Christine Part 5

"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 sh.o.r.e 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,--mult.i.tudes 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 Sat.u.r.day.

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--G.o.d, 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 s.h.i.+vers 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 woodp.e.c.k.e.rs, 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 n.o.body 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 cla.s.ses: 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 Lutzowstra.s.se. 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 sc.r.a.ped hack into a little hard k.n.o.b, 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 b.u.t.ter 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 s.e.x," 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 unb.u.t.toned 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 gra.s.s 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 G.o.d. It feels like being home again in heaven after having been obliged to spend six weeks in h.e.l.l. 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 tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs 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 pa.s.sing, 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 Sat.u.r.day, which is a very long way off. Sat.u.r.days used to seem to come rus.h.i.+ng 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.