Not having a fiddle I couldn't do that. I wish I could have, for I'm instantly natural and happy when I get playing; but the Grafin said she hoped I would play to some of her friends one evening as soon as she could arrange it,friends interested in youthful geniuses, as she put it.
I said I would love to, and that it was so kind of her, but privately I thought I would inquire of Kloster first; for if her friends are all as deeply interested in music as the Graf and Helena, then I would be doing better and more profitably by going to bed at ten o'clock as usual, rather than emerge bedizened from my lair to go and flaunt in these haunts of splendid virtue.
After Herr von Inster came I began faintly to enjoy myself, for he talked all round, and greatly and obviously relieved his aunt by doing so. Helena let go of my ear and looked at him. Once she very nearly smiled. The other girl left off murmuring, and talked about things I could talk about too, such as England and Germanythey're never tired of thatand Strauss and Debussy. Only the Graf sat mute, his eyes fixed on the tablecloth.
"My husband is dying to hear you play," said the Grafin, when he got up presently to go back to his work. "Absolutely dying ," she said, recklessly padding out the leanness of his very bald good-bye to me.
He said nothing even to that. He just went. He didn't seem to be dying.
Herr von luster walked back with me. He is very agreeable-looking, with kind eyes that are both shrewd and sad. He talks English very well, and so did everybody at the Koseritzes who talked at all. He is pathetically keen on music. Kloster says he would have been a really great player, but being a Junker settles him for ever. It is tragic to be forced out of one's natural bent, and he says he hates soldiering. People in the street were very polite, and made way for me because I was with an officer. I wasn't pushed off the pavement once.
Good night my own mother. I've had a happy week. I put my arms round you and kiss you with all that I have of love.
Your Chris.
Wanda came in in great excitement to fetch my tray just now, and said a prince has been assassinated. She heard the Herrschaften saying so at supper. She thought they said it was an Austrian, but whatever prince it was it was Majestatsbeleidigung to get killing him, and she marvelled how any one had dared. Then Frau Berg herself came to tell me. By this time I was in bed,pig-tailed, and ready to go to sleep. She was tremendously excited, and I felt a cold shiver down my back watching her. She was so much excited that I caught it from her and was excited too. Well, it is very dreadful the way these king-people get bombed out of life. She said it was the Austrian heir to the throne and his wife, both of them. But of course you'll know all about it by the time you get this.
She didn't know any details, but there had been extra editions of the Sunday papers, and she said it would mean war.
"War?" I echoed.
"War," she repeated; and began to tread heavily about the room saying, "War. War."
"But who with?" I asked, watching her fascinated, sitting up in bed holding on to my knees.
"It will come," said Frau Berg, treading about like some huge Judaic prophetess who sniffs blood. "It must come. There will be no quiet in the world till blood has been let."
"But what blood?" I asked, rather tremulously, for her voice and behaviour curdled me.
"The blood of all those evil-doers who are responsible," she said; and she paused a moment at the foot of my bed and folded her arms across her chestthey could hardly reach, and the word chest sounds much too flatand added, "Of whom there are many."
Then she began to walk about again, and each time a foot went down the room shook. "All, all need punishing," she said as she walked. "There will be, there must be, punishment for this. Great and terrible. Blood will, blood must flow in streams before such a crime can be regarded as washed out. Such evil-doers must be emptied of all their blood."
And then luckily she went away, for I was beginning to freeze to the sheets with horror.
I got out of bed to write this. You'll be shocked too, I know. The way royalties are snuffed out one after the other! How glad I am I'm not one and you're not one, and we can live safely and fruitfully outside the range of bombs. Poor things. It is very horrible. Yet they never seem to abdicate or want not to be royalties, so that I suppose they think it worth it on the whole. But Frau Berg was terrible. What a bloodthirsty woman. I wonder if the other boarders will talk like that. I do pray not, for I hate the very word blood. And why does she say there'll be war? They will catch the murderers and punish them as they've done before, and there'll be an end of it. There wasn't war when the Empress of Austria was killed, or the King and Queen of Servia. I think Frau Berg wanted to make me creep. She has a fixed idea that English people are every one of them much too comfortable, and should at all costs be made to know what being uncomfortable is like. For their good, I suppose.