They're all certainly very kind to me, the people I've met here, and say the nicest things about England. They're in love with her, as I used to tell Frau Berg's boarders, but openly and enthusiastically, not angrily and reluctantly as the boarders were. I've not heard so many nice things about England ever as I did yesterday. I loved hearing them, and felt all lit up.
We went out on the balcony overlooking the Thiergarten after dinner. The Graf's chief had sent for him, and Bernd and some of the men had gone away too, but more people kept dropping in and joining us on the balcony watching the crowds. The Brandenburger Thor is close on our left, and the Reichstag is a stone's throw across the road on our right. When the crowd saw the officers in our group, they yelled for joy and flung their hats in the air. The Colonel, in his staff officer's uniform, was the chief attraction. He seemed unaware that there was a crowd, and talked to me in much the same hilarious and flowery strain he had talked at the Oberforsterei, saying a great number of things about hair and eyes and such. I know I've got hair and eyes; I've had them all my life, so what's the use of wasting time telling me about them? I tried all I knew to get him to talk about what he really thought of the chances of war, but quite in vain.
Do you know what time it is? Nearly eight, and the Deutschland uber Alles business has already started in the streets. There are little crowds of people, looking so tiny and black, not a bit as if they were real, and had blood in them and could be hurt, already on the steps of the Reichstag eagerly reading the morning papers. I must get dressed and go down and hear if anything fresh has happened. Good-bye my own loved mother,I'll write whenever I get a moment. And don't forget, mother darling, that if you're worried about my being here I'll start straight off for Switzerland. But if you're not worried I wouldn't like to interrupt my lessons. They really are very important things for our future.
Your Chris.
Berlin, Friday afternoon, July 31st
Your letters have been following me about, to Koseritz and to Frau Berg's, where of course you didn't know I wouldn't be. I went to Frau Berg's today and found your last two. I love you, my precious mother, and thank you for all your dearness and sweet unselfish understanding about Bernd and me. You have always been my closest, dearest friend, as well as my own darling mother. I seem now to be living in a sort of bath of love. Can anything more ever be added to it? I feel as if I had reached the very innermost heart of happiness. Wonderful how one carries about such a precious consciousness. It's like something magic and hidden that takes care of one, keeping one untouched and unharmed; while outside, day and night, there's this terrible noise of a people gone mad.
You
with dangerous knowledge that their youngness in wisdom makes them use wrongly. If they hadn't got the latest things in guns and equipment they would be quiet, and wouldn't think of fighting.
Bernd made me promise to wait at Frau Berg's till he could fetch me, and as he didn't get back till two o'clock, and Frau Berg very amiably said I must be her guest at the well-known mid-day meal, I found myself once more in the bosom of the boarders. Only this time I sat proudly on Frau Berg's right, in the place of honour next to Doctor Krummlaut, instead of in the obscurity of my old seat at the dark end near the door.
It was so queer, and so different. There was the same Wanda, resting her dishes on my left shoulder, which she always used to do, not only so as to attract my attention but as a convenience to herself, because they were hot and heavy. There were the same boarders, except the red-mouthed bank-clerk and another young man. Hilda Seeberg was there, and the Swede, and Doctor Krummlaut; and of course Frau Berg, massive in her tight black dress buttoned up the front without a collar to it, the big brooch she fastens it with at the neck half hidden by her impressive double chins, which flow down as majestically as a patriarch's beard. We had the same food, the same heat, and I'm sure the same flies. But the nervous tension there used to be, the tendency to quarrel, the pugnacious political arguing with me, the gibes at England, were gone. I don't know whether it was because I'm engaged to a Prussian officer that they were so very politeI was tremendously congratulated,but they were certainly different about England. It may of course have been their general happinesshappiness makes one so kind all round!for here too was the content, the satisfaction of those who, after painful waiting, get what they want. It was expressed very noisily, not with the restraint of the Koseritzes, but it was the same thing really. The Berg atmosphere was more like the one in the streets. Where the Grafin in her pleasure became only more calm, the boarders were abandoned,excited like savages dancing round the fire their victims are to roast at. Frau Berg rumbled and shook with her relief, like some great earthquake, and didn't mind a bit apparently about the tremendous rise there has been in prices this week. What will she get, I wonder, by war, except struggle and difficulty and departing boarders? Being a guest, I had to be polite and let them say what they liked without protest,really, the disabilities of guests! I couldn't argue, as I would have if I'd still been a boarder, which was a pity, for meanwhile I've learned a lot of German and could have said a great many things and been as natural as I liked here away from the Grafin's gentle smile reminding me that I'm not behaving. But I had to sit and listen smilingly, and of course show none of my horror at their attitude, for more muzzling even than being a guest is being the betrothed of a Prussian officer. They don't know what sort of a Prussian officer he is, how different, how truly educated, how full of dislike for the base things they worship and want; and he, caught by birth in the Prussian chains, shall not be betrayed by me who love him. Here he is, caught anyhow for the present, and he must do his duty; but someday we're going away,he, and I, and you, little mother darling, when there's no war anywhere in sight and therefore no duty to stay for, and we'll go and live in America, and he'll take off all those buttons and spurs and things, and we'll give ourselves up to freedom, and harmlessness, and art, and beauty, and we'll have friends who neither intrigue, which is what the class at the top here lives by, nor who waste their lives being afraid, which is what all the other classes here spend their lives being.