hope to get on in an hour or two.  We've
+been stopped to let troop trains pass.  They go rushing by one after
+the other, packed with waving, shouting soldiers, all of them with
+flowers stuck about them, in their buttonholes and caps.  I've been
+watching them.  There's no end to them.  And the enthusiasm of the
+crowds on the platform as they go by never slackens.  I'm making for
+Zurich.  I tried for Bale.  but couldn't get into Switzerland that
+way,--it is _abgesperrt_.  I hadn't much difficulty getting a ticket in
+Berlin.  There was such confusion and such a rush at the ticket office
+that the man just asked me why I wanted to go; and I said I was
+American and rejoining my mother, and he flung me the ticket, only too
+glad to get rid of me.  Don't expect me till you see me, for we shall
+be held up lots of times, I'm sure.
+
+I'm all right, mother darling.  It was fearfully hot all day, squeezed
+tight in a third class carriage--no other class to be had.  It's cold
+and draughty in this station by comparison, and I wish I had my coat.
+I've brought nothing away with me, except my fiddle and what would go
+into its case, which was handkerchiefs.  Bernd will see that my things
+get sent on, I expect.  I locked everything up in my trunk,--your
+letters, and all my precious things.  An official came along the train
+at Wittenberg, and after eyeing us all in my compartment suddenly held
+out his hand to me and said, "_Ihre Papiere_."  As I haven't got any I
+told him about being an American, and as much family history not till
+then known to me as I could put into German.  The other passengers
+listened eagerly, but not unfriendly.  I think if you're a woman, not
+being old helps one in Germany.
+
+Now I'm going to get some hot coffee, for it has turned cold, I think,
+and post this.  The one thing in life now that seems of desperate
+importance is to get to you.  Oh, little mother, the moment when I
+reach you!  It will be like getting to heaven, like getting at last,
+after many wanderings, and batterings, to the feet of God.
+
+We _ought_ to be at Waldshut, on the frontier, tomorrow morning, but
+nobody can say for certain, because we may be held up for hours
+anywhere on the way.
+
+  Your Chris.
+
+It's a good thing being too tired to think.
+
+
+
+
+  _Wursburg, Thursday, August 6th, 1914, 4 p. m_.
+
+I've only got as far as this.  I was held up this time, not the train.
+It went on without me.  Well, it doesn't matter really; it only keeps
+me a little longer from you.
+
+We stopped here about ten o'clock this morning, and I was so tired and
+stiff after the long night wedged in tight in the railway carriage that
+I got out to get some air and unstiffen myself, instinctively clutching
+my fiddle-case; and a Bavarian officer on the platform, watching the
+train with some soldiers, saw me and came over to me at once and
+demanded to see my papers.
+
+"You are English," he said; and when I said I was American he made a
+sound like Tcha.
+
+I can't tell you how horrid he was.  He kept me standing for two hours
+in the blazing sun.  You can imagine what I felt like when I saw my
+train going away without me.  I asked if I mightn't go into the shade,
+into the waiting-room, anywhere out of the terrible sun, for I was
+positively dripping after the first half hour of it, and his answer to
+that and to anything else I said in protest was always the same:
+"_Krieg ist Krieg.  Mund halten_."
+
+There was no _reason_ why I shouldn't be in the shade, except that he
+had power to prevent it.  Well, he was very young, and I don't suppose
+had ever had so much power before, so I suppose it was natural, he
+being German.  But it was a most ridiculous position.  I tried to see
+it from that side and be amused, but I wasn't amused.  While he went
+and telephoned to his superiors for instructions he put a soldier to
+guard me, and of course the people waiting on the platform for trains
+crowded to look.  They decided that I was no doubt a spy, and certainly
+and manifestly one of the swinish English, they said.  I wished then I
+couldn't understand German.  I stood there doing my best to think it
+was all very funny, but I was too tired to succeed, and hadn't had any
+breakfast, and they were too rude.  Then I tried to think it was just a
+silly dream, and that I had really got to Glion, and would wake up in a
+minute in a cool bedroom with the light coming through green shutters,
+and there'd be the lake, and the mountains opposite with snow on them,
+and you, my blessed, blessed little mother, calling me to breakfast.
+But it was too hot and distinct and horribly consistent to be a dream.
+And my clothes were getting wetter and wetter with the heat, and
+sticking to me.
+
+I want to get to you.  That's all I think of now.  There isn't a train
+till tonight, and then only as far as Stuttgart.  I expect this letter
+will get to you long before I do, because I may be kept at Stuttgart.
+
+Another officer, higher up than the first one, let me go.  He was more
+decent.  He came and questioned me, and said that as he couldn't prove
+I wasn't American he preferred to risk believing that I was, rather
+than inconvenience a lady belonging to a friendly nation, or something
+like that.  I don't know what he said really, for by that time I was
+stupid because of the sun beating down so.  But he let me go, and I
+came here to the restaurant to get something to drink.  He came after
+me, to see that I was not further inconvenienced, he said, so I thought
+I'd tell him I was going to marry one of his fellow-officers.  He
+changed completely then, when I told him Bernd's name and regiment, and
+was really polite and really saw that I wasn't further inconvenienced.
+Dear Bernd!  Even just his name saves me.
+
+I went to sleep on the bench in the waiting room after I had drunk a
+great deal of iced milk.  My fiddle-case was the pillow.  Poor fiddle.
+It seems such a useless, futile thing now.
+
+It was so nice lying down flat, and not having to do anything.  The
+waiter says there's a place I can wash in, and I suppose I'd better go
+and wash after I've posted this, but I don't want to particularly.  I
+don't want to do anything, particularly, except shut my eyes and wait
+till I get to you.  But I think I'll go out into the sun and warm
+myself up again, for it's cold in here.  Dear mother, I'm a great deal
+nearer to you than I've been for weeks.  Won't you borrow a map, and
+see where Wurzburg is?
+
+  Your Chris.
+
+          *          *          *          *          *
+
+
+Transcriber's note:  The following is my attempt to convert the music
+                     found earlier in this book into Lilypond format.
+                     Search for "G minor Bach".
+
+                       {
+                       \clef treble \key b \major \time 4/4
+                       r8 d8 d8[ d8]
+                       \bar "|"
+                       d8[ c8[ b16]] c8[ a8]
+                       \bar "|"
+                       b8
+                       }
+
+                     This was produced by a combination of examining
+                     other Lilypond files and on-line research.  I
+                     know little of music reading or theory, so any
+                     errors are mine.  I have made no attempt to
+                     create any Lilypond "wrapper" components that
+                     may be required.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHRISTINE***
+
+
+******* This file should be named 12683.txt or 12683.zip *******
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