Oh well, all that doesn't matter now,I'm in a hurry, I want to get this letter off to you tonight. Luckily there's a letter-box a few yards away, so I won't have to face much of those awful streets that are yelling now for England's blood.
I went up and got my things together. I knew Bernd would get the letter I posted to him this morning telling him I was going to Frau Berg's tomorrow, so I felt safe about seeing him, even if he didn't come in to the Koseritzes before I left. But he did come in. He came just as I was going downstairs carrying my violin-casehow foolish and outside of life that music business seems nowand he seized my hand and took me into the drawingroom.
"Not in here, not in here!" cried the Grafin, getting up excitedly. "Not again, not ever again does an Englishwoman come into my drawingroom"
Bernd went to her and drew her hand through his arm and led her politely to the door, which he shut after her. Then he came back to me. "You know, Chris," he said, "about England?"
"Of coursejust listen," I answered, for in the street newsboys were
at such a moment in the lives of two poor human beings was so unkind.
God bless and keep you, my mother,my dear sweet mother.
Your Chris.
Halle, Wednesday night, August 5th, 1914
abgesperrtI'm all right, mother darling. It was fearfully hot all day, squeezed tight in a third class carriageno other class to be had. It's cold and draughty in this station by comparison, and I wish I had my coat. I've brought nothing away with me, except my fiddle and what would go into its case, which was handkerchiefs. Bernd will see that my things get sent on, I expect. I locked everything up in my trunk,your letters, and all my precious things. An official came along the train at Wittenberg, and after eyeing us all in my compartment suddenly held out his hand to me and said, "Ihre Papiere ." As I haven't got any I told him about being an American, and as much family history not till then known to me as I could put into German. The other passengers listened eagerly, but not unfriendly. I think if you're a woman, not being old helps one in Germany.
Now I'm going to get some hot coffee, for it has turned cold, I think, and post this. The one thing in life now that seems of desperate importance is to get to you. Oh, little mother, the moment when I reach you! It will be like getting to heaven, like getting at last, after many wanderings, and batterings, to the feet of God.
We ought to be at Waldshut, on the frontier, tomorrow morning, but nobody can say for certain, because we may be held up for hours anywhere on the way.
Your Chris.
It's a good thing being too tired to think.
Wursburg, Thursday, August 6th, 1914, 4 p. m
We stopped here about ten o'clock this morning, and I was so tired and stiff after the long night wedged in tight in the railway carriage that I got out to get some air and unstiffen myself, instinctively clutching my fiddle-case; and a Bavarian officer on the platform, watching the train with some soldiers, saw me and came over to me at once and demanded to see my papers.
"You are English," he said; and when I said I was American he made a sound like Tcha.
I can't tell you how horrid he was. He kept me standing for two hours in the blazing sun. You can imagine what I felt like when I saw my train going away without me. I asked if I mightn't go into the shade, into the waiting-room, anywhere out of the terrible sun, for I was positively dripping after the first half hour of it, and his answer to that and to anything else I said in protest was always the same: "Krieg ist Krieg. Mund halten ."
There was no reason why I shouldn't be in the shade, except that he had power to prevent it. Well, he was very young, and I don't suppose had ever had so much power before, so I suppose it was natural, he being German. But it was a most ridiculous position. I tried to see it from that side and be amused, but I wasn't amused. While he went and telephoned to his superiors for instructions he put a soldier to guard me, and of course the people waiting on the platform for trains crowded to look. They decided that I was no doubt a spy, and certainly and manifestly one of the swinish English, they said. I wished then I couldn't understand German. I stood there doing my best to think it was all very funny, but I was too tired to succeed, and hadn't had any breakfast, and they were too rude. Then I tried to think it was just a silly dream, and that I had really got to Glion, and would wake up in a minute in a cool bedroom with the light coming through green shutters, and there'd be the lake, and the mountains opposite with snow on them, and you, my blessed, blessed little mother,