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 gravelyshe is always grave, and never knows how funny we both are being reallyabout 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 thishe's driving to the post, so good-bye little darling mother, little beloved and precious one.
Your Chris.
Schuppenfelde, Thursday, July 16, 1914
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. Not 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!