Delphi Collected Works of Elizabeth von Arnim (Illustrated)

by Elizabeth Von Arnim

  And it did suggest this, for he said, “Oh doch,” balancing himself on his heels and toes alternately, as though balancing himself into exact justice. “Oh doch. I think one may honestly say she still is a great country, But—” and he raised his voice and his forefinger at me,— “let her beware of her money bags. That is my word to England: Beware of thy money bags.”

  There was a sound of approval in the room, and they all nodded their heads.

  He looked at me, and as I supposed he might be expecting an answer I thought I had better say ja again, so I did.

  “England,” he then continued, “is our cousin, our blood-relation. Therefore is it that we can and must tell her the truth, even if it is unpalatable.”

  “Ja,” I said, as he paused again; only there were several little things I would have liked to have said about that, if I had been able to talk German properly. But I had nothing but my list of exclamations and the psalms I had learnt ready. So I said Ja, and tried to look modest and intelligent.

  “Her love of money, her materialism — these are her great dangers,” he said. “I do not like to contemplate, and I ask my friends here—” he turned slowly round on his heels and back again— “whether they would like to contemplate a day when the sun of the British Empire, that Empire which, after all, has upheld the cause of religion with faithfulness and persistence for so long, shall be seen at last descending, to rise no more, in an engulfing ocean of over-indulged appetites.”

  “Ja,” I said; and then perceiving it was the wrong word, hastily amended in English, “I mean nein.”

  He looked at me for a moment more carefully. Then deciding that all was well he went on.

  “England,” he said, “is our natural ally. She is of the same blood, the same faith, and the same colour. Behold the other races of the world, and they are either partly, chiefly, or altogether black. The blonde races are, like the dawn, destined to drive away the darkness. They must stand together shoulder to shoulder in any discord that may, in the future, gash the harmony of the world.”

  “Ja,” I said, as one who should, at the conclusion of a Psalm, be saying Selah.

  “We live in serious times,” he said. “They may easily become more serious. Round us stand the Latins and the Slavs, armed to the teeth, bursting with envy of our goods, of our proud calm, and watching for the moment when they can fall upon us with criminal and murderous intent. Is it not so, my Fraulein?”

  “Ja” said I, forced to agree because of my unfortunate emptiness of German.

  The only thing I could have reeled off at him was the Psalm I had learnt, and I did long to, because it was the one asking why the heathen so furiously rage together; but you see, little mother, though I longed to I couldn’t have followed it up, and having fired it off I’d have sat there defenceless while he annihilated me.

  But I don’t know what they all mean by this constant talk of envious nations crouching ready to spring at them. They talk and talk about it, and their papers write and write about it, till they inflame each other into a fever of pugnaciousness. I’ve never been anywhere in the least like it in my life. In England people talked of a thousand things, and hardly ever of war. When we were in Italy, and that time in Paris, we hardly heard it mentioned. Directly my train got into Germany at Goch coming from Flushing, and Germans began to get in, there in the very train this everlasting talk of war and the enviousness of other nations began, and it has never left off since. The Archduke’s murder didn’t start it; it was going on weeks before that, when first I came. It has been going on, Kloster says, growing in clamour, for years, ever since the present Kaiser succeeded to the throne. Kloster says the nation thinks it feels all this, but it is merely being stage-managed by the group of men at the top, headed by S. M. So well stage-managed is it, so carefully taught by such slow degrees, that it is absolutely convinced it has arrived at its opinions and judgments by itself. I wonder if these people are mad. Is it possible for a whole nation to go mad at once? It is they who seem to have the enviousness, to be torn with desire to get what isn’t theirs.

  “The disastrous crime of Sarajevo,” continued Pastor Wienicke, “cannot in this connection pass unnoticed. To smite down a God’s Anointed!” He held up his hands. “Not yet, it is true, an actually Anointed, but set aside by God for future use. It is typical of the world outside our Fatherland. Lawlessness and its companion Sacrilege stalk at large. Women emerge from the seclusion God has arranged for them, and rear their heads in shameless competition with men. Our rulers, whom God has given us so that they shall guide and lead us and in return be reverently taken care of, are blasphemously bombed.” He flung both his arms heavenwards. “Arise, Germany!” he cried. “Arise and show thyself! Arise in thy might, I say, and let our enemies be scattered!”

  Then he wiped his forehead, looked round in recognition of the sehr guts and ausserordentlich schon gesagts that were being flung about, re-lit his cigar with the aid of the Herr Lehrer, who sprang obsequiously forward with a match, and sat down.

  Wasn’t it a good thing he sat down. I felt so much happier. But just as it was at the meals at Frau Berg’s so it was at the coffee party here, — I was singled out and talked to, or at, by the entire company. The concentration of curiosity of Germans is terrible. But it’s more than curiosity, it’s a kind of determination to crush what I’m thinking out of me and force what they’re thinking into me. I shall see as they do; I shall think as they do; they’ll shout at me till I’m forced to. That’s what I feel. I don’t a bit know if it isn’t quite a wrong idea I’ve got, but somehow my very bones feel it.

  Would you believe it, they stayed to supper, all of them, and never went away till ten o’clock. Frau Bornsted says one always does that in the country here when invited to afternoon coffee. I won’t tell you any more of what they said, because it was all on exactly the same lines, the older men singling me out one by one and very loudly telling me variations of Pastor Wienicke’s theme, the women going for me in twos and threes, more definitely bloodthirsty than the men, more like Frau Berg on the subject of blood-letting, more openly greedy. They were all disconcerted and uneasy because nothing more has been heard of the Austrian assassination. The silence from Vienna worries them, I gather, very much. They are afraid, actually they are afraid, Austria may be going to do nothing except just punish the murderers, and so miss the glorious opportunity for war. I wonder if you can the least realize, you sane mother in a sane place, the state they’re in here, the sort of boiling and straining. I’m sure the whole of Germany is the same, — lashed by the few behind the scenes into a fury of aggressive patriotism. They call it patriotism, but it is just blood-lust and loot-lust.

  I helped Frau Bornsted get supper ready, and was glad to escape into the peace of the kitchen and stand safely frying potatoes. She was very sweet in her demure Sunday frock of plain black, and high up round her ears a little white frill. The solemnity and youth and quaintness of her are very attractive, and I could easily love her if it weren’t for this madness about Deutschland. She is as mad as any of them, and in her it is much more disconcerting. We will be discoursing together gravely — she is always grave, and never knows how funny we both are being really — about amusing things like husbands and when and if I’m ever going to get one, and she, full of the dignity and wisdom of the married, will be giving me much sage counsel with sobriety and gentleness, when something starts her off about Deutschland. Oh, they are intolerable about their Deutschland!

  The Oberforster is calling for this — he’s driving to the post, so good-bye little darling mother, little beloved and precious one.

  Your Chris.

  Schuppenfelde, Thursday, July 16, 1914.

  My blessed mother,

  Here’s Thursday evening in my week of nothing to do, and me meaning to write every day to you, and I haven’t done it since Monday. It’s because I’ve had so much time. Really it’s because I’ve been in a sort of sleep of loveliness. I’ve been doing nothing except be happy. No
t a soul has been near us since Sunday, and Frau Bornsted says not a soul will, till next Sunday. Each morning I’ve come down to a perfect world, with the sun shining through roses on to our breakfast-table in the porch, and after breakfast I’ve crossed the road and gone into the forest and not come back till late afternoon.

  Frau Bornsted has been sweet about it, giving me a little parcel of food and sending me off with many good wishes for a happy day. I wanted to help her do her housework, but except my room she won’t let me, having had orders from Kloster that I was to be completely idle. And it is doing me good. I feel so perfectly content these last three days. There’s nothing fretful about me any more; I feel harmonized, as if I were so much a part of the light and the air and the forest that I don’t know now where they leave off and I begin. I sit and watch the fine-weather clouds drifting slowly across the tree-tops, and wonder if heaven is any better. I go down to the edge of the Haff, and lie on my face in the long grass, and push up my sleeves, and slowly stir the shallow golden water about among the rushes. I pick wild strawberries to eat with my lunch, and after lunch I lie on the moss and learn the Psalm for the day, first in English and then in German. About five I begin to go home, walking slowly through the hot scents of the afternoon forest, feeling as solemn and as exulting as I suppose a Catholic does when he comes away, shriven and blest, from confession. In the evening we sit out, and the little garden grows every minute more enchanted. Frau Bornsted rests after her labours, with her hands in her lap, and agrees with what the Oberforster every now and then takes his pipe out of his mouth to say, and I lie back in my chair and stare at the stars, and I think and think, and wonder and wonder. And what do you suppose I think and wonder about, little mother? You and love. I don’t know why I say you and love, for it’s the same thing. And so is all this beauty of summer in the woods, and so is music, and my violin when it gets playing to me; and the future is full of it, and oh, I do so badly want to say thank you to some one!

  Good night my most precious mother.

  Your Chris.

  Schuppenfelde, Friday, July 17,1914.

  This morning when I came down to breakfast, sweet mother, there at the foot of the stairs was Herr von Inster. He didn’t say anything, but watched me coming down with the contented look he has I like so much. I was frightfully pleased to see him, and smiled all over myself. “Oh,” I exclaimed, “so you’ve come.”

  He held out his hand and helped me down the last steps. He was in green shooting clothes, like the Oberforster’s, but without the official buttons, and looked very nice. You’d like him, I’m sure. You’d like what he looks like, and like what he is.

  He had been in the forest since four this morning, shooting with his colonel, who came down with him to Koseritz last night. The colonel and Graf Koseritz, who came down from Berlin with them, were both breakfasting, attended by the Bornsteds, and it shows how soundly I sleep here that I hadn’t heard anything.

  “And aren’t you having any breakfast?” I asked.

  “I will now,” he said. “I was listening for your door to open,”

  I think you’d like him very much, little mother.

  The colonel, whose name is Graf Hohenfeld, was being very pleasant to Frau Bornsted, watching her admiringly as she brought him things to eat. He was very pleasant to me too, and got up and put his heels together and said, “Old England for ever” when I appeared, and asked the Graf whether Frau Bornsted and I didn’t remind him of a nosegay of flowers. Obviously we didn’t. The Graf doesn’t look as if anybody ever reminded him of anything. He greeted me briefly, and then sat staring abstractedly at the tablecloth, as he did in Berlin. The Colonel did all the talking. Both he and the Graf had on those pretty green shooting things they wear in Germany, with the becoming soft hats and little feathers. He was very jovial indeed, seemed fond and proud of his lieutenant, Herr von Inster, slapped the Oberforster every now and then on the back, which made him nearly faint with joy each time, and wished it weren’t breakfast and only coffee, because he would have liked to drink our healths,— “The healths of these two delightful young roses,” he said, bowing to Frau Bornsted and me, “the Rose of England — long live England, which produces such flowers — and the Rose of Germany, our own wild forest rose.”

  I laughed, and Frau Bornsted looked sedately indulgent, — I suppose because he is a great man, this staff officer, who helps work out all the wonderful plans that are some day to make Germany able to conquer the world; but, as she explained to me the other day when I said something about her eyelashes being so long and pretty, prettiness is out of place in her position, and she prefers it not mentioned. “What has the wife of an Oberforster to do with prettiness?” she asked. “It is good for a junges Madchen, who has still to find a husband, but once she has him why be pretty? To be pretty when you are a married woman is only an undesirability. It exposes one easily to comment, and might cause, if one had not a solid character, an ever-afterwards-to-be-regretted expenditure on clothes.”

  The men were going to shoot with the Oberforster after breakfast and be all day in the forest, and the Colonel was going back to Berlin by the night train. He said he was leaving his lieutenant at Koseritz for a few days, but that he himself had to get back into harness at once,— “While the young one plays around,” he said, slapping Herr von Inster on the back this time instead of the Oberforster, “among the varied and delightful flora of our old German forests. Here this nosegay,” he said, sweeping his arm in our direction, “and there at Koseritz—” sweeping his arm in the other direction, “a nosegay no less charming but more hot-house, — the schone Helena and her young lady friends.”

  I asked Herr von Inster after breakfast, when we were alone for a moment in the garden, what his Colonel was like after dinner, if even breakfast made him so jovial.

  “He is very clever,” he said. “He is one of our cleverest officers on the Staff, and this is how he hides it.”

  “Oh,” I said; for I thought it a funny explanation. Why hide it?

  Perhaps that is what’s the matter with the Graf, — he’s hiding how clever he is.

  But that Colonel certainly does seem clever. He asked where we live in England; a poser, rather, considering we don’t at present live at all; but I told him where we did live, when Dad was alive.

  “Ah,” he said, “that is in Sussex. Very pretty just there. Which house was your home?”

  I stared a little, for it seemed waste of time to describe it, but I said it was an old house on an open green.

  “Yes,” he said, nodding, “on the common. A very nice, roomy old house, with good outbuildings. But why do you not straighten out those corners on the road to Petworth? They are death traps.”

  “You’ve been there, then?” I said, astonished at the extreme smallness of the world.

  “Never,” he said, laughing. “But I study. We study, don’t we, Inster my boy, at the old General Staff. And tell your Sussex County Council, beautiful English lady, to straighten out those corners, for they are very awkward indeed, and might easily cause serious accidents some day when the roads have to be used for real traffic.”

  “It is very good of you,” I said politely, “to take such an interest in us.”

  “I not only take the greatest interest in you, charming young lady, and in your country, but I have an orderly mind and would be really pleased to see those corners straightened out. Use your influence, which I am sure must be great, with that shortsighted body of gentlemen, your County Council.”

  “I shall not fail,” I said, more politely than ever, “to inform them of your wishes.”

  “Ah, but she is delightful, — delightful, your little Englanderin,” he said gaily to Frau Bornsted, who listened to his badinage with grave and respectful indulgence; and he said a lot more things about England and its products and exports, meaning compliments to me — what can he be like after dinner? — and went off, jovial to the last, clicking his heels and kissing first Frau Bornsted’s hand and then mi
ne, in spite, as he explained, of its being against the rules to kiss the hand of a junges Madchen, but his way was never to take any notice of rules, he said, if they got between him and a charming young lady. And so he went off, waving his green hat to us and calling out Auf Wiedersehen till the forest engulfed him.

  Herr von Inster and the Graf went too, but quietly. The Graf went exceedingly quietly. He hadn’t said a word to anybody, as far as I could see, and no rallyings on the part of the Colonel could make him. He didn’t even react to being told what I gather is the German equivalent for a sly dog.

  Herr von Inster said, when he could get a word in, that he is coming over to-morrow to drive me about the forest. His attitude while his Colonel rattled on was very interesting: his punctilious attention, his apparent obligation to smile when there were sallies demanding that form of appreciation, his carefulness not to miss any indication of a wish.

  “Why do you do it?” I asked, when the Colonel was engaged for a moment with the Oberforster indoors. “Isn’t your military service enough? Are you drilled even to your smiles?”

  “To everything,” he said. “Including our enthusiasms. We’re like the claque at a theatre.”

  Then he turned and looked at me with those kind, surprising eyes of his, — they’re so reassuring, somehow, after his stern profile — and said, “To-morrow I shall be a human being again, and forget all this, — forget everything except the beautiful things of life.”

  Now I must leave off, because I want to iron out my white linen skirt and muslin blouse for to-morrow, as it’s sure to be hot and I may as well look as clean as I can, so good-bye darling little mother. Oh, I forgot to say how glad I am you like being at Glion. I did mean to answer a great many things in your last letter, my little loved one, but I will tomorrow. It isn’t that I don’t read and reread your darling letters, it’s that one has such heaps to say oneself to you. Each time I write to you I seem to empty the whole contents of the days I’ve lived since I last wrote into your lap. But to-morrow I’ll answer all your questions, — to-morrow evening, after my day with Herr von Inster, then I can tell you all about it.