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, Saturday, July 25th, 1914.
You know, my beloved one, I'd much rather be at Frau Berg's in Berlin and independent, and able to see Bernd 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 wurden die Leute sagen, as every German before doing or refraining 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 mother would wish it. I'm not a hit certain, I who know my mother and know how beautifully empty she is of conventions and how divinely indifferent to die Leute; but as I'm going 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 enthusiasm, which was marked, only makes it all the kinder. On that principle, too, my gratefulness, 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 towards us in a cart at a walking pace once a day. Nearly all today and quite all tomorrow 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 seriously 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 always 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, nothing 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 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 before 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; calmly 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 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 rather 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 Switzerland are feeling about it. You know, my dearest 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, whatever happens, quietly working with Kloster till 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.