Good night my most precious mother.
Your Chris.
Schuppenfelde, Friday, July 17,1914
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 Englandlong live England, which produces such flowersand 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."