Christine Part 7

_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 s.h.i.+ning 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 gra.s.s, 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 b.u.t.tons, 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 Suss.e.x. 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 Suss.e.x 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 att.i.tude 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 rea.s.suring, 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, Sat.u.r.day 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 Sat.u.r.day.

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.