I saw very little of Brand in London after Elsa’s arrival in his
parents’ house at Chelsea. I was busy, as usual, watching the way of
the world, and putting my nose down to bits of blank paper which I
proceeded to spoil with futile words. Brand was doing the same thing
in his study on the top floor of the house in Cheyne Walk, while Elsa,
in true German style, was working embroidery, or reading English
literature to improve her mind and her knowledge of the language.
Brand was endeavouring strenuously to earn money enough to make him
free of his father’s house. He failed, on the whole, rather miserably.
He began a novel on the war, became excited with it for the first six
chapters, then stuck hopelessly, and abandoned it.
“I find it impossible,” he wrote to me, “to get the real thing into
my narrative. It is all wooden, unnatural, and wrong. I can’t get the
right perspective on paper, although I think I see it clear enough
when I’m not writing. The thing is too enormous, the psychology too
complicated, for my power of expression. A thousand characters, four
years of experience, come crowding into my mind, and I can’t eliminate
the unessential and stick the point of my pen into the heart of truth.
Besides, the present state of the world, to say nothing of domestic
trouble, prevents anything like concentration.... And my nerves have
gone to hell.”
After the abandonment of his novel he took to writing articles for
magazines and newspapers, some of which appeared, thereby producing
some useful guineas. I read them and liked their strength of style and
intensity of emotion. But they were profoundly pessimistic and “the
gloomy Dean,” who was prophesying woe, had an able seconder in Wickham
Brand, who foresaw the ruin of civilisation and the downfall of the
British Empire because of the stupidity of the world’s leaders and the
careless ignorance of the multitudes. He harped too much on the same
string, and I fancied that editors would soon begin to tire of his
melancholy tune. I was right.
“I have had six articles rejected in three weeks,” wrote Brand. “People
don’t want the truth. They want cheery insincerity. Well, they won’t
get it from me, though I starve to death.... But it’s hard on Elsa.
She’s having a horrible time, and her nerve is breaking. I wish to God
I could afford to take her down to the country somewhere, away from
spiteful females and their cunning cruelty. Have you seen any Christian
charity about in this most Christian country? If so, send me word, and
I’ll walk to it, on my knees, from Chelsea.”
It was in a postscript to a letter about a short story he was writing
that he wrote an alarming sentence.
“I think Elsa is dying. She gets weaker every day.”
Those words sent me to Chelsea in a hurry. I had been too careless of
Brand’s troubles, owing to my own pressure of work, and my own fight
with a nervous depression which was a general malady, I found, with
most men back from the war.
When I rapped the brass knocker on the house in Cheyne Walk the door
was opened by a different maid from the one I had seen on my first
visit there. The other one, as Brand told me afterwards, had given
notice because “she couldn’t abide them Huns” (meaning Elsa), and
before her had gone the cook, who had been with Wickham’s mother for
twenty years.
Brand was writing in his study upstairs when the new maid showed me in.
Or, rather, he was leaning over a writing-block, with his elbows dug
into the table, and his face in his hands, while an unlighted pipe--his
old trench pipe--lay across the inkpot.
“Thinking out a new plot, old man?” I asked cheerily.
“It doesn’t come,” he said. “My own plot cuts across my line of
thought.”
“How’s Elsa?”
He pointed with the stem of his pipe to the door leading from his room.
“Sleeping, I hope.... Sit down, and let’s have a yarn.”
We talked about things in general for a time. They were not very
cheerful, anyhow. Brand and I were both gloomy souls just then, and
knew each other too well to camouflage our views about the state of
Europe and the “unrest” (as it was called) in England.
Then he told me about Elsa, and it was a tragic tale. From the very
first his people had treated her with a studied unkindness which had
broken her nerve and spirit. She had come to England with a joyous hope
of finding happiness and friendship with her husband’s family, and glad
to escape from the sadness of Germany and the solemn disapproval of her
own people, apart from Franz, who was devoted to her.
Her first dismay came when she kissed the hand of her mother-in-law,
who drew it away as though she had been stung by a wasp, and when her
movement to kiss her husband’s sister Ethel was repulsed by a girl who
drew back icily and said, “How do you do?”
Even then she comforted herself a little with the thought that this
coldness was due to English reserve, and that in a little while English
kindness would be revealed. But the days passed with only unkindness.
At first Lady Brand and her daughter maintained a chilly silence
towards Elsa, at breakfast, luncheon, and other meals, talking to each
other brightly, as though she did not exist, and referring constantly
to Wickham as “poor Wicky.” Ethel had a habit of reading out morsels
from the penny illustrated papers, and often they referred to “another
trick of the Huns” or “fresh revelations of Hun treachery.” At these
times Sir Amyas Brand said “Ah!” in a portentous voice, but, privately,
with some consciousness of decency, begged Ethel to desist from
“controversial topics.” She “desisted” in the presence of her brother,
whose violence of speech scared her into silence.
A later phase of Ethel’s hostility to Elsa was in the style of amiable
enquiry. In a simple, child-like way, as though eager for knowledge,
she would ask Elsa such questions as “Why the Germans boiled down their
dead?” “Why they crucified Canadian prisoners?” “Was it true that
German school-children sang the Hymn of Hate before morning lessons?”
“Was it by order of the Kaiser that English prisoners were starved to
death?”
Elsa answered all these questions by passionate denials. It was a
terrible falsehood, she said, that the Germans had boiled down bodies
for fats. On the contrary, they paid the greatest reverence to their
dead, as her brother had seen in many cemeteries on the Western front.
The story of the “crucified Canadians” had been disproved by the
English Intelligence officers after a special enquiry, as Wickham had
told her. She had never heard the Hymn of Hate. Some of the English
prisoners had been harshly treated--there were brutal commandants--but
not deliberately starved. Not starved more than German soldiers, who
had very little food during the last years of the war.
“But surely,” said Lady Brand, “you must admit, my dear, that Germany
conducted this war with the greatest possible barbarity? Otherwise why
should the world call them Huns?”
Elsa said it was only the English who called the Germans Huns, and that
was for a propaganda of hatred which was very wicked.
“Do _I_ look like a Hun?” she asked, and then burst into tears.
Lady Brand was disconcerted by that sign of weakness.
“You mustn’t think us unkind, Elsa, but of course we have to uphold the
truth.”
Ethel was utterly unmoved by Elsa’s tears, and, indeed, found a holy
satisfaction in them.
“When the German people confess their guilt with weeping and
lamentation, the English will be first to forgive. Never till then.”
The presence of a German girl in the house seemed to act as a blight
upon all domestic happiness. It was the cook who first “gave notice.”
Elsa had never so much as set eyes upon that cross-eyed woman
below-stairs who had prepared the family food since Wickham had sat
in a high chair, with a bib round his neck. But Mary, in a private
interview with Lady Brand, stormy in its character, as Elsa could hear
through the folding-doors, vowed that she would not live in the same
house with “one of those damned Germings.”
Lady Brand’s tearful protestations that Elsa was no longer German,
being “Mr. Wickham’s wife,” and that she had repented sincerely of
all the wrong done by the country in which she had unfortunately been
born, did not weaken the resolution of Mary Grubb, whose patriotism
had always been “above suspicion,” “which,” as she said, “I hope to
remain so.” She went next morning, after a great noise of breathing
and the descent of tin boxes, while Lady Brand and Ethel looked with
reproachful eyes at Elsa as the cause of this irreparable blow.
The parlour-maid followed in a week’s time, on the advice of her young
man, who had worked in a canteen of the Y. M. C. A. at Boulogne and
knew all about German spies.
It was very awkward for Lady Brand, who assumed an expression of
Christian martyrdom, and told Wickham that his rash act was bearing sad
fruit, a mixed metaphor which increased his anger, as he told me, to a
ridiculous degree.
He could see that Elsa was very miserable. Many times she wept when
alone with him, and begged him to take her away to a little home of
their own, even if it were only one room in the poorest neighbourhood.
But Wickham was almost penniless, and begged her to be patient a
little longer, until he had saved enough to fulfil their hope. There
I think he was unwise. It would have been better for him to borrow
money--he had good friends--rather than keep his wife in such a hostile
atmosphere. She was weak and ill. He was alarmed at her increasing
weakness. Once she fainted in his arms, and even to go upstairs to
their rooms at the top of the house tired her so much that afterwards
she would lie back in a chair, with her eyes closed, looking very
white and worn. She tried to hide her ill-health from her husband, and
when they were alone together she seemed gay and happy, and would have
deceived him but for those fits of weeping at the unkindness of his
mother and sister, and those sudden attacks of “tiredness” when all
physical strength departed from her.
Her love for him seemed to grow with the weakness of her body. She
could not bear him to leave her alone for any length of time, and while
he was writing, sat near him, so that she might have her head against
his shoulder, or touch his hand, or kiss it. It was not conducive to
easy writing, or the invention of plots.
Something like a crisis happened, after a painful scene in the
drawing-room downstairs, on a day when Brand had gone out to walk off a
sense of deadly depression which prevented all literary effort.
Several ladies had come to tea with Lady Brand and Ethel, and they
gazed at Elsa as though she were a strange and dangerous animal.
One of them, a thin and elderly schoolmistress, cross-questioned Elsa
as to her nationality.
“I suppose you are Swedish, my dear?” she said, sweetly.
“No,” said Elsa.
“Danish, then, no doubt?” continued Miss Clutter.
“I am German,” said Elsa.
That announcement had caused consternation among Lady Brand’s guests.
Two of the ladies departed almost immediately. The others stayed to see
how Miss Clutter would deal with this amazing situation.
She dealt with it firmly, and with the cold intelligence of a High
School mistress.
“How _very_ interesting!” she said, turning to Lady Brand. “Perhaps
your daughter-in-law will enlighten us a little about German
psychology, which we have found so puzzling. I should be so glad if
she could explain to us how the German people reconcile the sinking
of merchant ships, the unspeakable crime of the _Lusitania_ with any
belief in God, or even with the principles of our common humanity. It
is a mystery to me how the drowning of babies could be regarded as
legitimate warfare by a people proud of their civilisation.”
“Perhaps it would be better to avoid controversy, dear Miss Clutter,”
said Lady Brand, alarmed at the prospect of an “unpleasant” scene
which would be described in other drawing-rooms next day.
But Miss Clutter had adopted Ethel’s method of enquiry. She so much
wanted to know the German point of view. Certainly they must have a
point of view.
“Yes, it would be so interesting to know!” said another lady.
“Especially if we could believe it,” said another.
Elsa had been twisting and re-twisting a little lace handkerchief in
her lap. She was very pale, and tried to conceal a painful agitation
from all these hostile and enquiring ladies.
Then she spoke to them in a low, strained voice.
“You will never understand,” she said. “You look out from England with
eyes of hate, and without pity in your hearts. The submarine warfare
was shameful. There were little children drowned on the _Lusitania_,
and women. I wept for them, and prayed the dear God to stop the war.
Did you weep for our little children, and our women? They too were
killed by sea warfare, not only a few, as on the _Lusitania_, but
thousands and tens of thousands. Your blockade closed us in with an
iron ring. No ship could bring us food. For two years we starved on
short rations and chemical foods. We were without fats and milk.
Our mothers watched their children weaken, and wither, and die,
because of the English blockade. Their own milk dried up within their
breasts. Little coffins were carried down our streets day after day,
week after week. Fathers and mothers were mad at the loss of their
little ones. ‘We must smash our way through the English blockade!’
they said. The U-boat warfare gladdened them. It seemed a chance of
rescue for the children of Germany. It was wicked. But all the war
was wickedness. It was wicked of you English to keep up your blockade
so long after Armistice, so that more children died, and more women
were consumptive, and men fainted at their work. Do you reconcile that
with God’s good love? Oh, I find more hatred here in England than I
knew even in Germany. It is cruel, unforgiving, unfair! You are proud
of your own virtue, and hypocritical. God will be kinder to my people
than to you, because now we cry out for His mercy, and you are still
arrogant, with the name of God on your lips but a devil of pride in
your hearts. I came here with my dear husband believing that many
English would be like him, forgiving, hating cruelty, eager to heal the
world’s broken heart. You are not like him. You are cruel and lovers
of cruelty, even to one poor German girl who came to you for shelter
with her English man. I am sorry for you. I pity you because of your
narrowness. I do not want to know you.”
She stood up, swaying a little, with one hand on the mantelpiece, as
afterwards she told her husband. She did not believe that she could
cross the floor without falling. There was a strange dizziness in her
head, and a mist before her eyes. But she held her head high and walked
out of the drawing-room, and then upstairs. When Wickham Brand came
back, she was lying on her bed, very ill. He sent for a doctor, who was
with her for half-an-hour.
“She is very weak,” he said. “No pulse to speak of. You will have to be
careful of her. Deuced careful.”
He gave no name to her illness. “Just weakness,” he said. “Run down
like a worn-out clock. Nerves all wrong, and no vitality.”
He sent round a tonic, which Elsa took like a child, and for a little
while it seemed to do her good. But Brand was frightened because her
weakness had come back.
I am glad now that I had an idea which helped Brand in this time of
trouble and gave Elsa some weeks of happiness and peace. It occurred
to me that young Harding was living alone in his big old country
house near Weybridge, and would be glad and grateful, because of
his loneliness, to give house-room to Brand and his wife. He had a
great liking for Brand, as most of us had, and his hatred of Germany
had not been so violent since his days in Cologne. His good-nature,
anyhow, and the fine courtesy which was the essential quality of his
character, would make him kind to Elsa, so ill and so desperately in
need of kindness. I was not disappointed. When I spoke to him over the
telephone, he said, “It will be splendid for me. This lonely house is
getting on my nerves badly. Bring them down.”
I took them down in a car two days later. It was a fine autumn day,
with a sparkle in the air and a touch of frost on the hedgerows. Elsa,
wrapped up in heavy rugs, lay back next to Brand, and a little colour
crept back into her cheeks and brought back her beauty. I think a
shadow lifted from her as she drove away from that house in Chelsea
where she had dwelt with enmity among her husband’s people.
Harding’s house in Surrey was at the end of a fine avenue of beeches,
glorious in their autumn foliage of crinkled gold. A rabbit scuttled
across the drive as we came, and bobbed beneath the red bracken of the
undergrowth.
“Oh,” said Elsa, like a child, “there is Peterkin! What a rogue he
looks!”
Her eyes were bright when she caught sight of Harding’s house in the
Elizabethan style of post-and-plaster splashed with scarlet where the
Virginia creeper straggled on its walls.
“It is wonderfully English,” she said. “How Franz would love this
place!”
Harding came down from the steps to greet us, and I thought it noble
of him that he should kiss the girl’s hand when Brand said, “This is
Elsa.” For Harding had been a Hun-hater--you remember his much-repeated
phrase, “No good German but a dead German!”--and that little act was
real chivalry to a woman of the enemy.
There was a great fire of logs burning in the open hearth in the hall,
flinging a ruddy glare on the panelled walls and glinting on bits
of armour and hunting trophies. Upstairs also, Brand told me, there
was a splendid fire in Elsa’s room, which had once been the room of
Harding’s wife. It warmed Elsa not only in body but in soul. Here was
an English welcome, and kindness of thought. On her dressing-table
there were flowers from Harding’s hot-houses, and she gave a little
cry of pleasure at the sight of them, for there had been no flowers in
Cheyne Walk, Chelsea. That night she was strong enough to come down to
dinner, and looked very charming there at the polished board, lit only
by candlelight whose soft rays touched the gold of her hair.
“It is a true English home,” she said, glancing up at the panelled
walls and at portraits of Harding’s people in old-fashioned costumes
which hung there.
“A lonely one when no friends are here,” said Harding, and that was the
only time he referred in any way to the wife who had left him.
That dinner was the last one which Elsa had sitting at table with us.
She became very tired again. So tired that Brand had to carry her
upstairs and downstairs, which he did as though she weighed no more
than a child. During the day she lay on a sofa in the drawing-room, and
Brand did no writing now, nor any kind of work, but stayed always with
his wife. For hours together he sat by her side, and she held his hand
and touched his face and hair, and was happy in her love.
A good friend came to stay with them, and brought unfailing
cheerfulness. It was Charles Fortune, who had come down at Harding’s
invitation. He was as comical as ever, and made Elsa laugh with ripples
of merriment while he satirised the world as he knew it, with shrewd
and penetrating wit. He played the jester industriously to get that
laughter from her, though sometimes she had to beg of him not to make
her laugh so much because it hurt her. Then he played the piano late
into the afternoon, until the twilight in the room faded into darkness
except for the ruddy glow of the log fire, or after dinner in the
evenings until Brand carried his wife to bed. He played Chopin best,
with a magic touch, but Elsa liked him to play Bach and Schumann, and
sometimes Mozart, because that brought back her girlhood in the days
before the war.
So it was one evening when Brand sat on a low stool by the sofa on
which Elsa lay, with her fingers playing in his hair, or resting on his
shoulder, while Fortune filled the room with melody.
Once or twice Elsa spoke to Brand in a low voice. I heard some of her
words as I lay on a bearskin by the fire.
“I am wonderfully happy, my dear,” she said once, and Brand pulled her
hand down and kissed it.
A little later she spoke again.
“Love is so much better than hate. Then why should people go to war?”
“God knows, my dear,” said Brand.
It was some time after that, when Fortune was playing softly, that I
heard Elsa give a big, tired sigh, and say the word “Peace!”
Charles Fortune played something of Beethoven’s now, with grand
crashing chords which throbbed through the room as the last glow of
the sunset flushed through the windows.
Suddenly Brand stirred on his stool, made an abrupt movement, then
rose, and gave a loud, agonising cry. Fortune stopped playing, with a
slur of notes. Harding leapt up from his chair in a dark corner and
said, “Brand! ... what’s the matter?”
Brand had dropped to his knees, and was weeping, with his arms about
his dead wife.