Delphi Collected Works of Elizabeth von Arnim (Illustrated)

by Elizabeth Von Arnim

  “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 course — just listen,” I answered, for in the street newsboys were yelling Kriegserklarung Englands, and there was a great dull roaring as of a multitude of wild beasts who have been wounded.

  “You must go to your mother at once — tomorrow,” he said. “Before you’re noticed, before there’s been time to make your going difficult.”

  I told him the Grafin had asked me to leave, and I was coming here tonight. He wasted no words on the Koseritzes, but was anxious lest Frau Berg mightn’t wish to take me in now. He said he would come with me and see that she did, and place me under her care as part of himself. “And tomorrow you run. You run to Switzerland, without telling Frau Berg or a soul where you are going,” he said. “You just go out, and don’t come back. I’ll settle with Frau Berg afterwards. You go to the Anhalter station — on your feet, Chris, as though you were going for a walk — and get into the first train for Geneva, Zurich, Lausanne, anywhere as long as it’s Switzerland. You’ll want all your intelligence. Have you money enough?”

  “Yes, yes,” I said, feeling every second was precious and shouldn’t be wasted; but he opened my violin-case and put a lot of banknotes into it.

  “And have you courage enough?” he asked, taking my face in his hands and looking into my eyes.

  Oh the blessedness, the blessedness of being near him, of hearing and seeing him. What couldn’t I and wouldn’t I be and do for Bernd?

  I told him I had courage enough, for I had him, and I wouldn’t fail in it, nor in patience.

  “We shall want both, my Chris,” he said, his face against mine, “oh, my Chris — !”

  And then the Colonel walked in.

  “Herr Leutnant?” he said, in a raucous voice, as though he were ordering troops about.

  At the sound of it Bernd instantly became rigid and stood at attention, — the perfect automaton, except that I was hanging on his arm.

  “Zur Befehl, Herr Oberst,” he said.

  “Take that woman’s hand off your arm, Herr Leutnant,” said the Colonel sharply.

  Bernd gently put my hand off, and I put it back again.

  “We are going to be married,” I said to the Colonel, “and perhaps I may not see Bernd for a long while after tonight.”

  “No German officer marries an alien enemy,” snapped out the Colonel. “Remove the woman’s hand, Herr Leutnant.”

  Again Bernd gently took my hand, but I held on. “This is good-bye, then?” I said, looking up at him and clinging to him.

  He was facing the Colonel, rigid, his profile to me; but he did at that turn his head and look at me. “Remember—” he breathed.

  “I forbid all talking, Herr Leutnant,” snapped the Colonel.

  “Never mind him,” I whispered. “What does he matter? Remember what, my Bernd, my own beloved?”

  “Remember courage — patience—” he murmured quickly, under his breath.

  “Silence!” shouted the Colonel. “Take that woman’s hand off your arm, Herr Leutnant. Kreutzhimmeldonnerwetter nochmal. Instantly.”

  Bernd took my hand, and raising it to his face kissed it slowly and looked at me. I shall not forget that look.

  The Colonel, who was very red and more like an infuriated machine than a human being, stepped on one side and pointed to the door. “Precede me,” he said. “On the instant. March.”

  And Bernd went out as if on parade.

  When shall we see each other again? Only a fortnight, one fortnight and two days, have we been lovers. But such things can’t be measured by time. They are of eternity. They are for always. If he is killed, and the rest of my years are empty, we still will have had the whole of life.

  And now there’s tomorrow, and my getting away. You won’t be anxious, dear mother. You’ll wait quietly and patiently till I come. I’ll write to you on the way if I can. It may take several days to get to Switzerland, and it may be difficult to get out of Germany. I think I shall say I’m an American. Frau Berg, poor thing, will be relieved to find me gone. She only took me in tonight because of Bernd. While she was demurring on the threshold, when at last I got to her after a terrifying walk through the crowds, — for I was afraid they would notice me and see, as they always do, that I’m English, — his soldier servant brought her a note from him which just turned the scale for me. I’m afraid humanity wouldn’t have done it, nor pity, for patriotism and pity don’t go well together here.

  I wonder if you’ll believe how calmly I’m going to bed and to sleep tonight, on the night of what might seem to be the ruin of my happiness. I’m glad I’ve written everything down that has happened this evening. It has got it so clear to me. I don’t want ever to forget one word or look of Bernd’s tonight. I don’t want ever to forget his patience, his dear look of untouchable dignity, when the Colonel, because he is in authority and can be cruel, 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.

  I’ve got as far as this, and hope to get on in an hour or two. We’ve been stopped to let troop trains pass. They go rushing by one after the other, packed with waving, shouting soldiers, all of them with flowers stuck about them, in their buttonholes and caps. I’ve been watching them. There’s no end to them. And the enthusiasm of the crowds on the platform as they go by never slackens. I’m making for Zurich. I tried for Bale. but couldn’t get into Switzerland that way, — it is abgesperrt. I hadn’t much difficulty getting a ticket in Berlin. There was such confusion and such a rush at the ticket office that the man just asked me why I wanted to go; and I said I was American and rejoining my mother, and he flung me the ticket, only too glad to get rid of me. Don’t expect me till you see me, for we shall be held up lots of times, I’m sure.

  I’m all right, mother darling. It was fearfully hot all day, squeezed tight in a third class carriage — no 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.

  I’ve only got as far as this. I was held up this time, not the train. It went on without me. Well, it doesn’t matter really; it only keeps me a little longer from you.

  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 pla
tform, 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, calling me to breakfast. But it was too hot and distinct and horribly consistent to be a dream. And my clothes were getting wetter and wetter with the heat, and sticking to me.

  I want to get to you. That’s all I think of now. There isn’t a train till tonight, and then only as far as Stuttgart. I expect this letter will get to you long before I do, because I may be kept at Stuttgart.

  Another officer, higher up than the first one, let me go. He was more decent. He came and questioned me, and said that as he couldn’t prove I wasn’t American he preferred to risk believing that I was, rather than inconvenience a lady belonging to a friendly nation, or something like that. I don’t know what he said really, for by that time I was stupid because of the sun beating down so. But he let me go, and I came here to the restaurant to get something to drink. He came after me, to see that I was not further inconvenienced, he said, so I thought I’d tell him I was going to marry one of his fellow-officers. He changed completely then, when I told him Bernd’s name and regiment, and was really polite and really saw that I wasn’t further inconvenienced. Dear Bernd! Even just his name saves me.

  I went to sleep on the bench in the waiting room after I had drunk a great deal of iced milk. My fiddle-case was the pillow. Poor fiddle. It seems such a useless, futile thing now.

  It was so nice lying down flat, and not having to do anything. The waiter says there’s a place I can wash in, and I suppose I’d better go and wash after I’ve posted this, but I don’t want to particularly. I don’t want to do anything, particularly, except shut my eyes and wait till I get to you. But I think I’ll go out into the sun and warm myself up again, for it’s cold in here. Dear mother, I’m a great deal nearer to you than I’ve been for weeks. Won’t you borrow a map, and see where Wurzburg is?

  Your Chris.

  CHRISTOPHER AND COLUMBUS

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER I

  CHAPTER II

  CHAPTER III

  CHAPTER IV

  CHAPTER V

  CHAPTER VI

  CHAPTER VII

  CHAPTER VIII

  CHAPTER IX

  CHAPTER X

  CHAPTER XI

  CHAPTER XII

  CHAPTER XIII

  CHAPTER XIV

  CHAPTER XV

  CHAPTER XVI

  CHAPTER XVII

  CHAPTER XVIII

  CHAPTER XIX

  CHAPTER XX

  CHAPTER XXI

  CHAPTER XXII

  CHAPTER XXIII

  CHAPTER XXIV

  CHAPTER XXV

  CHAPTER XXVI

  CHAPTER XXVII

  CHAPTER XXVIII

  CHAPTER XXIX

  CHAPTER XXX

  CHAPTER XXXI

  CHAPTER XXXII

  CHAPTER XXXIII

  CHAPTER XXXIV

  CHAPTER XXXV

  CHAPTER XXXVI

  CHAPTER XXXVII

  CHAPTER XXXVIII

  The original frontispiece

  CHAPTER I

  Their names were really Anna-Rose and Anna-Felicitas; but they decided, as they sat huddled together in a corner of the second-class deck of the American liner St. Luke, and watched the dirty water of the Mersey slipping past and the Liverpool landing-stage disappearing into mist, and felt that it was comfortless and cold, and knew they hadn’t got a father or a mother, and remembered that they were aliens, and realized that in front of them lay a great deal of gray, uneasy, dreadfully wet sea, endless stretches of it, days and days of it, with waves on top of it to make them sick and submarines beneath it to kill them if they could, and knew that they hadn’t the remotest idea, not the very remotest, what was before them when and if they did get across to the other side, and knew that they were refugees, castaways, derelicts, two wretched little Germans who were neither really Germans nor really English because they so unfortunately, so complicatedly were both, — they decided, looking very calm and determined and sitting very close together beneath the rug their English aunt had given them to put round their miserable alien legs, that what they really were, were Christopher and Columbus, because they were setting out to discover a New World.

  “It’s very pleasant,” said Anna-Rose. “It’s very pleasant to go and discover America. All for ourselves.”

  It was Anna-Rosa who suggested their being Christopher and Columbus. She was the elder by twenty minutes. Both had had their seventeenth birthday — and what a birthday: no cake, no candles, no kisses and wreaths and home-made poems; but then, as Anna-Felicitas pointed out, to comfort Anna-Rose who was taking it hard, you can’t get blood out of an aunt — only a month before. Both were very German outside and very English inside. Both had fair hair, and the sorts of chins Germans have, and eyes the colour of the sky in August along the shores of the Baltic. Their noses were brief, and had been objected to in Germany, where, if you are a Junker’s daughter, you are expected to show it in your nose. Anna-Rose had a tight little body, inclined to the round. Anna-Felicitas, in spite of being a twin, seemed to have made the most of her twenty extra minutes to grow more in; anyhow she was tall and thin, and she drooped; and having perhaps grown quicker made her eyes more dreamy, and her thoughts more slow. And both held their heads up with a great air of calm whenever anybody on the ship looked at them, as who should say serenely, “We’re thoroughly happy, and having the time of our lives.”

  For worlds they wouldn’t have admitted to each other that they were even aware of such a thing as being anxious or wanting to cry. Like other persons of English blood, they never were so cheerful nor pretended to be so much amused as when they were right down on the very bottom of their luck. Like other persons of German blood, they had the squashiest corners deep in their hearts, where they secretly clung to cakes and Christmas trees, and fought a tendency to celebrate every possible anniversary, both dead and alive.

  The gulls, circling white against the gloomy sky over the rubbish that floated on the Mersey, made them feel extraordinarily forlorn. Empty boxes, bits of straw, orange-peel, a variety of dismal dirtiness lay about on the sullen water; England was slipping away, England, their mother’s country, the country of their dreams ever since they could remember — and the St. Luke with a loud screech had suddenly stopped.

  Neither of them could help jumping a little at that and getting an inch closer together beneath the rug. Surely it wasn’t a submarine already?

  “We
’re Christopher and Columbus,” said Anna-Rose quickly, changing as it were the unspoken conversation.

  As the eldest she had a great sense of her responsibility toward her twin, and considered it one of her first duties to cheer and encourage her. Their mother had always cheered and encouraged them, and hadn’t seemed to mind anything, however awful it was, that happened to her, — such as, for instance, when the war began and they three, their father having died some years before, left their home up by the Baltic, just as there was the most heavenly weather going on, and the garden was a dream, and the blue Chinchilla cat had produced four perfect kittens that very day, — all of whom had to be left to what Anna-Felicitas, whose thoughts if slow were picturesque once she had got them, called the tender mercies of a savage and licentious soldiery, — and came by slow and difficult stages to England; or such as when their mother began catching cold and didn’t seem at last ever able to leave off catching cold, and though she tried to pretend she didn’t mind colds and that they didn’t matter, it was plain that these colds did at last matter very much, for between them they killed her.

  Their mother had always been cheerful and full of hope. Now that she was dead, it was clearly Anna-Rose’s duty, as the next eldest in the family, to carry on the tradition and discountenance too much drooping in Anna-Felicitas. Anna-Felicitas was staring much too thoughtfully at the deepening gloom of the late afternoon sky and the rubbish brooding on the face of the waters, and she had jumped rather excessively when the St. Luke stopped so suddenly, just as if it were putting on the brake hard, and emitted that agonized whistle.

  “We’re Christopher and Columbus,” said Anna-Rose quickly, “and we’re going to discover America.”

  “Very well,” said Anna-Felicitas. “I’ll be Christopher.”

  “No. I’ll be Christopher,” said Anna-Rose.

  “Very well,” said Anna-Felicitas, who was the most amiable, acquiescent person in the world. “Then I suppose I’ll have to be Columbus. But I think Christopher sounds prettier.”