"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 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, 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 shore 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 nobody 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 pronounce 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 God. 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 God 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 God, 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 God ought to like that best. It's at least a square and manly attitude. Think how we would despise 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 prayers of gratitude, 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.