Читать книгу: «Christine», страница 10

Your Chris.

Berlin, Sunday, August 2nd, 1914

My precious mother,

Just think,—when I had my lesson yesterday Kloster wouldn't talk either about the war or the Kaiser. For a long time I thought he was ill; but he wasn't, he just wouldn't talk. I told him about Friday, and the Kaiser's "Geht nach Hause und betet," and how I had felt about it and the whole thing, and I expected a flood of illuminating and instructive and fearless comment from him; and instead he was dumb. And not only dumb, but he fidgeted while I talked, and at last stopped me altogether and bade me go on playing.

Then I asked him if he were ill, and he said, "No, why should I be ill?"

"Because you're different,—you don't talk," I said.

And he said, "It is only women who always talk."

So then I got on with my playing, and just wondered in silence.

I ran against Frau Kloster in the passage as I was coming out, and asked her if there was anything wrong, and she too said, "No, what should there be wrong?"

"Because the Master's different," I said. "He won't talk."

And she said, "My dear Mees Chrees, these are great days we live in, and one cannot be as usual."

"But the Master—" I said. "Just these great days—you'd think he'd be pouring out streams of all the things that most need saying—"

And she shrugged her shoulders and merely repeated, "One is not as usual."

So I came away, greatly puzzled. I had expected bread, and here I was going off with nothing but an unaccountable stone. Kloster and Bernd are the two solitary sane and wise people I know here in this place of fever, the two I trust, to whom I say what I really think and feel, and I went to Kloster yesterday athirst for wisdom, for that detached, critical picking out one by one of the feathers of the imperial bird, the Prussian eagle, that I find so wholesome, so balance-restoring, so comforting, in what is now a very great isolation of spirit. And he was dumb. I can't get over it.

I've not seen Bernd since, as he is frightfully busy and wasn't able to come yesterday at all, but he's coming to lunch today, and perhaps he'll be able to explain Kloster. I've been practising all the morning,—it will seem to you an odd thing to have done while Rome is burning, but I did it savagely, with a feeling of flinging defiance at this topsy-turvy world, of slitting its ugliness in spite of itself with bright spears of music, insisting on intruding loveliness on its preoccupation, the loveliness created by its own brains in the days before Prussia got the upper hand. All the morning I practised the Beethoven violin concerto, and the naked, slender radiance of it without the orchestra to muffle it up in a background, enchanted me into forgetting.

The crowds down there are soberer since Friday, and I didn't have to go into the bathroom to play. Now that war is upon them the women seem to have started thinking a little what it may really mean, and the men aren't quite so ready incoherently to roar. They keep on going to church,—the churches have been having services at unaccustomed moments throughout yesterday, of course by order, and are going on like that today too, for the churches are very valuable to Authority in nourishing the necessary emotions in the people at a time like this. The people were told by the Kaiser to pray, and so they do pray. It is useful to have them praying, it quiets them and gets them out of the streets and helps the authorities. Berlin is really the most godless place. Religion is the last thing anybody thinks of. Nobody dreams of going to church unless there is going to be special music there or a prince, and as for the country, my two Sundays there might have been week-days except for the extra food. It is true on each of them I saw a pastor, but each time he came to the family I was with, they didn't go to him, to his church. Now there's suddenly this immense recollection of God, turned on by Authority just as one turns on an electric light switch and says "Let there be light," and there is light. So I picture the Kaiser, running his finger down his list of available assets and coming to God. Then he rings for an official, and says, "Let there be God"; and there is God.

I'm not really being profane. It isn't really God at all I'm talking about. It's what German Authority finds convenient to turn on and off, according as it suits what it wishes to obtain. It isn't God. It's just a tap.

Later.

Bernd came to lunch, but also unfortunately so did his chief. They both arrived together after we had begun,—there's a tremendous aller et venir all day in the house, and sometimes the traffic on the stairs to the drawingroom gets so congested that nothing but a London policeman could deal with it. I could only say ordinary things to Bernd, and he went away, swept off by his Colonel, directly afterwards. He did manage to whisper he would try to come in to dinner tonight and get here early, but he hasn't come yet and it's nearly half past seven.

The Graf was at lunch, and two other men who ate their food as if they had to catch a train, and they talked so breathlessly while they ate that I can't think why they didn't choke; and there was great triumph and excitement because the Germans crossed into Luxembourg this morning on their way to France, marching straight through the expostulations and entreaties of the Grand Duchess, blowing her aside, I gather, like so much rather amusing thistledown. It seemed to tickle the Graf, whom I have not before seen tickled and hadn't imagined ever could be; but this idea of a junges Madchen—("Sie soll ganz niedlich sein_," threw in one of the gobbling men. "Ja ganz appetitlich," threw in the other; "Na, es geht," said the Colonel with a shrug—)—motoring out to bar the passage of a mighty army, trying to stop thousands of bayonets by lifting up one little admonitory kitten's paw, shook him out of his gravity into a weird, uncanny chuckling.

The Colonel, who was as genial and hilarious as ever, rather more so than ever, said all the Luxembourg railways would be in German hands by tonight. "It works out as easily and inevitably as a simple arithmetical problem," he laughed; and I heard him tell the Graf German cavalry was already in France at several points.

"Ja, ja" he said, apparently addressing me, for he looked at me and smiled, "when we Germans make war we do not wait till the next day. Everything thought of; everything ready; plenty of oil in the machine; und dann los."

He raised his glass. "Delightful young English lady," he said, "I drink to your charming eyes."

There's dinner. I must leave off.

Eleven p. m.

You'll never believe it, but Kloster has been given the Order of the Red Eagle 1st Class, and made a privy councillor and an excellency by the Kaiser this very day. And his most intimate friends, the cleverest talkers among his set, two or three who used to hold forth particularly brilliantly in his rooms on Socialism and the slavish stupidity of Germans, have each had an order and an advancement of some sort. Kloster was at the palace this afternoon. He knew about it yesterday when I was having my lesson. Kloster. Of all men. I feel sick.

Bernd didn't come to dinner, but was able to be with me for half an hour afterwards, half an hour of comfort I badly needed, for where can one's feet be set firmly and safely in this upheaving world? The Colonel was at dinner; he comes to nearly every meal; and it was he who started talking about Kloster's audience with Majestat this afternoon.

I jumped as though some one had hit me. "That can't be true," I exclaimed, exactly as one calls out quickly if one is suddenly struck.

They all looked at me. Somehow I saw that they had known about it beforehand, and Bernd told me tonight it was the Graf who had drawn the authorities' attention to the desirability of having tongues like Kloster's on the side of the Hohenzollerns.

"Dear child," said the Grafin gently, "we Germans do not permit our great to go unhonoured."

"But he would never—" I began; then remembered my lesson yesterday and his silence. So that's what it was. He already had his command to attend at the palace and be decorated in his pocket.

I sat staring straight before me. Kloster bought? Kloster for sale? And the Government at such a crisis finding time to bother about him?

"Ja, ja," said the Colonel gaily, as though answering my thoughts—and I found I had been staring, without seeing him, straight into his eyes, "ja, ja, we think of everything here."

"Not," gently amended the Grafin, "that it was difficult to think of honouring so great a genius as our dear Kloster. He has been in Majestat's thoughts for years."

"I expect he has," I said; for Kloster has often told me how they hated him at court, him and his friends, but that he was too well known all over the world for them to be able to interfere with him; something like, I expect, Tolstoi and the Russian court.

The Grafin looked at me quickly.

"And so has Majestat been in his," I continued.

"Kloster," said the Grafin very gently, "is a most amusing talker, and sometimes cannot resist saying the witty things that occur to him, however undesirable they may be. We all know they mean nothing. We all understand and love our Kloster. And nobody, as you see, dear child, more than Majestat, with his ever ready appreciation of genius."

I could only sit silent, staring at my plate. Kloster gone. Kloster allowing himself to be gagged by a decoration. I wanted to push the intolerable thought away from me and cry out, "No, it can't be."

Why, who can one believe in now? Who is left? There's Bernd, my beloved, my heart's own mate; and as I sat there dumb, and they all triumphed on with their self-congratulations and satisfactions, and Majestat this, and Deutschland that, for an awful moment my faith in Bernd himself began to shake. Suppose he too, he with his Prussian blood and upbringing, fell away and went over in spirit to the side of life that decorates a man in return for the absolute control of his thoughts, rewards him for the disposal of his soul? Kloster, that freest of critics, had gone over, his German blood after all unable to resist the call to slavery. I never could have believed it. I never would have believed it without actual proof. And Bernd? What about Bernd? For I haven't more believed in Kloster than I do in Bernd. Oh, little mother, I was cold with fear.

Then he came. My dear one came for a blessed half hour. And because we, thank God, are betrothed, and so have the right to be alone together, we got rid of those smug triumphant others; and if he had happened not to be able to come, and I had had to wait till tomorrow, all night long thinking of Kloster, I believe I'd have gone mad. For you see one believes so utterly in a person one does believe in. At least, I do. I can't manage caution in belief, I can't give prudently, carefully, holding back part, as I'm told a woman does if she is really clever, in either faith or love. And how is one to get on without faith and love? Bernd comforted me. And he comforted me most by my finding how greatly he needed to be comforted himself. He was every bit as profoundly shaken and shocked as I was. Oh, the relief of discovering that!

We clung to each other, and comforted each other like two hurt children. Kloster has been so much to us both. More, perhaps, here in this place of hypocrisy and self-deceptions, than he would have been anywhere else. He stood for fearlessness, for freedom, for beauty, for all the great things. And now he has gone; silent, choked by the Rote Adler Orden Erste Klasse. It is an order with three classes. We wondered bitterly whether he couldn't have been had cheaper,—whether second, or even third class, wouldn't have done it. He is now a Wirkliche Geheimrath mit dem Pradikat Excellenz. God rest his soul.

Chris.

Berlin, Monday, August 3rd, 1914

Darling own mother,

It's only a matter of hours now before Bernd will have to go, and when he goes I'm coming back to you.

Your Chris.

Berlin, Monday August 3rd, evening

Precious mother,

I want to come back to you—directly Bernd has gone I'm coming back to you, and if he doesn't go soon but is used in Berlin at the Staff Head Quarters, as he says now perhaps he may be for a while, I won't stay with the Koseritzes, but go back to Frau Berg's for as long as Bernd is in Berlin, and the day he leaves I start for Switzerland.

I don't know what is happening, but the Koseritzes have suddenly turned different to me. They're making me feel more and more uncomfortable and strange. And there's a gloom about them and the people who have been here today that sets me wondering whether their war plans after all are rolling along quite as smoothly as they thought. I never did quite believe the Koseritzes liked me, any of them, and now I'm sure they don't. Tonight at dinner the Graf's face was a thunder-cloud, and actually the Colonel, who hasn't been all day but came in late for dinner and went again immediately, didn't speak to me once. Hardly looked at me when he bowed, and his bow was the stiffest thing. I can't ask anybody if there is bad news for Germany, for it would be a most dreadful insult even to suggest there could be bad news. Besides, I feel as if I somehow were mixed up in whatever it is. Bernd hasn't been since this morning. I shall go round to Frau Berg tomorrow and ask her if I can have my old room. But oh, little beloved mother, I feel torn in two! I want so dreadfully to get away, to go back to you, and the thought of being at Frau Berg's, just waiting, waiting for the tiny scraps of moments Bernd can come to me, fills me with horror. And yet how can I leave him? I love him so. And once he has gone, shall I ever see him again? If it weren't for him I'd have started for Switzerland yesterday, the moment I heard about Kloster, for the whole reason for my being in Berlin was only Kloster,

And now Kloster says he isn't going to teach me any more. Darling mother, I'm so sorry to have to tell you this, but it's true. He sent round a note this evening saying he regretted he couldn't continue the lessons. Just that. Not another word. I can't make anything out any more. I've got nobody but Bernd to ask, and I only see him in briefest snatches. Of course I knew the lessons would be strange and painful now, but I thought we could manage, Kloster and I, by excluding everything but the bare teaching and learning, to go on and finish what we've begun. He knows how important it is to me. He knows what this journey here has meant to us, to you and me, the difficulty of it, the sacrifice. I'm very unhappy tonight, darling mother, and selfishly crying out to you. I feel almost like leaving Bernd, and starting for Glion tomorrow. And then when I think of him without me—He's as spiritually alone in this welter as I am. I'm the only one he has, the only human being who understands. Today he said, holding me in his arms—you should see how we cling to each other now as if we were drowning—"When this is over, Chris, when I've paid off my bill of duty and settled with them here to the last farthing of me that I've promised them, we'll go away for ever. We'll never come back. We'll never be caught again."

Berlin, Tuesday, August 4th, 1914

My beloved mother,

The atmosphere in this house really is intolerable, and I'm going back to Frau Berg's tomorrow morning. I've settled it with her by telephone, and I can have my old room. However lonely I am in it without my lessons and Kloster, without the reason there was for being there before, I won't have this horrid feeling of being in a place full of sudden and unaccountable hostility. Bernd came this morning, and the Grafin told him I was out, and he went away again. She couldn't have thought I was out, for I always tell her when I'm going, so she wants to separate us. But why? Why? And oh, it means so much to me to see him, it was so cruel to find out by accident that he had been! A woman who was at lunch happened to say she had met him coming out of the front door as she came in.

"What—was Bernd here?" I exclaimed, half getting up on a sort of impulse to run after him and try and catch him in the street.

"Helena thought you had gone out," said the Grafin.

"But you knew I hadn't," I said, turning on Helena.

"Helena knew nothing of the sort," said the Grafin severely. "She said what she believed to be true. I must request you, Christine, not to cast doubts on her word. We Germans do not lie."

And the Graf muttered, "Peinlich, peinlich" and pushed hack his chair and left the room.

"You have spoilt my husband's lunch," said the Grafin sternly.

"I am very sorry," I said; and tried to go on with my own, but couldn't see it because I was blinded by tears.

After this there was nothing for it but Frau Berg. I waited till the Grafin was alone, and then went and told her I thought it better I should go back to the Lutzowstrasse, and would like, if she didn't mind, to go tomorrow. It was very peinlich, as they say; for however much people want to get rid of you they're always angry if you want to go. I said all I could that was grateful, and there was quite a lot I could say by blotting out the last two days from my remembrance. I did, being greatly at sea and perplexed, ask what it was that I had done to offend her; though of course she didn't tell me, and was only still more offended at being asked.

I'm going to pack now, and write a letter to Bernd telling him about it, in case Helena should have a second unfortunate conviction that I'm not at home when he comes next. And I do try to be cheerful, little mother, and keep my soul from getting hurt, and when I'm at Frau Berg's I shall feel more normal again I expect. But one has such fears—oh, more than just fears, terrors—Well, I won't go on writing in this mood. I'll pack.

Your own Chris.

At Frau Berg's, August 4th, 1914, very late

Precious mother,

I'm coming back to you. Don't be unhappy about me. Don't think I'm coming back mangled, a bleeding thing, because you see, I still have Bernd. I still believe in him—oh, with my whole being. And as long as I do that how can I be anything but happy? It's strange how, now that the catastrophe has come, I'm quite calm, sitting here at Frau Berg's in my old room in the middle of the night writing to you. I think it's because the whole thing is so great that I'm like this, like somebody who has had a mortal blow, and because it's mortal doesn't feel. But this isn't mortal. I've got Bernd and you,—only now I must have great patience. Till I see him again. Till war is over and he comes for me, and I shall be with him always.

I'm coming to you, dear mother. It's finished here. I'm going to describe it all quite calmly to you. I'm not going to be unworthy of Bernd, I won't have less of dignity and patience than he has. If you'd seen him tonight saying good-bye to me, and stopped by the Colonel! His look as he obeyed—I shan't forget it. When next I'm weak and base I shall remember it, and it will save me.

At dinner there were only the Grafin and Helena and me, and they didn't speak a word, not only not to me but not to each other, and in the middle a servant brought in a note for the Grafin from the Graf, he said, and when she had looked at it she got up and went out. We finished our dinner in dead silence, and I was going up to my room when the Grafin's maid came after me and said would I go to her mistress. She was alone in the drawingroom, sitting at her writing table, though she wasn't writing, and when I came in she said, without turning round, that she must ask me to leave her house at once, that very evening. She said that apart from her private feelings, which were all in favour of my going—she would be quite frank, she said—there were serious political reasons why I shouldn't stay even as long as till tomorrow. The Graf's career, his position in the ministry, their social position, Majestat,—I really don't remember all she said, and it matters so little, so little. I listened, trying to understand, trying to give all my attention to it and disentangle it, while my heart was thumping so because of Bernd. For I was being turned out in disgrace, and I am his betrothed, and so I am his honour, and whatever of shame there is for me there is of shame for him.

The Grafin got more and more unsteady in her voice as she went on. She was trying hard to keep calm, but she was evidently feeling so acutely, so violently, that it was distressing to, have to watch her. I was so sorry. I wanted to put my arms round her and tell her not to mind so much, that of course I'd go, but if only she wouldn't mind so much whatever it was. Then at last she began to lose her hold on herself, and got up and walked about the room saying things about England. So then I knew. And I knew the answer to everything that has been perplexing me. They'd been afraid of it the last two days, and now they knew it. England isn't going to fold her arms and look on. Oh, how I loved England then! Standing in that Berlin drawingroom in the heart of the Junker-military-official set, all by myself in what I think and feel,—how I loved her! My heart was thumping five minutes before for fear of shame, now it thumped so that I couldn't have said anything if I'd wanted to for gladness and pride. I was a bit of England. I think to know how much one loves England one has to be in Germany. I forgot Bernd for a moment, my heart was so full of that other love, that proud love for one's country when it takes its stand on the side of righteousness. And presently the Grafin said it all, tumbled it all out,—that England was going to declare war, and under circumstances so shameful, so full of the well-known revolting hypocrisy, that it made an honest German sick. "Belgium!" she cried, "What is Belgium? An excuse, a pretence, one more of the sickening, whining phrases with which you conceal your gluttonous opportunism—" And so she continued, while I stood silent.

Oh well, all that doesn't matter now,—I'm in a hurry, I want to get this letter off to you tonight. Luckily there's a letter-box a few yards away, so I won't have to face much of those awful streets that are yelling now for England's blood.

I went up and got my things together. I knew Bernd would get the letter I posted to him this morning telling him I was going to Frau Berg's tomorrow, so I felt safe about seeing him, even if he didn't come in to the Koseritzes before I left. But he did come in. He came just as I was going downstairs carrying my violin-case—how foolish and outside of life that music business seems now—and he seized my hand and took me into the drawingroom.

"Not in here, not in here!" cried the Grafin, getting up excitedly. "Not again, not ever again does an Englishwoman come into my drawingroom—"

Bernd went to her and drew her hand through his arm and led her politely to the door, which he shut after her. Then he came back to me. "You know, Chris," he said, "about England?"

"Of course—just listen," I answered, for in the street newsboys were yelling Kriegserklarung Englands, and there was a great dull roaring as of a multitude of wild beasts who have been wounded.

"You must go to your mother at once—tomorrow," he said. "Before you're noticed, before there's been time to make your going difficult."

I told him the Grafin had asked me to leave, and I was coming here tonight. He wasted no words on the Koseritzes, but was anxious lest Frau Berg mightn't wish to take me in now. He said he would come with me and see that she did, and place me under her care as part of himself. "And tomorrow you run. You run to Switzerland, without telling Frau Berg or a soul where you are going," he said. "You just go out, and don't come back. I'll settle with Frau Berg afterwards. You go to the Anhalter station—on your feet, Chris, as though you were going for a walk—and get into the first train for Geneva, Zurich, Lausanne, anywhere as long as it's Switzerland. You'll want all your intelligence. Have you money enough?"

"Yes, yes," I said, feeling every second was precious and shouldn't be wasted; but he opened my violin-case and put a lot of banknotes into it.

"And have you courage enough?" he asked, taking my face in his hands and looking into my eyes.

Oh the blessedness, the blessedness of being near him, of hearing and seeing him. What couldn't I and wouldn't I be and do for Bernd?

I told him I had courage enough, for I had him, and I wouldn't fail in it, nor in patience.

"We shall want both, my Chris," he said, his face against mine, "oh, my Chris—!"

And then the Colonel walked in.

"Herr Leutnant?" he said, in a raucous voice, as though he were ordering troops about.

At the sound of it Bernd instantly became rigid and stood at attention,—the perfect automaton, except that I was hanging on his arm.

"Zur Befehl, Herr Oberst," he said.

"Take that woman's hand off your arm, Herr Leutnant," said the Colonel sharply.

Bernd gently put my hand off, and I put it back again.

"We are going to be married," I said to the Colonel, "and perhaps I may not see Bernd for a long while after tonight."

"No German officer marries an alien enemy," snapped out the Colonel.

"Remove the woman's hand, Herr Leutnant."

Again Bernd gently took my hand, but I held on. "This is good-bye, then?" I said, looking up at him and clinging to him.

He was facing the Colonel, rigid, his profile to me; but he did at that turn his head and look at me. "Remember—" he breathed.

"I forbid all talking, Herr Leutnant," snapped the Colonel.

"Never mind him," I whispered. "What does he matter? Remember what, my Bernd, my own beloved?"

"Remember courage—patience—" he murmured quickly, under his breath.

"Silence!" shouted the Colonel. "Take that woman's hand off your arm, Herr Leutnant. Kreutzhimmeldonnerwetter nochmal. Instantly."

Bernd took my hand, and raising it to his face kissed it slowly and looked at me. I shall not forget that look.

The Colonel, who was very red and more like an infuriated machine than a human being, stepped on one side and pointed to the door. "Precede me," he said. "On the instant. March."

And Bernd went out as if on parade.

When shall we see each other again? Only a fortnight, one fortnight and two days, have we been lovers. But such things can't be measured by time. They are of eternity. They are for always. If he is killed, and the rest of my years are empty, we still will have had the whole of life.

And now there's tomorrow, and my getting away. You won't be anxious, dear mother. You'll wait quietly and patiently till I come. I'll write to you on the way if I can. It may take several days to get to Switzerland, and it may be difficult to get out of Germany. I think I shall say I'm an American. Frau Berg, poor thing, will be relieved to find me gone. She only took me in tonight because of Bernd. While she was demurring on the threshold, when at last I got to her after a terrifying walk through the crowds,—for I was afraid they would notice me and see, as they always do, that I'm English,—his soldier servant brought her a note from him which just turned the scale for me. I'm afraid humanity wouldn't have done it, nor pity, for patriotism and pity don't go well together here.

I wonder if you'll believe how calmly I'm going to bed and to sleep tonight, on the night of what might seem to be the ruin of my happiness. I'm glad I've written everything down that has happened this evening. It has got it so clear to me. I don't want ever to forget one word or look of Bernd's tonight. I don't want ever to forget his patience, his dear look of untouchable dignity, when the Colonel, because he is in authority and can be cruel, at such a moment in the lives of two poor human beings was so unkind.

God bless and keep you, my mother,—my dear sweet mother.

Your Chris.