Christine Part 9

And yet I can't quite see you in August in lodgings in Berlin, come down from your beautiful mountain, away from your beautiful lake.

After all, I've only got four more months of it, and then I'm finished and can go back to you. What is going to happen then, exactly, I don't know. Bernd says, Marry, and that you'll come and live with us in Germany. That's all very well, but what about, if I marry so soon, starting my public career, which was to have begun this next winter?

Kloster says impatiently. Oh marry, and get done with it, and that then | I'll be sensible again and able to arrange my debut as a violinist with the calm, I gather he thinks, of the disillusioned.

"I'm perfectly sensible," I said.

"You are not. You are in love. A woman should never be an artist.

Again I say, Mees Chrees, what I have said to you before, that it is sheer malice on the part of Providence to have taken you, a woman, as the vessel which is to carry this great gift about the world. A man, gifted to the extent you so unluckily are, falls in love and is inspired by it. Indeed, it is in that condition that he does his best work; which is why the man artist is so seldom a faithful husband, for the faithful husband is precluded from being in love."

"Why can't he be in love?" I asked, husbands now having become very interesting to me.

"Because he is a faithful husband."

"But he can be in love with his wife."

"No," said Kloster, "he cannot. And he cannot for the same reason that no man can go on wanting his dinner who has had it. Whereas," he went on louder, because I had opened my mouth and was going to say something, "a woman artist who falls in love neglects everything and merely loves. Merely loves," he repeated, looking me up and down with great severity and disfavour.

"You'll see how I'll work," I said.

"Nonsense," he said, waving that aside impatiently. "Which is why," he continued, "I urge you to marry quickly. Then the woman, so unfortunately singled out by Providence to be something she is not fitted for, having married and secured her husband, prey, victim. Or whatever you prefer to call him--"

"I prefer to call him husband," I said.

"--if she succeeds in steering clear of detaining and delaying objects like cradles, is cured and can go back with proper serenity to that which alone matters. Art and the work necessary to produce it. But she will have wasted time," he said, shaking his head. "She will most sadly have wasted time."

In my turn I said Nonsense, and laughed with that heavenly, glorious security one has when one has a lover.

I expect there are some people who may be as Kloster says, but we're not like them, Bernd and I. We're not going to waste a minute. He adores my music, and his pride in it inspires me and makes me glow with longing to do better and better for his sake, so as to see him moved, to see him with that dear look of happy triumph in his eyes. Why, I feel lifted high up above any sort of difficulty or obstacle life can try to put in my way. I'm going to work when I get to Berlin as I never did before.

I said something like this to Kloster, who replied with great tartness that I oughtn't to want to do anything for the sake of producing a certain look in somebody's eyes. "That is not Art, Mees Chrees. That is nothing that will ever be any good. You are, you see, just the veriest woman; and here--" he almost cried--"is this gift, this precious immortal gift, placed in such shaky small hands as yours."

"I'm very sorry," I said, feeling quite ashamed that I had it, he was so much annoyed.

"No, no," he said, relenting a little, "do not be sorry--marry. Marry quickly. Then there may be recovery."

And when he was saying good-bye--I tell you this because it will amuse you--he said with a kind of angry grief that if Providence were determined in its unaccountable freakishness to place a gift which should be so exclusively man's in the sh.e.l.l or husk (I forget which he called it, but anyhow it sounded contemptuous), of a woman, it might at least have selected an ugly woman. "It need not," he said angrily, "have taken one who was likely in any case to be selected for purposes of love-making, and given her, besides the ordinary collection of allurements provided by nature to attract the male, a _Beethovenkopf_.

Never should that wide sweep of brow and those deep set eyes, the whole n.o.ble thoughtfulness of such a head,"--you mustn't think me vain, little mother, he positively said all these things and was so angry--"have been combined with the rubbish, in this case irrelevant and actually harmful, that goes to make up the usual pretty young face.

Mees Chrees, I could have wished you some minor deformity, such as many spots, for then you would not now be in this lamentable condition of being loved and responding to it. And if," he said as a parting shot, "Providence was determined to commit this folly, it need not have crowned it by choosing an Englishwoman."

"What?" I said, astonished, following him out on to the steps, for he has always seemed to like and admire us.

"The English are not musical," he said, climbing into the car that was to take him to the station, and in which Frau Kloster had been patiently waiting. "They are not, they never were, and they never will be. Purcell? A fig for your Purcell. You cannot make a great gallery of art out of one miniature, however perfect. And as for your moderns, your Parrys and Stanfords and Elgars and the rest, why, what stuff are they? Very nice, very good, very conscientious: the translation into musical notation of respectable English gentlemen in black coats and silk hats. They are the British Stock Exchange got into music. No, no," he said, tucking the dust-cover round himself and his wife, "the English are not musicians. And you," he called back as the car was moving, "You, Mees Chrees, are a freak,--nothing whatever but a freak and an accident."

We turned away to go indoors. The Grafin said she considered he might have wished her good-bye. "After all," she remarked, "I was his hostess."

She looked thoughtfully at me and Bernd as we stood arm-in-arm aside at the door to let her pa.s.s. "These geniuses," she said, laying her hand a moment on Bernd's shoulder, "are interesting but difficult."

I think, little mother, she meant me, and was feeling a little sorry for Bernd!

Isn't it queer how people don't understand. Anyhow, when she had gone in we looked at each other and laughed, and Bernd took my hands and kissed them one after the other, and said something so sweet, so dear,--but I can't tell you what it was. That's the worst of this having a lover,--all the most wonderful, beautiful things that are being said to me by him are things I can't tell you, my mother, my beloved mother whom I've always told everything to all my life. Just the things you'd love most to hear, the things that crown me with glory and pride, I can't tell you. It is because they're sacred. Sacred and holy to him and to me. You must imagine them, my precious one; imagine the very loveliest things you'd like said to your Chris, and they won't be half as lovely as what is being said to her. I must go now, because Bernd and I are going sailing on the Haff in a fishing boat there is.

We're taking tea, and are going to be away till the evening. The fishing boat has orange-coloured sails, and is quite big,--I mean you can walk about on her and she doesn't tip up. We're going to run her nose into the rushes along the sh.o.r.e when we're tired of sailing, and Bernd is going to hear me say my German psalms and read Heine to me.

Good-bye then for the moment, my little darling one. How very heavenly it is being engaged, and having the right to go off openly for hours with the one person you want to be with, and n.o.body can say, "No, you mustn't." Do you know Bernd has to have the Kaiser's permission to marry? All officers have to, and he quite often says no. The girl has to prove she has an income of her own of at least 5000 marks--that's 250 pounds a year--and be of demonstrably decent birth. Well, the birth part is all right--I wonder if the Kaiser knows how to p.r.o.nounce Cholmondeley--and of course once I get playing at concerts I shall earn heaps more than the 250 pounds; so I expect we shall be able to arrange that. Kloster will give me a certificate of future earning powers, I'm sure. But marrying seems so far off, such a dreamy thing, that I've not begun really to think of it. Being engaged is quite lovely enough to go on with. There's Bernd calling.

_Evening_.

I've just come in. It's ten o'clock. I've had the most perfect day.

Little mother, what an amazingly beautiful world it is. Everything is combining to make this summer the most wonderful of summers for me.

How I shall think of it when I am old, and laugh for joy. The weather is so perfect, people are so kind, my playing prospects are so encouraging; and there's Bernd. Did you ever know such a lot of lovely things for one girl? All my days are filled with sunshine and love.

Everywhere I look there's nothing but kindness. Do you think the world is getting really kinder, or is it only that I'm so happy? I can't help thinking that all that talk I heard in Berlin, all that restlessness and desire to hit out at somebody, anybody,--the knock-him-down-and-rob him idea they seemed obsessed with, was simply because it was drawing near the holiday time of year, and every one was overworked and nervy after a year's being cooped up in offices; and then the great heat came and finished them. They were cross, like overtired children, cross and quarrelsome. How cross I was too, tormented by those flies! After this month, when everybody has been away at the sea and in the forests, they'll be different, and as full of kindliness and gentleness as these gentle kind skies are, and the morning and the evening, and the placid noons. I don't believe anybody who has watched cows pasturing in golden meadows, as Bernd and I have for hours this afternoon, or heard water lapping among reeds, or seen eagles shining far up in the blue above the pine trees, and drawn in with every breath the sweetness, the extraordinary warm sweetness, of this summer in places in the forests and by the sea,--I don't believe people who had done that could for at least another year want to quarrel and fight. And by the time they did want to, having got jumpy in the course of months of uninterrupted herding together, it will be time for them to go for holidays again, back to the blessed country to be soothed and healed. And each year we shall grow wiser, each year more grown-up, less like naughty children, nearer to G.o.d. All we want is time,--time to think and understand. I feel religious now.

Happiness has made me so religious that I would satisfy even Aunt Edith. I'm sure happiness brings one to G.o.d much quicker than ways of grief. Indeed it's the only right way of being brought, I think. You know, little mother, I've always hated the idea of being kicked to G.o.d, of getting on to our knees because we've been beaten till we can't stand. I think if I were to lose what I love,--you, Bernd, or be hurt in my hands so that I couldn't play,--it wouldn't make me good, it would make me bad. I'd go all hard, and defy and rebel. And really G.o.d ought to like that best. It's at least a square and manly att.i.tude. Think how we would despise any creature who fawned on us, and praised and thanked us because we had been cruel. And why should G.o.d be less fine than we are? Oh well, I must go to bed. One can't settle G.o.d in the tail-end of a letter. But I'm going to say prayers tonight, real prayers of grat.i.tude, real uplifting of the heart in thanks and praise. I think I was always happy, little mother. I don't remember anything else; but it wasn't this secure happiness. I used to be anxious sometimes. I knew we were poor, and that you were so very precious. Now I feel safe, safe about you as well as myself. I can look life in the eyes, quite confident, almost careless. I have such faith in Bernd! Two together are so strong, if one of the two is Bernd.

Good night my blessed mother of my heart. I'm going to say thank-prayers now, for you, for him, for the whole beautifulness of the world. My windows are wide open on to the Haff. There's no sound at all, except that little plop, plop, of the water against the terrace wall. Sometimes a bird flutters for a moment in the trees of the forest on either side of the garden, turning over in its sleep, I suppose, and then everything is still again, so still; just as if some great cool hand were laid gently on the hot forehead of the world and was hushing it to sleep.

Your Chris who loves you.

_Koseritz, Friday, July 25th, 1914_.

Beloved mother,

Bernd was telegraphed for this afternoon from headquarters to go back at once to Berlin, and he's gone. I'm rubbing my eyes to see if I'm awake, it has been so sudden. The whole house seemed changed in an instant. The Graf went too. The newspaper doesn't get here till we are at lunch, and is always brought in and laid by the Graf, and today there was the Austrian ultimatum to Servia in it, and when the Graf saw that in the headlines of the _Tageszeitung_ he laid it down without a word and got up and left the room. Bernd reached over for the paper to see what had happened, and it was that. He read it out to us. "This means war," he said, and the Grafin said, "Hush," very quickly; I suppose because she couldn't bear to hear the word. Then she got up too, and went after the Graf, and we were left, Helena and the governess, and the children, and Bernd, and I at a confused and untidy table, everybody with a question in their eyes, and the servants' hands not very steady as they held the dishes. The menservants would all have to go and fight if there were war. No wonder the dishes shook a little, for they can't but feel excited.

As soon as we could get away from the diningroom Bernd and I went out into the garden--the Graf and Grafin hadn't reappeared--and he said that though for a moment he had thought Austria's ultimatum would mean war, it was only just the first moment, but that he believed Servia would agree to everything, and the crisis would blow over in the way so many of them had blown over before.

I asked him what would happen if it didn't; I wanted things explained to me clearly, for positively I'm not quite clear about which nations would be fighting; and he said why talk about hateful things like war as long as there wasn't a war. He said that as long as his chief left him peacefully at Koseritz and didn't send for him to Berlin I might be sure it was going to be just a local quarrel, for his being sent for would mean that all officers on leave were being sent for, and that the Government was at least uneasy. Then at four o'clock came the telegram. The Government is, accordingly, at least uneasy.

I saw hardly any more of him. He got his things together with a quickness that astonished me, and he and the Graf, who was going to Berlin by the same train, motored to Stettin to catch the last express.

Just before they left he caught hold of my hand and pulled me into the library where no one was, and told me how he thanked G.o.d I was English.

"Chris, if you had been French or Russian,"--he said, looking as though the very thought filled him with horror. He laid his face against mine. "I'd have loved you just the same," he said, "I could have done nothing else but love you, and think, think what it would have meant--"

"Then it will be Germany as well, if there's war?" I said, "Germany as well as Austria, and France and Russia--what, almost all Europe?" I exclaimed, incredulous of such a terror.

"Except England," he said; and whispered, "Oh, thank G.o.d, except England." Somebody opened the door an inch and told him he must come at once. I whispered in his ear that I would go back to Berlin tomorrow and be near him. He went out so quickly that by the time I got into the hall after him the car was tearing down the avenue, and I only caught a flash of the sun on his helmet as he disappeared round the corner.

It has all been so quick. I can't believe it quite. I don't know what to think, and n.o.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 Bernd--oh well, I'm tired. I don't think I'll write any more tonight. But I do love you so very much, darling mother.

Your Chris.

What a mercy that mothers are women, and needn't go away and fight.

Wouldn't it have been too awful if they had been men!

_Koseritz, Sat.u.r.day, July 25th, 1914.