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 BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE 
 
 SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND 
 
 THE GIFT OF 
 
 HENRY W. SAGE 
 
 1891 
 
Christine, 
 
 3 1924 013 595 537 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tliis book is in 
 tlie Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013595537 
 
CHRISTINE 
 
•The, 
 •0- 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 MEW VORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS 
 
 ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 MACMILLAN & CO., Limited 
 
 LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA 
 MELBOURNE 
 
 THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA. Ltd. 
 
 TOSOXTO 
 
CHRISTINE 
 
 BY 
 
 ALICE CHOLMONDELEY 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 ' 191Y 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
 6 
 
COPTBMHT, 191-,. 
 
 bt the macmillan compamt 
 
 Set up and electrotyped. Published. July, 19)17, 
 Reprinted. Ansnst, Four Times, September, 1017. 
 i-wica. October, 1917. Three Timea. 
 
CHRISTINE 
 
 My daughter Christine, who wote 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 
 lave 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 in- 
 clination to explain away ^and eseeuse, too 
 extreme and sweeping in their judgments. 
 Now, as the years have passed, and each has 
 been more full of actions on Germanics part 
 difficult to explain except in one way and im- 
 possible to excuse, I feel that these letters, giv- 
 ing a picture of the state of mind of the Ger- 
 man public immediately before the war, and 
 written by some one who went there enthusi- 
 astically ready to like everything and every- 
 body, may have a certain value in helping to 
 
CHRISTINE 
 
 put together a small corner of the great pic- 
 ture of Germany which it will he necessary to 
 keep clear and naked before us in the future if 
 the world is to be saved. 
 
 I am publishing the letters ju^t 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 hilled Christine, just as surely as 
 if she had been a soldier in the trenches. I will 
 not write of her great gift, which was extraor- 
 dinary. 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 Stutt- 
 gart, but was turned bach 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 
 
 Tfie Publishers have considered it best to alter 
 some of the personal names in the following pages. 
 
CHRISTINE 
 
CHRISTINE 
 
 Liitzowstrasse 49, Berlin, 
 
 Thursday, May 28th, 1914. 
 My blessed little mother. 
 
 Here I am safe, and before I impack 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 won- 
 derful 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 yom* 
 
2 CHRISTINE 
 
 Chris hasn't lived with you all her life for noth- 
 ing; 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 un- 
 happy while one is being brave, and besides, 
 one isn't brave unless one is suifering. 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 tiU 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 Lon- 
 
CHRISTINE 8 
 
 don, as well as our cottage, and we'll be happy 
 ever after. And after all, it is really a beauti- 
 ful 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 aUve and with you. 
 
 This pension is the top flat of a four-storied 
 house, and there isn't a lift, so I arrived breath- 
 less, besides being greatly battered and all 
 crooked after my night sitting up in the train; 
 and Frau Berg came and opened the door her- 
 self 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 viohn-case and umbrella and coat and a 
 paper bag of ginger biscuits I had been solac- 
 ing 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 ex- 
 pect do not; besides, she was a busy woman, 
 and busy women waste no time expecting any- 
 
4 CHRISTINE 
 
 thing in any case; and then she said, "Come 
 in." 
 
 "Seien Sie mllkommen, 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 fuU 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 Kdkes!" 
 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 Lon- 
 don, 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: 
 
CHRISTINE 5 
 
 Nicht wahr, 
 Wundervoll, 
 Naturlich, 
 Herrlich, 
 Ich gratuliere, 
 
 and 
 Dock. 
 
 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 Klosterl You 
 darhng one, you beloved mother, stinting your- 
 self, scraping your own life bare, so as Xo 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 laiU 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. A»d then I'll have a bath and go 
 
6 CHRISTINE 
 
 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 prac- 
 tise 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 darhng. 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 bedl 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 sol- 
 emn 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 win- 
 dows have long dark curtains of rep or some- 
 thing woolly, and long coffee-coloured lace cur- 
 tains 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 elab- 
 orate chandelier hanging from a coloured plas- 
 ter rosette in the middle of the ceiling, all 
 
8 CHRISTINE 
 
 twisty and gilt, but it doesn't light, — ^Wanda, 
 the maid of all work, brings me a petrolemn 
 lamp with a green glass shade to it when it gets 
 dusk. I've got a very short bed with a dark 
 red sateen quUt on to which my sheet is but- 
 toned all 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 veryi tiny washstand, and 
 pinned on the wall behind it over the part of 
 the wallpaper I might splash on Sunday morn- 
 ings when I'm supposed really to wash, is a 
 strip of grey linen with a motto worked on it 
 in blue wool: 
 
 Eigener Heerd 
 Isi Qoldes 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 
 
CHRISTINE 9 
 
 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 Liitzowstrasse. 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 wiU 
 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 
 
10 CHRISTINE 
 
 I can for the great man on Saturday. I'm 
 fearfully nervous and afraid, for so much de- 
 pends on it, and in spite of knowing that some- 
 how 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, j Do you remember 
 how he used to say he couldn't think which end 
 of a violin the noises came out of, and which- 
 ever it was he wished they wouldn't? But 
 what a mercy, what a real mercy and solution 
 of our diflSculties, 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 out- 
 side people come in for the midday dinner 
 every day, all Germans, and four of them are 
 men. They have what they call Ahonne- 
 mentskarten 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 pfen- 
 
CHRISTINE 11 
 
 nigs 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 i^ going to be rather fun, I think. 
 Today I was solemnly presented to the diners, 
 first collectively by Frau Berg as Unset, 
 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 some- 
 thing 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 some- 
 thing. 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 
 
12 CHRISTINE 
 
 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 leav- 
 ing 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 Sun- 
 day. 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? 
 
Swnday, May Slst, 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 one- 
 self, 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 fear- 
 fully kind and encouraging. He said very 
 much what Ysaye said in London, and 
 Joachim when I was httle 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 be- 
 fore. So I've been walking on clouds with my 
 chin well in the air, as who wouldn't? Kloster 
 
 13 
 
14 CHRISTINE 
 
 is a little round, red, bald man, the baldest man 
 I've ever seen; quite bald, with hardly any eye- 
 brows, and clean-shaven as well. He's the 
 funniest little thing till you join him to a vio- 
 lin, and then — I 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 begin- 
 ning: 
 
 4^' •> c r_.rif , f r (v-P 
 
 he solemnly shook hands with me and 
 said — what do you think he said? — "My Frau- 
 lein, when you came in I thought, 'Behold yet 
 one more well-washed, nice-looking, foolish, 
 rich, nothing-at-all English Mees, who is go- 
 ing to waste my time and her money with les- 
 sons.' 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, see- 
 ing how ancient all my clothes are, and espe- 
 cially 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 
 
CHRISTINE 15 
 
 good for them. So I told him of our regretta- 
 ble 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 win- 
 ter, 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 Unermiidlichkeit, 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 
 
16 CHRISTINE 
 
 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 Pots- 
 damerstrasse home. I felt I could defy every- 
 body 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 Mittagsgdste dislike 
 me. Well, I would have accepted it with a de- 
 pressed resignation as the natural result of be- 
 ing unlikeable, and have tried by being pleas- 
 anter and pleasanter — ^wouldn't it have been a 
 dreadful sight to see me screwing myself up 
 more and more tightly to an awful pleasant- 
 ness — ^to induce them to like me, but the people 
 
CHRISTINE 17 
 
 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 per- 
 sonally dishke 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 polite- 
 ness 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 Engldnderin 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 
 hif" and the women stare at one all over and 
 also say to each other Engldnderin. 
 
 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 practis- 
 ings, I preferred getting lost to asking any- 
 body 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 guid- 
 
18 CHRISTINE 
 
 ance, they simply never answered me at all. 
 They just stood and stared with a sort of mock- 
 ing. 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 any- 
 body, 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 indig- 
 nantly certain that these people, any of them, 
 policemen or policed, would have answered the 
 same question with the most extravagant po- 
 liteness if I had been an officer, or with an offi- 
 cer. 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 mel- 
 lifluousness, it would avail me nothing. 
 
 So when I was out, and being made so curi- 
 ously 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 
 
CHRISTINE 19 
 
 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 toiUng-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 bed- 
 room of mine become a temple of happiness. 
 I'm going to play Bach to it till it turns beau- 
 tiful. 
 
 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 great- 
 est, 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 
 
20 CHRISTINE 
 
 has only got to shut out the parts of the pres- 
 ent 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 soimd, 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 bvmips the soup-tureen 
 against my door as she carries it down the pas- 
 sage 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 
 
CHRISTINE 21 
 
 your daughter loves you. I mayn't practise 
 on Sundays, because of the Hausruhe, Frau 
 flBerg says, and so I have time to think; and 
 I'm astonished, mother darling, at the empti- 
 ness 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 grat- 
 itude 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. 
 
22 CHRISTINE 
 
 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 detach- 
 ment searching for the reason. And having 
 found the reason you understand and forgive; 
 for of course there always is a reason when or- 
 dinary people, not born fiends, are disagree- 
 able. I'm sure that's why we've been so happy 
 together, — because you've never taken any- 
 thing I've done or said that was foolish or un- 
 kind personally. You've always known it was 
 just so much irrelevant rubbish, just an excres- 
 cence, 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 tomor- 
 row 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 let- 
 ters, 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 Sun- 
 day, 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 Sun- 
 day. 
 
 Chris. 
 
 Oh, I must just tell you that at my lesson 
 yesterday I played the Ernst F# minor con- 
 certo, — the virtuoso, firework thing, you know, 
 with Kloster putting in bits of the orchestra 
 
 23 
 
24 CHRISTINE 
 
 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, di- 
 rectly I wake I remember it is my day for being 
 with you. I can hardly be patient with break- 
 fast, 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 rim away and talk to you. I 
 got another letter from you yesterday, and 
 Hilda Seeberg, a girl boarding here and study- 
 ing painting, said when she met me in the pas- 
 sage after I had been reading it in my room, 
 "You have had a letter from your Frau Mut- 
 ter, nicht?" So you see yom* letters shine in 
 my face. 
 
 Don't be afraid I won't take enough exer- 
 cise. I go for an immense walk directly after 
 dinner every day, a real quick hot one through 
 the Thiergartenu 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 
 
 25 
 
26 CHRISTINE 
 
 away at you. It has everything in it that a 
 city ought to have, — pubhc 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 dinnner they talk of its beauty and its per- 
 fections tiU I nearly go to sleep. You know 
 how oddly sleepy one gets when one isn't inter- 
 ested. 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 slimis to me 
 as though the slums were on my face. They 
 tell me pityingly what they look like, what ter- 
 rible blots and deformities they are, and how I 
 — they say England, but no one could dream 
 
CHRISTINE 27 
 
 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 with- 
 out the lofty, high-nosed manner that as a rule 
 so regrettably characterizes the unfortunate 
 people. "Sie sind so kochnasig" 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 some- 
 thing 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 prelimina,ry stage 
 of icy coldness towards me — and I try to be 
 sprightly, and bandy my six German words 
 about whenever they seem appropriate. Im- 
 
28 CHRISTINE 
 
 agine your poor Chris trying to be sprightly 
 with eleven Germans — ^no, ten Germans, for 
 the eleventh is a Swede and doesn't say any- 
 thing. 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 Enghsh 
 when the worst comes to the worst, and they 
 flounder in after me. 
 
 It is the fimniest thing, their hostility to 
 England, and the queer, reluctant, and yet 
 passionate admiration that goes with it. It is 
 
CHRISTINE 29 
 
 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 indif- 
 ferent he stays ; exasperated with the bitterness 
 of thwarted love. One day at dinner, when 
 they had all been thmnping away at me, this 
 flashed across me as the explanation, and I ex- 
 claimed in English, "Why, you're in love with 
 usl" 
 
 Twenty round eyes stared at me, sombrely 
 at first, not understanding, and then with hor- 
 ror 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. "Ndn, aber 
 so wasl" 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> hav- 
 ing 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 ob- 
 stinacy, "Passionately." 
 
 You can't think how seriously they took it. 
 They all talked at once, very loud. They were 
 
30 CHRISTINE 
 
 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 law- 
 yer 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 de- 
 terred from saying, and he felt sure his col- 
 
CHRISTINE . 31 
 
 leagues 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 knowl- 
 edge of history, and sufficient acquaintance 
 with the three kinds of politics, — Politik, Welt- 
 politik, 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 1 
 had meant about Germany really being in love 
 with England, because I hadn't got words 
 
82 CHRISTINE 
 
 enough; but that is exactly the impression I've 
 received from my brief experiences of one cor- 
 ner of its life. In this small corner of it, any- 
 how, 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 pos- 
 sible to love and hate at the same time, little 
 mother? I can imagine it quite well — is so in- 
 different as to whether she loves or hates. 
 And whichever she does, he is polite, — "Al- 
 ways gentleman," as the Germans say. Which 
 is, naturally, maddening. 
 
 Evening. 
 
 Do you know I wrote to you the whole morn- 
 ing? I wrote and wrote, with no idea how 
 time was passing, and was astonished and in- 
 dignant, 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 
 
CHRISTINE 33 
 
 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 won- 
 derful 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 re- 
 quested 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 dis- 
 
34 CHRISTINE 
 
 turbed 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 pretend- 
 ing she was fond of me for a moment? She 
 did look so comfortable and fat and kind, 
 standing there fiUing 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 long- 
 ing 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 less- 
 ons, 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 
 
CHRISTINE 35 
 
 darling mother? If you were an ordinary 
 mother I'd be jso much more placid. I 
 wouldn't mind not being with an ordinary 
 mother. When I look at other people's moth- 
 ers 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 
 yoii, because I'm not. It's only that I love 
 you. We're such friends. You always un- 
 derstand, 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, — be- 
 cause 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 vir- 
 tue in kissing, I think; an amazing comfort in 
 just touching the person one loves. Good- 
 night, most blessed little mother, and good-bye 
 for a week. Your Chris. 
 
36 CHRISTINE 
 
 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 re- 
 sisted. (Good morning, darling mother.) I 
 knew quite well it wouldn't be a postcard, or 
 anything even remotely related to the post- 
 card 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 yom* 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 shoul- 
 
 37 
 
38 CHRISTINE 
 
 der back at you when I see, as I do see all day 
 long, the extreme sentimentality of the Ger- 
 mans. It is very surprising. They're the odd- 
 est mixture of what really is a brutal hardness, 
 the kind of hardness that springs from real 
 fundamental differences from ours in their atti- 
 tude towards life, and a squashiness that leaves 
 one with one's mouth open. Tliey 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 Ger- 
 mans trailing through life more and more heav- 
 ily as they grow old, hauhng an increasing 
 number of anniversaries along with them, 
 rolling them up as they go, dragging at each 
 remove a lengthening chain, as your dear Gold- 
 smith 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 
 
CHRISTINE 39 
 
 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 mous- 
 tache 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 par- 
 don, 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." 
 
40 CHRISTINE 
 
 "Then why—?" 
 
 "But liebes Frdulein, 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 
 
CHRISTINE 41 
 
 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, hesi- 
 tating way, and when she got to the one of her 
 father she said with perfect frankness that she 
 hadn't Uked him, and that it had been an im- 
 mense 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 criti- 
 cizes them with a dispassionate thoroughness 
 that is surprising. The remarks he makes 
 about the Kaiser, for instance, whom he irrev- 
 erently alludes to as S. M. — (short and rude 
 for Seine Majestdt) — simply make me shiver 
 in this country of Use 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 Beamten- 
 
42 CHRISTINE 
 
 heleidigung — 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 popu- 
 lar. But then Kloster belongs to the intelli- 
 gents, and his friends are all people of intelli- 
 gence, 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 alto- 
 gether 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 coun- 
 try would think, to deserve an evergreen gar- 
 land 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. 
 
CHRISTINE 43 
 
 "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, hut 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 oiu*selves in that excess; 
 and, like the savage, we are afraid, and there- 
 fore hedge ourselves about with observances, 
 celebrations, cannon, kings. In no other coun- 
 try is there more than one king. In ours we 
 find three and an emperor necessary. The sav- 
 age 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 ex- 
 tent incredible, and tremble before the opinion 
 of our servants and tradespeople; we fear our 
 own manners and therefore are obliged to pre- 
 serve the idiotic practice of duelling, in which 
 as often as not the man whose honour is being 
 
44 CHRISTINE 
 
 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 coun- 
 try 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 re- 
 lief to be for a moment natural. Every Ger- 
 man 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 
 
CHRISTINE 45 
 
 with quivers and raps, his shiny bald head re- 
 flecting 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 overhang- 
 ing 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 re- 
 semblance 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 Grcrman properly I would have 
 
46 CHRISTINE 
 
 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 Eng- 
 land, and has pale hair and a mouth exactly 
 like two scarlet slugs — I'm sorry to be so hor- 
 rid, but it is like two scarlet slugs — and said, — 
 "Have you noticed that I have a Beethoven- 
 kopf? What do you think of me, an Eng- 
 Idndenn, 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 Lon- 
 don 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 
 
CHRISTINE 47 
 
 Mees Chrees," he said. "I put my affairs in 
 his hands, and having done so I obey him. It 
 saves trouble. Obedience is a comfortabk 
 thing." 
 
 "Then why — " I began, remembering the 
 things he says about kings and masters and 
 persons in authority; but he picked up his vio- 
 lin and began to play a bit. "See," he said, 
 "this is how—" 
 
 And when he plays I can brily stand and lis- 
 ten. 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 after- 
 noon, 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 be- 
 cause 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 
 
48 CHRISTINE 
 
 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 particu- 
 lar — 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 
 
CHRISTINE 49 
 
 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 particu- 
 larly happy, that there were even greater hap- 
 piness 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 re- 
 sults through one's own effort. After all, be- 
 ing 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 beau- 
 tiful and safe, and on the top there is you. To 
 get to the top will be perfect joy, but the get- 
 ting there is very wonderful too. You'll judge 
 from all this that I've had a happy week, that 
 
60 CHRISTINE 
 
 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 de- 
 jection. 
 
 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 21st, 1914. 
 My precious mother. 
 
 The weeks fly by, full of work and Welt- 
 politik. They talk of nothing here at meals 
 but this WeltpoUtik. I've just been having a 
 dose of it at breakfast. To say that the board- 
 ers are interested in it is to speak feebly: they 
 blaze with interest, they explode with it, they 
 scorch and sizzle. And they are so pugna- 
 cious I 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 caliA 
 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 
 
 61 
 
52 CHRISTINE 
 
 quickly as possible. And as I can't string 
 them into sentences my conversation consists 
 of single words, which produce a very odd ef- 
 fect, 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 sev- 
 eral 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 in- 
 tense, tightly-strung waiting, very like that 
 breathless expectancy in the last act of "Tris- 
 tan" when Isolde's ship is sighted and all the 
 vioUns 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 al- 
 ways in capital letters. They talk in tremen- 
 dous capitals about what they call the deutsche 
 Standpuriktj and the deutsche Standpv/iikt 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 un- 
 derstand, for a world so far behind in high 
 qualities to appreciate. No other people has 
 anything approaching it. As far as I can 
 make outj, stripped of its decorations its main 
 
CHRISTINE 53 
 
 idea is that what Germans do is right and what 
 other people do is wrong. Even when it is ex- 
 actly the same thing. And also, that wrong 
 becomes right directly it has anything to do 
 with Germans. Not with a German. The in- 
 dividual 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 for- 
 ever saying, his crimes become virtues. As a 
 body he purifies, he has a purging quality. To- 
 day 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 suc- 
 cess, 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 
 
54 CHRISTINE 
 
 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 povierty 
 thus became apparent and unhideable. If one 
 smashes, she said, one does it for millions, other- 
 wise 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 in- 
 terested. 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 
 
CHRISTINE 55 
 
 and then, generally with an unfortunate ef- 
 fect, 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 conversa- 
 tion, 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 Mit- 
 tagsruhe; and the other boarders drift away 
 one by one, and I run out for a walk to get un- 
 stiffened after having practised all the morn- 
 ing, 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 Au- 
 
56 CHRISTINE 
 
 thority, 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 Phil- 
 armonie. He played like an angel. It was so 
 strange, the fat, red, more than commonplace- 
 looking little bald man, with his quite expres- 
 sionless 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 mix- 
 ture, 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 shuflBing along the kerb, and in 
 their arms, rubbing against their dirty shoul- 
 ders, 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, 
 roimd 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 
 
CHRISTINE 57 
 
 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, appar- 
 ently, of grossness, and the music he was mak- 
 ing 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 
 ughly 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 careless- 
 ness of the music, its apparently accidental 
 beauty, was difficult for them. Germans have 
 
58 CHRISTINE 
 
 to have beauty explained to them and ac- 
 counted for, — stamped first by an official, au- 
 thorized, 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, perceiv- 
 ing 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 recognized it. I almost called out, 
 "Yes — of com-se — I know that too." 
 
 Afterwards I would have hked best to go 
 home and to sleep with the sound of it still in 
 my heart, but Kloster sent roimd 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 or- 
 dered 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 
 
CHRISTINE 59 
 
 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 wiU not and cannot embark on 
 her family name, for it is one of those Eng- 
 lish 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 be- 
 nevolently 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 doesii'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 min- 
 istry, 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 
 
60 CHRISTINE 
 
 marry a German! Because, she said, all good 
 music is by rights, by natural rights, the prop- 
 erty of Germany. 
 
 I wanted to say what about Debussy, and 
 Ravel, and Stravinski, but I didn't. 
 
 She said how much she enjoyed these in- 
 formal 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 fid- 
 dling. 
 
 ' Not that I haven't already felt it, the cleav- 
 age here in the classes ; but this was my first ex- 
 perience 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, com- 
 
CHRISTINE 61 
 
 meriting 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 im- 
 portant for me to play to these particular peor 
 pie, 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 embarrass- 
 ingly 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 comer by you in just 
 expiation of her offensiveness — it really feels 
 
62 CHRISTINE 
 
 as if it were yesterday — ^think of her beiiig 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 accompani- 
 ment bowed, clicked his heels together, caught 
 up my hand, and kissed it. He didn't say any- 
 thing. 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 hap- 
 pened to have been born a Junker, and there- 
 fore has to be an officer. It's a tragedy, ap- 
 parently, 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 dis- 
 mal. 
 
CHRISTINE 63 
 
 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. Gk)od night 
 and bless you, my sweetest mother. 
 
 Your own Chris who loves you. 
 
Berlin, Sunday, June S8th. 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 gener- 
 ally 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 
 
 64 
 
CHRISTINE 65 
 
 i*ush of work day after day, as confused as the 
 drawer I keep my gloves and ribbons in, thrust- 
 ing them in as I take them o& and never having 
 time to tidy. Life tears along, and I have 
 hardly time to look at my treasures. I'm go- 
 ing to look at them and count them up on Sun- 
 days. 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 Liitzowstrasse. No 
 wonder I went away from it this morning to 
 
66 CHRISTINE 
 
 go out and look for June in the woods. The 
 woods were a httle thin and austere, for there 
 has been no rain lately, but how enchanting 
 after the barren dustiness of my Berhn street! 
 I did love it so. And I felt so free and glori- 
 ous, coming off on my own for my hard-earned 
 Sunday outing, just hke 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 com- 
 /partment they were talking together eagerly 
 all the way, talking shop with unaffected ap- 
 petite, as though shop were so interesting that 
 even on Sundays they couldn't let it be, and 
 poring together over maps. No trace of stol- 
 idity. But where is this etolidity 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 pal- 
 aces and parks. If it hadn't been woods I was 
 after I would have explored it with great in- 
 terest. Do you remember when you read 
 
CHRISTINE 67 
 
 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 HohenzoUerns, and some Sun- 
 day 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 
 aU 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 twol 
 
 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 Jef — 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 Eng- 
 lish ones, so no wonder she said Herr Je. But 
 
68 CHRISTINE 
 
 j ust 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 hap- 
 pened 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 re- 
 membering, 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 fol- 
 lowed it so long that I do completely forget 
 
CHRISTINE 69 
 
 them; but last Monday I didn't. They were 
 urged on my notice by Grafin Koseritz's daugh- 
 ter, 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 sus- 
 pected, 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 gen- 
 erously 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 
 
70 CHRISTINE 
 
 me with the same cahn eyes. She has a com- 
 pletely 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, Jimk- 
 erlets still in the school-room, who stared un- 
 interruptedly at me and seemed unsuccessfully 
 endeavoiiring 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 
 vmearthed, 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 mur- 
 mur of talk, Helena's calm eyes lingered on 
 one portion after the other of your poor vul- 
 nerable Chris. 
 
 Actually I foimd myself hoping hotly that 
 I hadn't forgotten to wash my ears that morn- 
 ing in the mSlee of getting up. I have to wash 
 myself in bits, one at a time, because at Frau 
 
CHRISTINE 71 
 
 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 vol- 
 ubly kind than ever. Helena's eyes never 
 wavered. They were still on my ear. A lit- 
 tle 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. 
 
72 CHRISTINE 
 
 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 ht a cigar and was gaz- 
 ing 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 flow- 
 ers 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 offi- 
 cer, 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 limcheon, but thought, as he was 
 passing, he would look in. He would not deny, 
 he said, that he had heard I was coming — ^he 
 made me a little bow across the table and smiled 
 
CHRISTINE 73 
 
 — 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 do- 
 ing 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 s&t 
 mute, his eyes fixed on the tablecloth. 
 
74 CHRISTINE 
 
 "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 Inster 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 Koser- 
 itzes 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 soldier- 
 ing. People in the street were very polite, and 
 made way for me because I was with an offi- 
 cer. 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 
 
CHRISTINE 75 
 
 was an Austrian, but whatever prince it was it 
 was Majestdtsbeleidigtmg 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 watch- 
 ing 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 fas- 
 cinated, 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 tremu- 
 
76 CHRISTINE 
 
 lously» for her voice and behaviour curdled me. 
 
 "The blood of all those evil-doers who are 
 responsible," she said; and she paused a mo- 
 ment 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, pun- 
 ishment 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. 
 
CHRISTINE 77 
 
 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 com- 
 fortable, 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 ^oing to Switzer- 
 land 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 Tiad to tell you how glad I am. 
 
 Chris. 
 This isn't a letter, it's a cry of joy. 
 
 78 
 
Berlin, Sundap, July 5tK 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 Liitzowstrasse 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 en- 
 raptured 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 sup- 
 pose, 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, 
 
 79 
 
80 CHRISTINE 
 
 is possible in Germany. It is too well man- 
 aged, is Germany, she says. I said I sup- 
 posed she knew that because she had seen it in 
 the newspapers. I was snappy, yoii 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 volxime 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 
 nigli(it. 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 oJ a blast of hot air. Kloster says 
 I'm working too much, and wants me to prac- 
 tise 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." 
 
CHRISTINE 81 
 
 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 coiu-se 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, be- 
 cause 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 after- 
 noon some day in the future at Wertheim's; 
 and the pallid young man has suggested show- 
 ing me the HohenzoUern museum some Sun- 
 day, 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 rub- 
 bing his hands and passes my chair, "Na, was 
 macht Englandf which is a sign he is being 
 gracious. It is only a feeling, this of being 
 
82 CHRISTINE 
 
 completely alone. But I've got it, and the 
 ionger 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, ulti- 
 mate and only bit of me that is me and that 
 matters. 
 
 If I go on hke 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, — Rus- 
 sia 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 mal- 
 
CHRISTINE 83 
 
 ice, 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 sim- 
 plicity 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, be- 
 cause 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 gratu- 
 liere. The gigantic, the really cosmic cyni- 
 cism I fling into it glances off their comfortable 
 thick skins imnoticed. 
 
 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 
 IdecHen, I have found no trace of consideration 
 
84 CHRISTINE 
 
 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 differ- 
 ence 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 be- 
 ing drilled. He never gets over it. Before 
 that, he has had the nursery and the school- 
 room: drill, and very thorough driU, 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." 
 
CHRISTINE 85 
 
 "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 Jeru- 
 salem, which can't be half as beautiful as just 
 plain grass and daisies. Herr von Inster ap- 
 peared 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 Offi- 
 zier ist schon wieder da" 
 
 All thft flat must have heard her, and so did 
 Herr von Inster. 
 
 "Here I am, schon tmeder da," he said, click- 
 ing his heels together when I came into the din- 
 
86 CHRISTINE 
 
 ingroom 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 admira- 
 tion 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, look- 
 ing at me as we went down the four flights 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 chauf- 
 feur 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 Klos- 
 ter, but that is because one keeps on forgetting 
 she is there. Perhaps that quality of benefi- 
 cent invisibleness is what an artist most needs in 
 a wife. She never says anything, except things 
 
CHRISTINE 87 
 
 that require no answering. It's a great vir- 
 tue, 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 an- 
 nounces 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 undercur- 
 rent without taking the least notice of it. 
 They seem very happy. She tends him as 
 carefully as one would tend a baby, — <me of 
 those quite new pink ones that can't stand any- 
 thing hardly without crumphng up, — and com- 
 petently 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 direc- 
 tion 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 smit- 
 ten 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 HohenzoUerns are so high up that criticism 
 can't harm them, but I doubt it ; or perhaps he 
 regards Kloster indulgently, as a gifted and 
 
88 CHRISTINE 
 
 wayward child, but I doubt that too. He hap- 
 pens to be intelligent, and is not to be per- 
 suaded 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 pen- 
 sion. 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, be- 
 cause 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 Klos- 
 ter, "and behold we will return with a rose. 
 At present, Mees Chrees, you are a cross be- 
 
CHRISTINE 89 
 
 tween the two. You have ceased to be a wind- 
 flower, 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 httle mother, and so was Frau Klos- 
 ter, 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 com- 
 pany 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 oflficer, 
 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 Oberleut- 
 
90 CHRISTINE 
 
 nant; and out of it look the eyes of a human 
 being who knows, or will know I'm certain be- 
 fore life has done with him, what exultations 
 are, and agonies, and love, and man's uncon- 
 querable 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 I — 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 Liitzowstrasse. And at four o'clock we 
 f 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 Ger- 
 mans do with great simplicity. It was rather 
 
CHRISTINE 91 
 
 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, balanc- 
 ing 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 god- 
 desses wittled away by the centuries to this old 
 pimt 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 musie 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 
 
92 CHRISTINE 
 
 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 con- 
 quest that has possessed it ever since the pres- 
 ent emperor came to the throne. 
 
 "I'm sure you're saying things you oughtn't 
 to," I said. 
 
 "Of couDTse," 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 be- 
 have. 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 be- 
 have 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 Serajeyo assassinations. 
 
CHRISTINE 93 
 
 and said he was afraid they would not be set- 
 tled very easily. He said Germany is seeth- 
 ing, — seething, he said emphatically, with de- 
 sire 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 hke 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 unpunish- 
 able." 
 
 "Great God, and don't 11" he exclaimed, 
 with infinite fervour. 
 
 He told me something that greatly horri- 
 fied me. He says that children kill themselves 
 in Germany. They commit suicide, school- 
 children and even younger ones, in great num- 
 bers every year. He says they're driven to it 
 by the sheer cruelty of the way they are over- 
 worked and made to feel that if they are not 
 moved up in the school at the set time they and 
 
94 CHRISTINE 
 
 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 out- 
 strip; outstrip at whatever cost of happiness 
 and life. We must be better trained, more 
 efficient, quicker at grabbing than other na- 
 tions, 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. 
 
CHRISTINE 95 
 
 l*hat'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 de- 
 struction, bec^ use then the other nations w« uld 
 know, he say.' , before Germany is ready fi r 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 fo r a whole fort- 
 night. This is just a line to tel 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 
 
 96 
 
CHRISTINE n 
 
 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 
 responsibihty, 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 
 solenm, 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'D be at 
 
98 CHRISTINE 
 
 Heringsdorf , which is a seaside place not very 
 far away from where I shall bei for ten days 
 himself, and wiU 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 any- 
 thing 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 Klo- 
 ster, 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 ad- 
 dress 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 
 
CHRISTINE 99 
 
 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. 
 
Oberf6r$f£rei, Schuppenfelde, 
 July nth, 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 
 biu-ied 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, with- 
 out 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." 
 
 100 
 
CHRISTINE 101 
 
 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 sniflFs were sniffs of exulta- 
 tion. 
 
 "Ach so" he said, indulgent with the in- 
 dulgence 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 re- 
 peating in a monotonous sweet pipe the open- 
 ing 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 
 
102 CHRISTINE 
 
 had time to learn more German, which I'm go- 
 ing to do diligently here, and till the Ober 
 f orster 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 Ger- 
 mans 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, be- 
 cause 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. 
 
CHRISTINE 103 
 
 , 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 hor- 
 rible, 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 ex- 
 traordinarily 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 Ger- 
 man 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 plat- 
 
104 CHRISTINE 
 
 form at Stettin. So you can imagine how 
 heavenly it was to get into this beautiful for- 
 est, away from all that, into the quiet, the 
 holiness. Frau Bornsted, who learned Eng- 
 lish 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 arrange- 
 ment," 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 pahng, 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 
 
CHRISTINE 105 
 
 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 
 back 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, pre- 
 pared, 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, be- 
 sides keeping on having calves without a mur- 
 mur, — "She is an example," said Frau Born- 
 sted, 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 imsuited to 
 
106 CHRISTINE 
 
 her sex," said Frau Bornsted, turning and look- 
 ing at me. She showed what she was thinking 
 of by adding, "I hope you are not a suffra- 
 gette?" 
 
 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 dark- 
 ness, 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 
 
CHRISTINE 107 
 
 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, begin- 
 ning 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 fort- 
 night. Bless you, beloved little mother. 
 
 Your Chris. 
 
Schuppenfelde, Monday, July 13th. 
 Sweet mother, 
 
 I got your letter from Switzerland for- 
 warded 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. .1 Want to work, to be 
 quick; and here I am idle, precious days pass- 
 ing, 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 min- 
 ute. 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 I And then 
 for another whole week there'll only be two 
 hours of my violin allowed. Why, I shall fall 
 
 108 
 
CHRISTINE 109 
 
 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 yes- 
 terday, 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 ac- 
 quaintance with the Oberforster, with whom he 
 says he has gone shooting sometimes when he 
 has been staying at Koseritz. His Christian 
 
110 CHRISTINE 
 
 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. Sat- 
 urdays 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 lu- 
 ster'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 ac- 
 count to allow me to. Because I might tumble 
 off, if you please, and sprain either of my pre- 
 cious wrists. Did you ever. I believe Kloster 
 regards me only as a vessel for carrying about 
 
CHRISTINE 111 
 
 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 beau- 
 tiful pkce, on the very edge of the Haif. 
 They talk "v^ith 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 Engldnderin, 
 
112 CHRISTINE 
 
 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 re- 
 member 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 grdfliche FamiUe'* 
 
 "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 disrespect- 
 ful without being fimny, for Frau Bornsted 
 looked at me in silence, and Herr Bornsted, 
 who doesn't understand English, asked in Ger- 
 man, seeing his wife solemn, "What does she 
 say?" And when she told him he said, "Ach" 
 and showed his disapproval by absorbing him- 
 self in the Deutsche Tageszeitung. 
 
 It's wonderful how easy it is to be disre- 
 spectful 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 say- 
 ing anything for five minutes. 
 
CHRISTINE 113 
 
 "Like what?" 
 
 "So — so without reverence. And yet you 
 are a religious people. You send out mission- 
 aries." 
 
 "Yes, and support bishops," I said. "You 
 haven't got any bishops." 
 
 "You are the first nation in the world as re- 
 gards 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 mis- 
 sionaries. How is it you have so many mis- 
 sionaries and at the same time so little reyer- 
 ence?" 
 
 "Perhaps that is why," I said; and started 
 off explaining, while she looked at me with 
 beautiful uncomprehending eyes, that the reac- 
 tion from the missionaries and from the kind 
 of spirit that prompts their raising and ex- 
 port might conceivably produce a desire to be 
 irreverent and laugh, and that hfe more and 
 more seemed to me hke 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 
 
114 CHRISTINE 
 
 junges Mddchen, 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 after- 
 noon. At least, it was coffee. I thought 
 there were no neighbours, and when I came 
 back late from having been all day in the for- 
 est, 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 go- 
 ing 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 Sat- 
 urday, 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 
 
CHRISTINE 115 
 
 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 un- 
 nerved me if I hadn't still had my eyes so full 
 of sunhght that I hardly saw anything in the 
 dark room, and stood there blinking. 
 
 Unsere junge Engldnderin" said Frau 
 Bornsted, presenting me. "Schiihlerin von 
 •Kloster — grosses Talent, — " I heard her add- 
 ing, handing round the bits of information as 
 though it was cake. 
 
116 CHRISTINE 
 
 They all said Ach so, and WirkUc%, and 
 somebody asked if I liked Gennany, and I said, 
 still not seeing much, "Es ist wimdervoll" 
 which provoked a murmur of applause, as the 
 newspapers say. 
 
 I foimd I was expected to sit in a comer 
 with Frau Bornsted's sister, who with the Leh- 
 rer and myself, being all of us unmarried, 
 represented what the others spoke of as die 
 Jugendj and that I was to answer sweetly and 
 modestly any question I was asked by the oth- 
 ers, 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 Born- 
 sted'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 coifee and some cake by Frau Bom- 
 sted, 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 Bomsted wait on me, but she pressed 
 me down into my chair again with firmness and 
 the pained look of one who is witnessing 
 ihe committing of a solecism. "Bitte — ^take 
 
CHRISTINE 117 
 
 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 no- 
 body 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 Born- 
 sted'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 Wien- 
 icke. 
 
 "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 
 
118 CHRISTINE 
 
 and expecting the rector every minute. "Eng- 
 land," 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 lit- 
 tle 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 great- 
 ness 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 fore- 
 finger 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 bloor! relation. Therefore is it 
 
CHRISTINE 119 
 
 that we can and must tell her the truth, even 
 if it is unpalatable." 
 
 "3a" 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 J a, 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 contem- 
 plate a day when the sun of the British Empire, 
 that Empire which, after all, has upheld the 
 cause of religion with faithfulness and per- 
 sistence for so long, shall be seen at last de- 
 scending, to rise no more, in an engulfing ocean 
 of over-indulged appetites." 
 
 "J a" I said; and then perceiving it was the 
 wrong word, hastily amended in Enghsh, "I 
 mean nein" 
 
 He looked at me for a moment more care- 
 fully. 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 
 
120 CHRISTINE 
 
 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 con- 
 clusion of a Psalm, be saying Selah. 
 
 "We live in serious times," he said. "They 
 may easily become more serious. Roimd 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 mvu"- 
 derous intent. Is it not so, my Fraulein?" 
 
 "J a'' said I, forced to agree because of my 
 unfortimate 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 
 
CHRISTINE 121 
 
 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 na- 
 tions began, and it has never left oflf 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-man- 
 aged 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 possi- 
 ble 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. 
 
122 CHRISTINE 
 
 "The disastrous crime of Serajevo," con- 
 tinued Pastor Wienicke, "cannot in this con- 
 nection pass unnoticed. To smite down a 
 God's Aiiointed!" 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. Lawless- 
 ness and its companion Sacrilege stalk at large. 
 Women emerge from the seclusion God has ar- 
 ranged for them, and rear their heads in shame- 
 less 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 jflung 
 both his arms heavenwards. "Arise, Ger- 
 many!" 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 ausserordent- 
 lich 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^ 
 
CHRISTINE 123 
 
 or at, ty the entire company. The concentra- 
 tion of curiosity of Germans is terrible. But 
 it's more than curiosity, it's a kind of determin- 
 ation 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 tiU ten 
 o'clock. Frau Bornsted says one always does 
 that in the cotmtry here when invited to after- 
 noon 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 un- 
 easy 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, Aus- 
 tria may be going to do nothing except just 
 
124 CHRISTINE 
 
 punish the murderers, and so miss the glorious 
 opportimity 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 j^ust 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 rovmd 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 mad- 
 ness about Deutschland. She is as mad as any 
 of them, and in her it is much more disconcert- 
 ing. We will be discoursing together gravely 
 —she is always grave, and never knows how 
 funny we both are being really — about amus- 
 ing things like husbands and when and if I'm 
 ever going to get one, and she, full of the dig- 
 nity and wisdom of the married, will be giving 
 me much sage counsel with sobriety and gen- 
 tleness, when something starts her oflF about 
 
CHRISTINE 125 
 
 Deutschland. Oh, they are intolerable about 
 their Deutschland! 
 
 The Oberforster is calling fop this — ^he's 
 driving to the post, so good-bye little darling 
 mother, little beloved and precious one. 
 
 iYour Chris. 
 
Schuppenfelde, 
 Thursday J July 16j 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 Mon- 
 day. 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, giv- 
 ing 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 ex- 
 cept my room she won't let me, having had 
 orders from Kloster that I was to be com- 
 pletely idle. And it is doing me good. I feel 
 so perfectly content these last three days. 
 
 126 
 
CHRISTINE 137 
 
 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 ex- 
 ulting as I suppose a Catholic does when he 
 comes away, shriven and blest, from confes- 
 sion. 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 
 
128 CHRISTINE 
 
 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 futiure is full of it, 
 and oh, I do so badly want to say thank you 
 to some one! 
 Grood night my most precious mother. 
 
 Your Chris. 
 
^Schwppenfelde, 
 Friday. July 17, 1914. 
 
 This morning when I came down to break- 
 fast, 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 con- 
 tented 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 stepSb 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 breakfast- 
 ing, attended by the Bomsteds, and it shows 
 how soundly I sleep here that I hadn't^ heard 
 anything. 
 
 129 
 
130 CHRISTINE 
 
 "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 Hohenf eld, 
 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 flow- 
 ers. Obviously we didn't. The Graf doesn't 
 look as if anybody ever reminded him of any- 
 thing. 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 
 coifee, because he would have liked to drink our 
 
CHRISTINE 131 
 
 healths, — "The healths of these two delightful 
 young roses," he said, bowing to Frau Born- 
 sted 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 se- 
 dately 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 Mddchen, who has still to find a hus- 
 band, 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-re- 
 gretted expenditure on clothes." 
 
 The men were going to shoot with the Ober- 
 forster 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^ 
 
182 CHRISTINE 
 
 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 Gennan 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 yoimg lady friends." 
 
 I asked Herr von Inster after breakfast, 
 when we were alone for a moment in the gar- 
 den, what his Colonel was hke 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 ex- 
 planation. 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. 
 
CHRISTINE 183 
 
 "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 out- 
 buildings. 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 Staif . 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 acci- 
 dents some day when the roads have to be used 
 for real traflSc." 
 
 "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 comers straightened out. 
 Use your influence, which I am sure must be 
 
134 CHRISTINE 
 
 great, with that shortsighted body of gentle- 
 men, your County Council." 
 
 "I shall not fail," I said, more politely than 
 ever, "to inform them of your wishes." 
 
 "Ah, but she is dehghtful, — delightful, your 
 little Engldnderin" 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 
 Mddchen, 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 ofiF, waving his green hat to us and calling 
 I 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 re- 
 act to being told what I gather is the German 
 equivalent for a sly dog. 
 
CHRISTINE 135 
 
 Herr von Inster said, when hie 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 the- 
 atre." 
 
 Then he tinned and looked at me with those 
 kind,^ sm"prising eyes of his, — ^they're so reas- 
 suring, somehow, after his stern profile — and 
 said, "To-morrow I shall be a himaan being 
 again, and forget all this, — forget everjrthing 
 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 dar- 
 ling little mother. Oh, I forgot to say how 
 glad I am you like being at Glion, I did 
 
136 CHRISTINE 
 
 mean to answer a great many things in your 
 last letter, my little loved one, but I will to- 
 morrow. It isn't that I don't read and re- 
 read 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 con- 
 tents 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 Schuppenf elde this after- 
 noon, 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 Ober- 
 f orsterei 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 
 
 137 
 
138 CHRISTINE 
 
 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 
 Bomsted the Grafin's letter. 
 
 If it hadn't been a Koseritz taking me away 
 she would have been dreadfully ofPended at 
 my wanting to go when only half my fort- 
 night was over, but it was like a royai 
 command to her, and she looked at me 
 with greatly increased interest as the ob- 
 ject 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 Mad- 
 cJien, 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 Graf- 
 in's letter I was treated more nearly as an 
 
CHRISTINE 189 
 
 equal, and she became all interest and co-oper- 
 ation. She helped me pack, while Herr von 
 Inster, who has a great gift for quiet patience, 
 waited downstairs; and she told me how for- 
 tunate I was to be going to spend some days 
 with Komtesse Helena, from whom 1 could 
 learn, she said, what the real perfect junges 
 Mddchen 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 sin- 
 gled 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 Mddchen 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, remem- 
 bering 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. 
 
140 CHRISTINE 
 
 and said, "You are not at all what a junges 
 Mddchen 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 
 affabihty put between the Bomsteds — 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 Swinemiinde 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 pan- 
 nelled 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 Koser- 
 itzes, 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 gov- 
 
CHRISTINE 141 
 
 emness and comes here every summer to en- 
 joy what she called, speaking Enghsh to me, 
 the Smnmer 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 to- 
 gether 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 nat- 
 ural with him, so content ; and I think it is be- 
 cause he is here at Koseritz that I'm so comfort- 
 able, and not in the least shy, as I was that 
 
143 CHRISTINE 
 
 day at luncheon. I simply take things as they 
 come, and don't think ajbout 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 fig- 
 ure and manner, — ^it is so gentle, so kind. I 
 went into the room where they all were with a 
 funny feeling of heing 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 hap- 
 pen if I sat on my window-sill and played 
 Ravel to the larkspurs and the stars! I be- 
 lieve it would make even the Graf say some- 
 thing. But I won't do anything so unlike, as 
 Frau Bornsted would say, what a junges Mdd- 
 chen 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 
 
CHRISTINE 143 
 
 Grafin told me she got aU her chintzes in Lon- 
 don! It's so funny after my room at Frau 
 Berg's, and my little impainted wooden attic 
 at the Oberforsterei. 
 
 Grood 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, 19l4i 
 My own darling mother, 
 
 I don't know what you'll say, but I'm en- 
 gaged 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 un- 
 derstanding 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 Klos- 
 ters 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 
 
 144 
 
CHRISTINE 145 
 
 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 xmeasy. "I hope," she 
 said to Frau Kloster, "my asking has not of- 
 fended him?" 
 
 But Bemd knew — ^Bernd, still at that mo- 
 ment 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 mo- 
 ment 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. 
 
146 CHRISTINE 
 
 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 com- 
 pletely that I might have been unconscious, 
 myself. I was listening; and what I heard 
 were secrets, secrets strange and exquisite ; no- 
 ble, 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 im- 
 portant, very beautiful that one used to know, 
 but has forgotten. 
 
 Pl-esently 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 
 
CHRISTINE 147 
 
 when first one wakes from a dream and sees 
 familiar things again and doesn't quite under- 
 stand. 
 
 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, hut 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 happi- 
 ness that I could drop in a heap on the floor and 
 go to sleep like that. Beloved mother — ^bless 
 your Chris. 
 
 , i- 1 i. 
 
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 min- 
 utes 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 
 
 148 
 
CHRISTINE 149 
 
 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 dis- 
 approval, 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 for- 
 est. It's all quite true what happened last 
 night. It wasn't a dream. We are engaged. 
 I've hardly seen the others. They congratu- 
 lated 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 wotdd 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. 
 
KoseritZj Thursday, July 83. 
 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 wiU love Bemd, and understand di- 
 rectly you see him why I do. We are so placid 
 here these beautiful summer days. Every- 
 body accepts us now resignedly as a fait ac- 
 compli, 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 he- 
 
 150 
 
CHRISTINE ISI 
 
 ginning 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 tiU then, and there's no point in spend- 
 ing 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 j oin 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 
 
152 CHRISTINE 
 
 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 fin- 
 ished 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 
 
CHRISTINE 153 
 
 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, hus- 
 bands 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 some- 
 thing, "a woman artist who falls in love neg- 
 lects 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 im- 
 patiently. "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 mar- 
 
154. CHRISTINE 
 
 ried 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 de- 
 taining and delaying objects like cradles, is 
 ciu:ed 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 triimiph 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 Ber- 
 lin as I never did before. 
 
 I said something like this to Kloster, who 
 replied with great tartness that I oughtn't to 
 
CHRISTINE 155 
 
 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, feehng quite 
 ashamed that I had it, he was so much an- 
 noyed. 
 
 "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 contemptu- 
 ous) , 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 Beethovenhopf. Never 
 should that wide sweep of brow and those deep 
 
156 CHRISTINE 
 
 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 lamen- 
 table 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 modems, your 
 Parrys and Stanfords and Elgars and the rest, 
 why, what stuflf are they? Very nice, yery 
 good, very conscientious: the translation into 
 
CHRISTINE 157 
 
 musical notation of respectable English gen- 
 tlemen in black coats and silk hats. They are 
 the British Stock Exchange got into music. 
 No, no," he said, tucking the dust-cover roimd 
 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, beau- 
 tiful things that are being said to me by him 
 
158 CHRISTINE 
 
 are things I can't tell you, my mother, my be- 
 loved mother whom I've always told every- 
 thing 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 sail- 
 ing, 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 no- 
 body can say, "No, you mustn't." Do you 
 know Bernd has to have the Kaiser's permis- 
 sion to marry? All officers have to, and he 
 quite often says no. The girl has to prove she 
 
CHRISTINE 159 
 
 has an income of her own of at least 5000 marks 
 — that's £250 a year — and be of demonstrably 
 decent birth. Well, the birth part is all right 
 — I wonder if the Kaiser knows how to pro- 
 nounce Cholmondeley — and of course once I 
 get playing at concerts I shall earn heaps more 
 than the £250; so I expect we shall be able 
 to arrange that. Kloster will give me a cer- 
 tificate 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 Bemd 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. Every- 
 thing is combining to make this simimer the 
 most wonderful of smnmers 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 encourag- 
 ing; 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 kind- 
 ness. Do you think the world is getting really 
 
160 CHRISTINE 
 
 kinder, or is it only that I'm so happy ? I can't 
 help thinldng that all that talk I heard in Ber- 
 lin, 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 over- 
 worked 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 pastur- 
 ing 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 
 
CHRISTINE 161 
 
 in the course of months of uninterrupted herd- 
 ing 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 under- 
 stand. 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. In- 
 deed 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 get- 
 ting 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 de- 
 spise 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 
 
162 CHRISTINE 
 
 prayers of gratitude, real uplif tings of the heart 
 in thanks and praise. I think I was always 
 happy, little mother. I don't remember any- 
 thing 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 con- 
 fident, 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 ter- 
 race wall. Sometimes a bird flutters for a mo- 
 ment in the trees of the forest on either side 
 of the garden, turning over in its sleep, I sup- 
 pose, 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 hush- 
 ing it to sleep. 
 
 Your Chris who loves you. 
 
KoseritZj, Friday, July 35th, 1914. 
 Beloved mother, 
 
 Bernd was telegraphed for this afternoon 
 from headquarters to go back at once to Ber- 
 lin, 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 chil- 
 dren, and Bernd, and I at a confused and un- 
 tidy table, everybody with a question in their 
 eyes, and the servants' hands not very steady as 
 they held the dishes. The menservants would 
 
 163 
 
164. CHRISTINE 
 
 all have to go and fight if there were war. No 
 wonder the dishes shook a httle, 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 reap- 
 peared — and he said that though for a mo- 
 ment he had thought Austria's ultimatum 
 would mean war, it was only just the first mo- 
 ment, 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 be- 
 fore. 
 
 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, ac- 
 cordingly, at least uneasy. 
 I saw hardly any more of him. He got his 
 
CHRISTINE 165 
 
 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 hor- 
 ror. 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 Eu- 
 rope?" I exclaimed, incredulous of such a ter- 
 ror. 
 
 "Except England," he said; and whispered, 
 "Oh, thank God, except England." Some- 
 body 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. 
 
166 CHRISTINE 
 
 It has all been so quick. I can't believe it 
 quite. I don't know what to think, and no- 
 body 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 Bemd — 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! 
 
Kd8ent!&, 
 
 Saturday, July 25th, 1914. 
 You know, my beloved one, I'd much 
 rather be at Frau Berg's in Berhn and inde- 
 pendent, and able to see Bemd 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 tmirden die Leute 
 sagen, as every German before doing or re- 
 fraining 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 
 
 167 
 
168 CHRISTINE 
 
 mother would wish it. I'm not a bit certain, 
 I who know my mother and know how beauti- 
 fully empty she is of conventions and how di- 
 vinely indifferent to die Leute; but as I'm go- 
 ing 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 en- 
 thusiasm, which was marked, only makes it all 
 the kinder. On that principle, too, my grate- 
 fulness, 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 to- 
 wards us in a cart at a walking pace once a 
 day. Nearly all today and quite all tomor- 
 row 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 seri- 
 
CHRISTINE 169 
 
 ously 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 al- 
 ways 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, noth- 
 ing 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 
 
170 CHRISTINE 
 
 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 be- 
 fore 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; calmty 
 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 
 
CHRISTINE 171 
 
 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 father 
 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 Switzer- 
 land are feeling about it. You know, my dear- 
 est 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, what- 
 ever happens, quietly working with Kloster till 
 
172 CHRISTINE 
 
 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 Ber- 
 lin about the Austro-Hungarian minister hav- 
 ing asked the Servian government for his pass- 
 ports 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 re- 
 fused. It did seem incredible. I did think 
 Servia would deserve her punishing. Yester- 
 day's papers said the demands were most rea- 
 sonable 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 
 
 173 
 
174 CHRISTINE 
 
 pleased at my expressions of indignation, and 
 her coming over to me to pat my cheek and say, 
 "This child will make an excellent httle Ger- 
 man." 
 
 3?hen I thought I'd better wait and know 
 more before sweeping Servia out of my dis- 
 gusted sight. There are probably lots of other 
 things to know. Kloster will tell me. I find 
 I have a profound distrust really of these peo- 
 ple. 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 dis- 
 comfort 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 Ger- 
 man. 
 
 "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. 
 
CHRISTINE 175 
 
 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 any- 
 where 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. "Pre- 
 cisely," she said. "Loyal subjects, true Chris- 
 tians, are alike in their unquestioning trust and 
 obedience to authority." 
 
 I came upstairs then, in case I shouldn't be 
 
176 CHRISTINE 
 
 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 Ger- 
 man 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 wUl take me all my 
 time, for I haven't been used to big events, 
 it will be very annoying t» be caught and de- 
 layed 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 pro- 
 testations you have to make! The elaborate- 
 ness and length of every acceptance or refusal ! 
 And it's all so much fluff and wind, signifying 
 
CHRISTINE 177 
 
 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 won- 
 der very much at Servia's refusing to accept 
 it, and yet siu-ely 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 tire- 
 some 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 mo- 
 ment when they can safely attack. It has 
 been the Kaiser's one idea, Kloster says, dur- 
 ing the whole of his reign. Of course it's true 
 it has been a peaceful reign, — they're always 
 
178 CHRISTINE 
 
 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 in- 
 structions, 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 
 
CHRISTINE m 
 
 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 stuflp 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 at- 
 tacker. 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-civihzed peoples would be 
 afraid to attack a nation so strong as Germany. 
 She is training and living, and has been train- 
 ing 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, 
 
180 CHRISTINE 
 
 whenever they remember not to be natural. 
 Oh, I know this is very different from what I 
 was writing and f eehng 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. Sup- 
 pose 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 thank- 
 ful these two days are over. 
 
 (Your Chris. 
 
CHRISTINE 181 
 
 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 peo- 
 ple 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 crea- 
 tures bellowing and strutting, and waving their 
 hats and handkerchiefs, and even their babies, 
 high ^er their heads whenever a honigliche 
 
 182 
 
CHRISTINE 183 
 
 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 beauti- 
 ful 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 rusthng 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 iiber 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 
 
184 CHRISTINE 
 
 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 con- 
 ceal their joy beneath their pious hopes that the 
 horrors of war may even yet be spared the 
 world, reveals the full seriousness of the situa- 
 tion. I like the "even yet," don't you ? Bernd 
 was at the station, and drove with us to the 
 Sommerstrasse. We went along the Doro- 
 theenstrasse, 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, 
 
CHRISTINE 185 
 
 "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 impetu- 
 ously. 
 
 "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, jou see, forgot, as Germans some- 
 
186 CHRISTINE 
 
 times 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 Hohen- 
 zollerns. 
 
 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 but- 
 ler, who certainly is too old to fight, vanished. 
 
 Bemd comes in whenever he can. Luckily 
 we're quite close to the General Staff Head- 
 quarters 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 agaiA He talks of 
 the madness of war, and of how no Govern- 
 ment 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 ques- 
 tion 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 yes- 
 terday nor Bernd's Colonel who dined here last 
 
CHRISTINE 187 
 
 night, nor any of the other people. Govern- 
 ment officials who come to see the Graf, and 
 women friends who come to see the Grafin. 
 They don't say war is certain, hut each one of 
 them has the look of satisfaction and rehef 
 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 Col- 
 onel, for instance, who seems particularly hila- 
 rious. He was very hilarious last night, 
 though not ostensibly about war. If the possi- 
 bihty of war is mentioned, as of course it con- 
 stantly 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, ex- 
 pressed 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 fimny. Especially 
 after two hours in the morning with Klos- 
 ter, who explained that the Government is 
 arranging everything that is happening, man- 
 aging public opinion, creating the exact 
 amount of enthusiasm and aggressiveness it 
 
188 CHRISTINE 
 
 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 jimges 
 Mddchen 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 Mdd- 
 chen who is betrothed is expected to show on all 
 occasions such extreme modesty, such a con- 
 tinuous 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 Minis- 
 terium des Innern, and saying "But your pub- 
 lic is so disciphned 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 dread- 
 fully 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 al- 
 ready 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 
 
CHRISTINE 189 
 
 permit him to drink my health and the health 
 of that luckiest of yoimg men, Lieutenant von 
 Inster. "Old England forever 1" he exclaimed, 
 bowing over his glass to me, "The England 
 that raises such fair flowers and allows Ger- 
 many to pluck them. Long may she continue 
 these altruistic activities. Long may the 
 homes of Germany be decorated with Eng- 
 land'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 Koser- 
 
190 CHRISTINE 
 
 itzes and Insters — welcomed the proposed mar- 
 riage 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 nimierous 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 re- 
 lapsed 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 reluc- 
 tantly 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 
 
CHRISTINE 191 
 
 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 flimg their hats in the 
 air. The Colonel, in his staff ofiicer's imiform, 
 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 iiber 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 
 
192 CHRISTINE 
 
 dressed and go down and hear if anything fresh 
 has happened. Good-bye my own loved 
 mother, — I'E 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 wor- 
 ried I wouldn't like to interrupt my lessons. 
 They really are very important things for our 
 future. 
 
 Your Chris. 
 
BerliUj 
 
 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 hving 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. Wonder- 
 ful how one carries about such a precious con- 
 sciousness. It's like something magic and hid- 
 den that takes care of one, keeping one un- 
 touched 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 col- 
 
 193 
 
194 CHRISTINE 
 
 our 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 Wed- 
 nesday, 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 Berhn; and Germany isn't even at 
 war! But it's no use asking questions, or try- 
 ing 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 pubhc. 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 sol- 
 diers 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 im- 
 agined a thing so pitiful to see as these respect- 
 
CHRISTINE 195 
 
 able 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 or- 
 dinary 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. Im- 
 agine 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 pave- 
 ment, and nobody thinking it anything but fine 
 and creditable, at the prospect of their chil- 
 dren's blood going to be shed, and everybody's 
 children's blood, except the blood of those safe 
 children, the children of the HohenzoUerns! 
 
 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 
 
196 CHRISTINE 
 
 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 
 hdte noise, it really hurts my ears — is the bath- 
 room 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 fame that a bath was wanted. 
 Then it had to 6e put in any hole, and this hole 
 is the one place where there is silence. Every- 
 where else, in every room in the house, it is as if 
 one were living next door to a dozen public 
 
CHRISTINE ld7 
 
 houses in the worst slums of London and it 
 were always Saturday night, I do think the 
 patriotism of an unattacked, aggressive coun- 
 try 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, hke a mob of luna- 
 tics 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 aU 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 im- 
 mature 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 
 
198 CHRISTINE 
 
 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 foimd 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 con- 
 venience 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 Krxmamlaut; and of coiu-se 
 Frau Berg, massive iii 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 quar- 
 rel, the pugnacious political arguing with me, 
 the gibes at England, were gone. I don't 
 
CHRISTINE 199 
 
 know whether it was because I'm engaged to a 
 Prussian officer that they were so very pohte — 
 I was tremendously congratulated, — but they 
 were certainly different about England. It 
 may of course have been their general happi- 
 ness — ^happiness makes one so kind all roimd! 
 — for here too was the content, the satisfac- 
 tion of those who, after painful waiting, get 
 what they want. It was expressed very nois- 
 ily, not with the restraint of the Koseritzes, but 
 it was the same thing reaUy. The Berg atmos- 
 phere was more like the one in the streets. 
 Where the Grafin in her pleasiu-e became only 
 more calm, the boarders were abandoned,— ex- 
 cited like savages dancing round the fire their 
 victims are to roast at. Frau Berg rumbled 
 and shook with her relief, like some great earth- 
 quake, 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 
 
200 CHRISTINE 
 
 liked here away from the Grafin's gentle smile 
 reminding me that I'm not behaving. But I 
 had to sit and listen smiUngly, 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 Priassian 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 pres- 
 ent, 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 harm- 
 lessness, 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 Krurmnlaut splut- 
 tered through his soup today at Frau Berg's 
 with shining eyes, — I should have thought it 
 
CHRISTINE 201 
 
 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 hf e when, at the head of his regi- 
 ment, he would go forth to slay President Poin- 
 care. "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 fresh- 
 ness and sanity of early morning came into the 
 room when he did. I hung on his arm, and 
 
202 CHRISTINE 
 
 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 Doc- 
 tor Krummlaut, a clever man with far better 
 brains probably than Bernd. Bernd, from 
 habit, stiif ened and became unapproachable the 
 instant the middle class pubhc 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 1 
 
 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 
 
CHRISTINE 203 
 
 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 be- 
 trothal is followed by marriage. One is as 
 committal as the other, he said. It is the rar- 
 est thing, and produces an immense scandal, 
 for an engagement to be broken off; and, ex- 
 plained 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 pro- 
 duce 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. There- 
 fore 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. 
 
204 CHRISTINE 
 
 "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 Staif, 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 Ch»is. 
 
Before Breakfast, 
 Berlin^ Sat., Aug. Istj 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 Ger- 
 many had sent Russia an ultimatum about in- 
 stantly demobilizing, demanding an answer by 
 eleven this morning. The sensation when this 
 was known was tremendous. The Grajfin 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 W'ls lucky we had to, else we might have gone 
 
 205 
 
206 CHRISTINE 
 
 and come back and missed seeing the Kaiser 
 come out and speak to the crowd. We went a 
 long way round, but even so aU Germany 
 seemed to be streaming towards the Lindens 
 and the part at the end where the palace is. 
 I don't expect we ever wquld have got there if 
 it hadn't been that a cousin of the Grafin's, a 
 very smart yoimg officer in the Guards, saw us 
 in the taxi as it was vainly trying to cross the 
 Friedrichstrasse, and flicking the obstructing 
 poUcemen on one side with a sort of little kick 
 of his spin*, 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 aUow 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 Ber- 
 lin 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 
 
CHRISTINE 207 
 
 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 ordi- 
 nary times. That's what is so constantly 
 strange to me, — ^these sohd bvu-ghers and their 
 families behaving hke drunken hooligans. 
 Somehow a spectacled professor with a golden 
 chain across his blackwaistcoated and impres- 
 sive front, just roaring incoherently, just open- 
 ing his mouth and hurhng 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 noth- 
 ing stranger, nothing that makes one more un- 
 comfortable 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 other- 
 wise only uses tenderly on Sundays off her 
 respectable grey head and wave it frantically, 
 Screaming hochs every time a prince is seen or a 
 
208 CHRISTINE 
 
 general or one of the ministers, makes one want 
 to cry with shame at the indignity put upon 
 poor himian beings, at the exploiting of tieir 
 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 oflF them instantly again, as we 
 woiild have been if he had left us. I think they 
 were the steps of a statue, or fountain, or some- 
 thing hke 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 heav- 
 ing, roaring sea of distorted red faces, all with 
 their mouths wide open, all blistering and 
 streaming in the sxm. 
 
 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 mous- 
 tache, standing beside us protectingly, very 
 elegant and slender and nonchalant, and re- 
 marked at intervals, "Fabelhafte EnihusiaS' 
 mus, was?" 
 
CHRISTINE 209 
 
 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 weD up to time, of 
 careful preparation. 
 
 Of course I said "Colossal" to the cousin, 
 when he expressed his satisfaction more par- 
 ticularly to me. 
 
 "DrecUges Volk, die Russen," he remarked, 
 twisting his little moustache's ends up. "Wer- 
 den lemen was es heisst, frech sein gegen uns. 
 Wollen sie hlau 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 Grnadigste — tau- 
 sendmal pardon — " he protested the next min- 
 ute 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 tum- 
 bled 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 satis- 
 factionsfahig as they say, he merely called him 
 
210 CHRISTINE 
 
 an infame end 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 confi- 
 dential 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 hand- 
 kerchiefs and delirious shrieking. The Kaiser 
 put up his hand. 
 
 "Majestat is going to speak," exclaimed the 
 Grafin, her calm fluttered into fragments. 
 
CHRISTINE 211 
 
 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 hold- 
 ing his arm tightly over it, so that no struggles 
 of suffocation could get it free. There was no 
 more noise, but the httle 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 iinable to take the steps his outraged 
 honour, let alone the pain in his shins, called 
 for. 
 
 I was so much interested in this situation, 
 reaUy absorbed by it, for the little boy uncon- 
 sciously 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 Wil- 
 ton Crescent and we saw him driving one after- 
 
212 CHRISTINE 
 
 noon in a barouche down Birdcage Walk. Do 
 you remember how cross he looked, hardly re- 
 turning the salutations he got? We said he 
 and she must have been quarrelling, he looked 
 so sulky. And do you remember how ordi- 
 nary he looked in his top hat and black coat, 
 just like any cross and bored middle-class hus- 
 band? 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, — ^iinpressive and glittering with orders 
 flashing in the sim. We were near enough to 
 see him perfectly. There wasn't much cross- 
 ness 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 lead- 
 ing moments must have : Sir Galahad, humbly 
 glorying in his perfect achievement of nega- 
 tions ; Parsifal, engulfed in an ecstasy of hum- 
 ble gloating over his own worthiness as he holds 
 up the Grail high above bowed, adoring heads ; 
 Beerbohm Tree — I can't get away from theat- 
 rical analogies — coming before the curtain on 
 his most successful first night, meek with hap- 
 piness. Hasn't it run through the ages, this 
 
CHRISTINE 213 
 
 great humility at the moment of supreme 
 success, this moved self -depreciation of the man 
 who has pulled it oflf, the "Not unto us, O Lord, 
 not imto us" attitude, — quite genuine at the 
 moment, and because quite genuine so extraor- 
 dinarily 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 sud- 
 denly 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 cheap- 
 est emotions, by something that catches one on 
 
214 CHRISTINE 
 
 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, Uttle mother. You know 
 the sort of thing, and have got that side your- 
 self, — 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 quiz- 
 zical 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 woxmded, 
 crawls blindly to Tristan's side and says, 
 "Schilt mich nicht dass der Treue audi mit- 
 kommt" and Siegfried's dying "Brilnnhild, 
 heilige Braut" and Tannhauser's dying "Heil- 
 ige Elisabeth^ bitte fur mich." All three Ger- 
 man things, you see. All morbid things. Most 
 of the sentimentality seems to have come from 
 Germany, an essentially brutal place. But of 
 course sentimentahty is really diluted morbid- 
 ness, and therefore first cousin to cruelty. And 
 I have a real and healthy dislike for that Tann- 
 hauser opera. 
 
 But seeing how the best of us — ^which is you 
 — ^have these little hidden swamps of emotion- 
 
CHRISTINE 215 
 
 alness, 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, rebelhous and 
 hostile to the whole attitude, sure that the real 
 motives beneath all this are base, and constitu- 
 tionally unable to care about Kaisers, was 
 thrilled. Thrilled by him, I mean. Oh, there 
 was enough to thrill one legitimately and tragi- 
 cally about the poor people, so eager to offer 
 themselves, their souls and bodies, to be an un- 
 reasonable sacrifice and satisfaction for the 
 HohenzoUerns. 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 prop- 
 erly 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, — 
 Gpd, 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 
 
216 CHRISTINE 
 
 Father. "Go to your homes," he said, dismiss- 
 ing them at the end with uphfted hand, — "go 
 to your homes, and pray." 
 
 And we went. In dead Silence. That im- 
 mense 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 per- 
 suaded 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 baby- 
 hood 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 go- 
 ing 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 
 
CHRISTINE 21t 
 
 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 chil- 
 dren, 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 pimished 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 any- 
 body, 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 yester- 
 day 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 ex- 
 pected 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 iU, 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 
 
 218 
 
CHRISTINE 219 
 
 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 say- 
 mg— 
 
 And she shrugged her shoulders and merely 
 repeated, "One is not as usual." 
 
 So I came away, greatly puzzled. I had ex- 
 pected bread, and here I was going off with 
 nothing but an imaccountable 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 comfort- 
 ing, in what is now a very great isolation of 
 spirit. And he was dmnb. I can't get over 
 it. 
 
220 CHRISTINE 
 
 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 burn- 
 ing, 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 loveli- 
 ness 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 bath- 
 room 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 
 
CHRISTINE 221 
 
 nourishing the necessary emotions in the peo- 
 ple 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 ex- 
 cept 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 im- 
 mense recollection of God, turned on by Au- 
 thority 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 ofiicial, 
 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 G^er- 
 man Authority finds convenient to turn on and 
 off, according as it suits what it wishes to ob- 
 tain. It isn't God. It's just a tap. 
 
222 CHRISTINE 
 
 Later. 
 
 Bemd came to lunch, but also unfortunately 
 so did his chief. They both arrived together 
 after we had begun, — ^there's a tremendous 
 oiler et venir all day in the house, and some- 
 times the traffic on the stairs to the drawing- 
 room gets so congested that nothing but a Lon- 
 don policeman could deal with it. I could only 
 say ordinary things to Bemd, and he went 
 away, swept off by his Colonel, directly after- 
 wards. 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 en- 
 treaties 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 
 
CHRISTINE 223 
 
 imagined ever could be; but this idea of a 
 junges Mddchen — {"Sie soil ganx 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 — ) — ^mo- 
 toring out to bar the passage of a mighty army, 
 trying to stop thousands of bayonets by lift- 
 ing 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 Ger- 
 man cavalry was already in France at several 
 points. 
 
 "Ja, 3a" he said, apparently addressing me, 
 for he looked at me and smiled, "when we Ger- 
 mans make war we do not wait till the next day. 
 Everything thought of; everything ready; 
 plenty of oil in the machine ; v/nd dann los." 
 
 He raised his glass. "Delightful young 
 English lady," he said, "I drink to your charm- 
 ing eyes." 
 
 There's dinner. I must leave oflP. 
 
224 CHRISTINE 
 
 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 in- 
 timate friends, the cleverest talkers among his 
 set, two or three who used to hold forth par- 
 ticularly 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. 
 
 Bemd 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 jmnped 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 desira- 
 
CHRISTINE 225 
 
 bility 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 un- 
 honoured." 
 
 "But he would never — " I began; then re- 
 membered my lesson yesterday and his silence. 
 So that's what it was. He already had his 
 command to attend at the palace and be deco- 
 rated in his pocket. 
 
 I sat staring straight before me. Kloster 
 bought? Kloster for sale? And the Govern- 
 ment 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 inter- 
 fere with him; something hke, I expect, Tolstoi 
 and the Russian court. 
 
226 CHRISTINE 
 
 The Grafin looked at me quickly. { 
 
 "And so has Majestat been in his," I con- 
 tinued. 
 
 "Kloster," said the Grafin very gently, "is a 
 most amusing talker, and sometimes cannot re- 
 sist 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. Sup- 
 pose he too, he with his Prussian blood and up- 
 bringing, 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, re- 
 wards him for the disposal of his soul? Kloster, 
 
CHRISTINE 227 
 
 that freest of critics, had gone over, his German 
 blood after all unable to resist the call to slav- 
 ery. 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 com- 
 forted me most by my finding how greatly he 
 needed to be comforted himself. He was every 
 bit as profoimdly shaken and shocked as I was. 
 Oh, the relief of discovering that! 
 
 We clung to each other, and comforted each 
 other like two hiu-t children. Kloster has been 
 
228 CHRISTINE 
 
 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 Bote 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 Prddikat 
 Excellenz. God rest his soul. 
 
 Chris. 
 
BerUiij 
 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. 
 
 zzi 
 
Berlin, 
 
 Monday August 3rd, evening. 
 Precious mother, 
 
 I want to come back to you — directly Bemd 
 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 thvm- 
 der-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 
 
 230 
 
CHRISTINE 231 
 
 once. Hardly looked at me when he bowed, 
 and his bow was the stiff est thing. I can't ask 
 anybody if there is bad news for Germany, for 
 it would be a most dreadful insult even to sug- 
 gest 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 I want so 
 dreadfully to get away, to go back to you, and 
 the thought of being at Frau Berg's, just wait- 
 ing, 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 be- 
 ing 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 
 
232 CHRISTINE 
 
 course I knew the lessons would be strange and 
 painful now, but I thought we could manage, 
 Kloster and I, Ijy 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 hke leaving Bernd, and starting 
 for Ghon 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." 
 
BerUfij 
 
 Tuesday J August 4th, 1914. 
 My beloved mother, 
 
 The atmosphere in this house really is in- 
 tolerable, 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 feel- 
 ing of being in a place full of sudden and un- 
 accovmtable hostility. Bernd came this morn- 
 ing, 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 go- 
 ing, 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 hap- 
 pened 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. 
 
 233 
 
234 CHRISTINE 
 
 "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 helieved 
 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 back 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 Liitzowstrasse, and would 
 like, if she didn't mind, to go tomorrow. It 
 was very peirdich, as they say; for however 
 much people want to get rid of you they're al- 
 ways angry if you want to go. I said aU 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 
 
CHRISTINE 235 
 
 that I had done to offend her ; though of course 
 she didn't tell me, and was only stiU more of- 
 fended 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 xmfortunate 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 stiU 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 be- 
 cause 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 fin- 
 ished 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 pa- 
 tience than he has. If you'd seen him tonight 
 
 236 
 
CHRISTINE 237 
 
 saying good-bye to me, and stopped by the 
 Colonel! His look as he obeyed — I shan't for- 
 get 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 
 tinging 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 poli- 
 tical reasons why I shouldn't stay even as long 
 as till tomorrow. The Graf's career, his posi- 
 tion in the ministry, their social position, 
 Majestat, — I really don't remember all she 
 said, and it matters so little, so little. I lis- 
 tened, trying to understand, trying to give all 
 my attention to it and disentangle it, while my 
 
238 CHRISTINE 
 
 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 cakn, 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 every- 
 thing that has been perplexing me. They'd 
 been afraid of it the Ijast 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, 
 aU by myself in what I think and feel, — ^how I 
 loved her! My heart was thumping five min- 
 utes before for fear of shame, now it thxmiped 
 so that I couldn't have said anything if I'd 
 wanted to for gladness and pride. I was a bit 
 
CHRISTINE 239 
 
 of England. I think to know how much one 
 loves England one has to be in Germany. I 
 forgot Bernd for a moment, tey 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 con- 
 tinued, 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 Bemd would get the letter I posted to 
 him this mbrning telling him I was going to 
 Frau Berg's tomorrow, so I felt safe about see- 
 ing him, even if he didn't come in to the Koser- 
 itzes before I left. But he did come in. He 
 came just as I was going downstairs carrying 
 
240 CHRISTINE 
 
 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 Kriegserkld- 
 rung 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 — to- 
 morrow," he said. "Before you're noticed, be- 
 fore there's been time to make your going dif- 
 ficult." 
 
 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 
 
CHRISTINE 241 
 
 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, Laus- 
 anne, anywhere as long as it's Switzerland. 
 You'U 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 bank- 
 notes 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 
 
242 CHRISTINE 
 
 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 pro- 
 file 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 Tie matter? Remember what, my Bernd, 
 my own beloved?" 
 
 "Remember courage — ^patience — " he mur- 
 mured quickly, under his breath. 
 
 "Silence !" shouted the Colonel. "Take that 
 
CHRISTINE 248 
 
 woman's hand off your arm, Herr Leutnant. 
 Kreuzhimmeldornierwetter nochmal. In- 
 stantly." 
 
 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 heing, 
 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 stiU will have 
 had the whole of hfe. 
 
 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'U 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 
 
244 CHRISTINE 
 
 of Bernd. While she was demurring on the 
 threshold, when at last I got to her after a ter- 
 rifying walk through the crowds, — for I was 
 afraid they would notice me and see, as they 
 always do, that I'm English, — ^his soldier serv- 
 ant brought her a note from him which just 
 tiirned 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 go- 
 ing to bed and to sleep tonight, on the night 
 of what might seem to be the ruin of my hap- 
 piness. 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 for- 
 get 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 
 f 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 mght, 
 August 6th, 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, aU 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 plat- 
 form as they go by never slackens. I'm mak- 
 ing for Ziirich. I tried for Bale, but couldn't 
 get into Switzerland that way, — it is abges- 
 perrt. 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 f eai*- 
 fuUy 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 compari- 
 son, and I wish I had my coat. I've brought 
 
 245 
 
246 CHRISTINE 
 
 nothing away with me, except my fiddle and 
 what would go into its case, which was hand- 
 kerchiefs. Bernd wiU 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 aU 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 imf riendly. 
 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. 
 
Wurzburg^ 
 Thursday, "August 6tli, 1914, 
 
 4 p. in. 
 
 IVe 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 car- 
 riage that I got out to get some air and un- 
 stiffen myself, instinctively clutching my fid- 
 dle-case; and a Bavarian ofl&cer on the plat- 
 form, watching the train with some soldiers, 
 saw me and came over to me at once and de- 
 manded 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 sim, 
 for I was positively dripping after the first half 
 
 247 
 
248 CHRISTINE 
 
 hour of it, and his answer to that and to any- 
 thing 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 sup- 
 pose 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 tele- 
 phoned 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 swin- 
 ish English, they said. I wished then I 
 couldn't understand German. I stood there 
 doing my best to think it was aU 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 ow on them, and you, my blessed, blessed 
 little mother, calling me :c 'ji'eakfast. But it 
 
CHRISTINE 249 
 
 was too hot and distinct and horribly consist- 
 ent to be a dream. And my clothes were get- 
 ting wetter and wetter with the heat, and stick- 
 ing to me. 
 
 I want to get to you. That's all I think of 
 now. There isn't a train tiU 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 oflScer, 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 some- 
 thing 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 some- 
 thing 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 com- 
 pletely then, when I told him Bemd's name 
 and regiment, and was really polite and really 
 saw that I wasn't ftu-ther inconvenienced. 
 Dear Bemd! Even just his name saves me. 
 
 I went to sleep on the bench in the waiting 
 
250 CHRISTINE 
 
 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 hav- 
 ing to do anything. The waiter says there's 
 a place I can wash in, and I suppose I'd hetter 
 go and wash after I've posted this, hut I don't 
 want to particularly. I don't want to do any- 
 thing, 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 Wurz- 
 burgis? 
 
 Your Chris. 
 
 Printed in the United States of America. 
 
''HE following pages contain advertisements of a few of the 
 ' Macmillan hovels. 
 
Bromley Neighborhood 
 
 By ALICE BROWN 
 
 Author of "The Prisoner," "Children of Earth," "Road to 
 
 Castaly," etc. 
 
 i2mo, ^1.50 
 
 It is as the novelist of New England that Alice Brown 
 has won the hearts of thousands of readers. Few writers 
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 As the years go by Miss Brown loses none of her skill in 
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 its people. 
 
 Particularly, Bromley Neighborhood has to do with the 
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 around whom Miss Brown has written a most engaging 
 romance. 
 
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 "In 'His Family' Ernest Poole reveals the mind and the 
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 Mr. Poole has written a very fine, a very_ truthful, a very 
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 N. Y. Telegraph.. 
 
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NEW MACMILLAN FICTION: 
 
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 By ST. JOHN G. ERVINE 
 
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 "A thoughtful, absorbingly interesting novel." — > 
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 12'. $1.50 
 
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The Ejnpty House 
 
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 Frontispiece, jsmo, $1.40 
 
 It is a brilliant and searching story having to do with the 
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