Chapter 11

"_Oh pardon--aber meine Gnadigste--tausendmal pardon--" he protested the next minute in a voice of tremendous solicitude, having been pushed rather hard and suddenly against me by a little boy who had scrambled down off whatever it was he was hanging on to; and he turned on the little boy, who I believe had tumbled off rather than scrambled, with his hand flashing to his sword, ready to slash at whoever it was had dared push against him, an officer; and seeing it was a child and therefore not _satisfactionsfahig_ as they say, he merely called him an _infame_ and _verfluchte Bengel_ and smacked his face so hard that he would have been knocked down if there had been room to fall in.

As it was, he was only hurled violently against the side of a man in a black coat and straw hat who looked like an elderly confidential clerk, so respectable and complete with his short grey beard and spectacles, who was evidently the father, for he instantly on his own account smacked the boy on his other ear, and sweeping off his hat entreated the Herr Leutnant to forgive the boy on account of his extreme youth.

The cousin, whom by now I didn't like, was beginning very severely to advise the parent jolly well to see to it, or German words to that effect, that his idiotic boy didn't repeat such insolences, or by hell, etc., etc., when there was such a blast of extra noise and hurrahing that the rest of his remarks were knocked out of his mouth. It was the Kaiser, come out on the balcony of the palace.

The cousin became rigid, and stood at the salute. The air seemed full of hats and handkerchiefs and delirious shrieking. The Kaiser put up his hand.

"Majestat is going to speak," exclaimed the Grafin, her calm fluttered into fragments.

There was an immense instantaneous hush, uncanny after all the noise. Only the little boy with the boxed ears continued to call out, but not patriotically. His father, efficient and Prussian, put a stop to that by seizing his head, buttoning it up inside his black coat, and holding his arm tightly over it, so that no struggles of suffocation could get it free. There was no more noise, but the little boy's legs, desperately twitching, kicked their dusty little boots against the cousin's shins, and he, standing at the salute with his body rigidly turned towards Majestat, was unable to take the steps his outraged honour, let alone the pain in his shins, called for.

I was so much interested in this situation, really absorbed by it, for the little boy unconsciously was getting quite a lot of his own back, his little boots being sturdy and studded with nails, and the father, all eyes and ears for Majestat, not aware of what was happening, that positively I missed the first part of the speech. But what I did hear was immensely impressive. I had seen the Kaiser before, you remember; that time he was in London with the Kaiserin, in 1912 or 1913 I think it was, and we were staying with Aunt Angela in Wilton Crescent and we saw him driving one afternoon in a barouche down Birdcage Walk. Do you remember how cross he looked, hardly returning the salutations he got? We said he and she must have been quarrelling, he looked so sulky. And do you remember how ordinary he looked in his top hat and black coat, just like any cross and bored middle-class husband? There was nothing royal about him that day except the liveries on the servants, and they were England's. Yesterday things were very different. He really did look like the royal prince of a picture book, a real War Lord,--impressive and glittering with orders flashing in the sun. We were near enough to see him perfectly. There wasn't much crossness or boredom about him this time. He was, I am certain, thoroughly enjoying himself,--unconsciously of course, but with that immense thrilled enjoyment all leading figures at leading moments must have: Sir Galahad, humbly glorying in his perfect achievement of negations; Parsifal, engulfed in an ecstasy of humble gloating over his own worthiness as he holds up the Grail high above bowed, adoring heads; Beerbohm Tree--I can't get away from theatrical analogies--coming before the curtain on his most successful first night, meek with happiness. Hasn't it run through the ages, this great humility at the moment of supreme success, this moved self-depreciation of the man who has pulled it off, the "Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us" attitude,--quite genuine at the moment, and because quite genuine so extraordinarily moving and impressive? Really one couldn't wonder at the people. The Empress was there, and a lot of officers and princes and people, but it was the Emperor alone that we looked at. He came and stood by himself in front of the others. He was very grave, with a real look of solemn exaltation. Here was royalty in all its most impressive trappings, a prince of the fairy-tales, splendidly dressed, dilated of nostril, flashing of eye, the defender of homes, the leader to glory, the object of the nation's worship and belief and prayers since each of its members was a baby, become visible and audible to thousands who had never seen him before, who had worshipped him by faith only. It was as though the people were suddenly allowed to look upon God. There was a profound awe in the hush. I believe if they hadn't been so tightly packed together they would all have knelt down.

Well, it is easy to stir a mob. One knows how easily one is moved oneself by the cheapest emotions, by something that catches one on the sentimental side, on that side of one that through all the years has still stayed clinging to one's mother's knee. We've often talked of this, you and I, little mother. You know the sort of thing, and have got that side yourself,--even you, you dear objective one. The three things up to now that have got me most on that side, got me on the very raw of it--I'll tell you now, now that I can't see your amused eyes looking at me with that little quizzical questioning in them--the three things that have broken my heart each time I've come across them and made me only want to sob and sob, are when Kurwenal, mortally wounded, crawls blindly to Tristan's side and says, "_Schilt mich nicht dass der Treue auch mitkommt_" and Siegfried's dying "_Brunnhild, heilige Braut_," and Tannhauser's dying "_Heilige Elisabeth, bitte fur mich_." All three German things, you see. All morbid things. Most of the sentimentality seems to have come from Germany, an essentially brutal place. But of course sentimentality is really diluted morbidness, and therefore first cousin to cruelty. And I have a real and healthy dislike for that Tannhauser opera.

But seeing how the best of us--which is you--have these little hidden swamps of emotionalness, you can imagine the effect of the Kaiser yesterday at such a moment in their lives on a people whose swamps are carefully cultivated by their politicians. Even I, rebellious and hostile to the whole attitude, sure that the real motives beneath all this are base, and constitutionally unable to care about Kaisers, was thrilled. Thrilled by him, I mean. Oh, there was enough to thrill one legitimately and tragically about the poor people, so eager to offer themselves, their souls and bodies, to be an unreasonable sacrifice and satisfaction for the Hohenzollerns. His speech was wonderfully suited to the occasion. Of course it would be. If he were not able to prepare it himself his officials would have seen to it that some properly eloquent person did it for him; but Kloster says he speaks really well on cheap, popular lines. All the great reverberating words were in it, the old big words ambitious and greedy rulers have conjured with since time began,--God, Duty, Country, Hearth and Home, Wives, Little Ones, God again--lots of God.

Perhaps you'll see the speech in the papers. What you won't see is that enormous crowd, struck quiet, struck into religious awe, crying quietly, men and women like little children gathered to the feet of, positively, a heavenly Father. "Go to your homes," he said, dismissing them at the end with uplifted hand,--"go to your homes, and pray."

And we went. In dead silence. That immense crowd. Quietly, like people going out of church; moved, like people coming away from communion. I walked beside Helena, who was crying, with my head very high and my chin in the air, trying not to cry too, for then they would have been more than ever persuaded that I'm a promising little German, but I did desperately want to. I could hardly not cry. These cheated people! Exploited and cheated, led carefully step by step from babyhood to a certain habit of mind necessary to their exploiters, with certain passions carefully developed and encouraged, certain ancient ideas, anachronisms every one of them, kept continually before their eyes,--why, if they _did_ win in their murderous attack on nations who have done nothing to them, what are they going to get individually? Just wind; the empty wind of big words. They'll be told, and they'll read it in the newspapers, that now they're great, the mightiest people in the world, the one best able to crush and grind other nations. But not a single happiness _really_ will be added to the private life of a single citizen belonging to the vast class that pays the bill. For the rest of their lives this generation will be poorer and sadder, that's all. Nobody will give them back the money they have sacrificed, or the ruined businesses, and nobody can give them back their dead sons. There'll be troops of old miserable women everywhere, who were young and content before all the glory set in, and troops of dreary old men who once had children, and troops of cripples who used to look forward and hope. Yes, I too obeyed the Kaiser and went home and prayed; but what I prayed was that Germany should be beaten--so beaten, so punished for this tremendous crime, that she will be jerked by main force into line with modern life, dragged up to date, taught that the world is too grown up now to put up with the smashings and destructions of a greedy and brutal child. It is queer to think of the fear of God having to be kicked into anybody, but I believe with Prussians it's the only way. They understand kicks. They respect brute strength exercised brutally. I can hear their roar of derision, if Christ were to come among them today with His gentle, "Little children, love one another."

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.