She spoke these words very softly, in almost a whisper, but I heard them in spite of the rattle of the tram-car and the gutteral argument of two Germans next to me. Those were the only words I heard her say on that journey to Bonn, and after that Brand talked very little, and then only commonplace remarks about the time and the scenery. But what I had heard was revealing, and I was disturbed, for Brand’s sake.
His eyes met mine as I passed out of the car, but they were unseeing eyes. He stared straight through me to some vision beyond. He gave his hand to Elsa von Kreuzenach, and they walked slowly up from the station and then went inside the cathedral. I had business in Bonn with officers at our headquarters in the hotel “Der Goldene Stern.” Afterwards I had lunch with them, and then, with one, went to Beethoven’s house—a little shrine in which the spirit of the master still lives, with his old instruments, his manuscript sheets of music, and many relics of his life and work.
It was at about four o’clock in the afternoon that I saw Brand and the German girl again. There was a beautiful dusk in the gardens beyond the University, with a ruddy glow through the trees when the sun went down, and then a purple twilight. Some German boys were playing leapfrog there, watched by British soldiers, and townsfolk passed on their way home. I strolled the length of the gardens, and at the end which is near the old front of the University buildings I saw Brand and Elsa von Kreuzenach together on a wooden seat. It was almost dark where they sat under the trees, but I knew Brand by his figure and by the tilt of his field-cap, and the girl by the white fur round her neck. They were holding hands like lovers in a London park, and when I passed them I heard Brand speak.
“I suppose this was meant to be. Fate leads us...”
When I went back to Cologne by tram that evening I wondered whether Brand would confide his secret to me. We had been so much together during the last phase of the war and had talked so much in intimate friendship that I guessed he would come one day and let me know this new adventure of his soul.
Several weeks passed and he said no word of this,-although we went for walks together and sat smoking sometimes in cafés after dinner. It had always been his habit to drop into deep silences, and now they lasted longer than before. Now and then, however, he would be talkative, argumentative, and passionate. At times there was a new light in his eyes, as though lit by some inward fire. And he would smile unconsciously as he blew out clouds of smoke, but more often he looked worried, nervous, and irritable, as though passing through some new mental crisis.
He spoke a good deal about German psychology and the German point of view, illustrating his remarks sometimes by references to conversations with Franz von Kreuzenach, with whom he often talked. He had come to the conclusion that it was quite hopeless to convince even the broadest-minded Germans that they were guilty of the war. They admitted freely enough that their military party had used the Serbian assassination and Austrian fury as the fuel for starting the blaze in Europe. Even then they believed that the Chancellor and the civil Ministry of State had struggled for peace until the Russian movements of troops put the military party into the saddle so that they might ride to hell. But in any case it was, Brand said, an unalterable conviction of most Germans that sooner or later the war had been bound to come, as they were surrounded by a ring of enemies conspiring to thwart their free development and to overthrow their power. They attacked first as a means of self-defence. It was an article of faith with them that they had fought a defensive warfare from the start.
“That is sheer lunacy!” I said. Brand laughed, and agreed.
“Idiotic in the face of plain facts, but that only shows how strong is the belief of people in their own righteousness. I suppose even now most English people think the Boer War was just and holy. Certainly at the time we stoned all who thought otherwise. Yet the verdict of the whole world was against us. They regarded that war as the brutal aggression of a great power upon a small and heroic people.”
“But surely,” I said, “a man like Franz von Kreu-zenach admits the brutality of Germany in Belgium—the shooting of. priests and civilians—the forced labour of girls—the smashing of machinery—and all the rest of it?”