In the company of his sister and her husband, Bertram saw a good deal of
the inner life of Germany, and polished up his knowledge of the language
sufficiently to carry on conversation with the people he met.
There was much that he came to admire in German character, and there
were times when he reproached himself for having forgotten “the Enemy”
so completely that he could shake hands with a German (so violating an
ancient vow) without any sense of physical repugnance, and even discuss
the war in a friendly way with men, like Von Arenburg, who had been
responsible for the death of British soldiers, and among them his own
best comrades.
He used to wonder sometimes whether that were not treachery to his old
standards of loyalty and honour, and was conscience-stricken because he
accepted hospitality, kindness, even friendship, from these people. But
he found it impossible to keep up the old “hate” against them. Even in
war-time that spirit of hate had been behind the lines rather than in
the trenches. The “Tommies” had given cigarettes to their prisoners
after the heat of battle. German officers had been treated civilly by
British officers, if they were at all well-behaved, and within a few
days after the occupation of Cologne, British soldiers had clinked beer
mugs with the fellows who had once lain behind machine guns, mowing them
down. That was the real spirit of chivalry, a lesson taught by the
common man, obeying some instinctive decent law of nature, to neurotic
and morbid-minded people who watered the roots of hate and cultivated
its poisonous fruit with unceasing care.
Only by some friendly pact with these people could Europe have peace.
Bertram could see no chance of peace if they were to be treated for ever
as moral lepers. It was ridiculous to regard them as moral lepers.
How could he take that view when he moved among their crowds in the
Opera House, in pleasant beer gardens outside Berlin to which they
flocked in the evenings, by the lakeside and in the woods of the
Grünewald? These young Germans with their girls, drinking light beer,
eating ices, chattering to the music of the band, playing with little
flaxen-haired children, did not behave like moral lepers. They were
good-natured, decent, smiling folk, the girls wonderfully neat and
pretty and plump, in cheap frocks, the men shabbily dressed, many in
their old war tunics dyed and re-cut to civilian styles, but
scrupulously brushed.
Von Arenburg, who had a certain sense of humour, limited by a Prussian
outlook, used to ask Bertram what he thought of the “Huns” in assemblies
like that. “Do they behave like barbarians? Do you see them eating their
babies?”
“No,” said Bertram; “but I find them enjoying themselves, obviously
well-fed, not badly dressed, and spending quite a lot of marks on their
evening’s amusement. What about this German poverty, that you keep
telling me about?”
It was Dorothy who tried to explain. These people in their home lives
stinted and scraped to enjoy an evening’s pleasure like this. They lived
in overcrowded rooms, stiflingly hot in summer. To go to a beer garden
in the evening was essential for very life and health. It cost but a few
marks for light beer or a pink ice. Look at the girls’ frocks, so clean,
but so cheap. Look at their boots, made of paper and sham leather.
Bertram was not satisfied with these explanations. It seemed to him in
Berlin and the other towns to which he went, that the German people were
marvellously prosperous after the war. It was true that in exchange
value German paper money was slumping away at an alarming rate, and that
every time it dropped prices were higher in the shops. But wages seemed
to rise also, and people seemed to get more paper money every month,
which, in Germany, had still a fair purchasing power.
He wandered round the great stores, like Wertheim’s, and was startled by
the amazingly low price of everything manufactured in Germany, and there
seemed nothing they didn’t make. Translated into English figures, at the
current rate of exchange, they were a mockery of English competition. At
such prices they could beat us in every market of the world, and, so it
seemed, were doing.
Von Arenburg pooh-poohed his argument.
“It’s all illusion,” he said. “I admit the feverish activity of German
trade and industry. It’s the genius of our people, inspired by a
desperate desire to avert their ruin. But nothing can do that so long as
the Allied nations do not release their stranglehold. We sell below cost
price. To buy raw material from abroad we have to pay the difference on
the mark. We’re bleeding to death. Presently the crash will come, and
Europe will shudder in all its members.”
Bertram was not good at arithmetic. International finance was a mystery
to him. He could not find any clue to this economic mystery of the
German people, bankrupt (they said) yet prosperous, capturing world
trade (as they admitted), yet “bleeding to death.”
More within his power of observation was the mentality of these people,
and in patient listening at luncheon tables and dinner tables, where he
met the Junker crowd and the “Intellectuals,” in conversations with
shop-keepers and peasants, he tried to discover the drift of thought in
Germany after defeat.
Largely the peace of the world depended upon their outlook on the
future. Had they liberated themselves from their old militarism? Were
they preparing to march forward as a free democracy in a commonwealth of
nations, away from the darkness of the old War-Gods in this Jungle? Or
were they again worshipping those ancient gods with secret rites and
propitiations?
It was hard to tell among Dorothy’s friends. They revealed how deep the
agony of war had been in their souls, how sharply the wound still hurt.
These German ladies, very charming, some of them, had lost fathers,
husbands, brothers, lovers, sons, even in more appalling numbers than
the death-rate of England. Whole families of the German aristocracy had
been wiped out, and in the humbler classes it was the same.
They cursed the war, and the Army commanders, and the politicians. They
said they had been “betrayed” by the conceit of Ludendorff, by the folly
of the Supreme War Council, by the spirit of Bolshevism among the troops
on the Russian Front who had been bitten by that frightful microbe. They
protested against the “cruelty” of the Versailles Treaty, and asserted
their faith in Wilson’s “Fourteen Points” which had never been
fulfilled. That was another betrayal, not only of Germany, but of all
the hopes of the world.
Yet never once in any company did any German, man or woman, acknowledge
the guilt of Germany in having started the war. Russia had “moved
first.” England had hemmed in Germany. The German people had been ringed
round by enemies. And in spite of all those enemies, the German armies
had never been defeated. It was the home front that had broken down, by
sheer starvation.
Never defeated! Bertram challenged that belief, with some violence, at
one of Dorothy’s afternoon “at homes.”
Among the ladies were several ex-officers, two Generals of Rupprecht’s
Army, so long opposite the British, in Flanders.
It was General von Althof who made the statement, with simple sincerity.
“_Gott sei dank!_ Our brave Armies were never defeated, from first to
last.”
“That surprises me,” said Bertram, with an ironical smile; “I always
thought the German Armies were broken to bits. First on the Marne, in
July ’18. Afterwards like brown paper on August 8th. They could never
hold a line again. When the end came they’d lost hundreds of thousands
of prisoners, thousands of guns, and the whole war-machine was
destroyed. Otherwise there was no need to sign the Armistice, the
greatest surrender of any nation in the history of the world, surely?”
It was not a courteous way of speech; not kind. But Bertram was becoming
rather tired of this calm forgetfulness of what had happened in history,
and he disliked the type represented by General von Althof, one of those
hard, bald-headed Prussians, with a mind as narrow as a Brazil nut.
Von Althof became red about the gills, and then very pale.
“Doubtless, as a young regimental officer, you regard local successes as
great victories. That is a common error, not difficult to understand. As
a General of the German High Command, I repeat, sir, that our glorious
Armies were never defeated in the field of battle. The Armistice was
forced upon us by revolution at home, and the broken _morale_ of a
hungry people.”
“There can be no argument about it,” said one of the younger officers.
“It is an accepted fact.”
Bertram made a considerable argument about it, until checked by Dorothy,
who was visibly distressed.
General von Althof departed with suppressed rage, after a stiff bow to
Bertram, and the other officers took their leave later, so that only a
few ladies remained.
One of them was the Fräulein von Wegener, a pretty blonde, who seemed to
be Dorothy’s greatest friend.
She crossed over to Bertram, sitting by his side, and her eyes were
alight with amusement.
“Of course I don’t think our Armies were defeated—I’m German!—but I
adore the courage with which you attacked Von Althof. It made me tremble
all over! I have never seen any officer disagree with a General. It
isn’t done in Germany. You reminded me of St. George and the Dragon.”
Bertram’s rage had subsided, and he felt guilty of a social misdemeanour
in having raised such an argument in Dorothy’s drawing-room.
“I behaved like the Dragon,” he said. “Breathing out fire. A disgraceful
incident!”
“I love sincerity,” said Fräulein von Wegener. “And I hate Generals.”
“How’s that?” asked Bertram. “They seem to be highly respected in
Germany, in spite of their—well, let’s call it failure to achieve
absolute victory.”
The girl laughed, with a pleasant, musical, mirthful sound.
“Their self-conceit is _kolossal_! But they’ve been found out. The
German people have no more use for them.”
“You think that?” asked Bertram, doubtfully.
“The people,” she said, and then lowered her voice. “Not the little
crowd in drawing-rooms like this. . . . I go among the working folk, in
children’s clinics—for charity, you know. They hate war and all its
stupidity. Never again, they say.”
“Not even against France?”
She hesitated, and seemed embarrassed for a moment.
“Not even against France, if she gives us a decent chance.”
She spoke of Dorothy, looking across at her with admiration.
“Your lovely sister has made me a Pacifist. She’s a saint. She has
converted me from all my wicked ways.”
“You were very wicked?” asked Bertram.
“In idea,” she said, smiling. “Full of naughty passion, and intolerance,
and rebellion against God. Now I’m getting good. I have a new
philosophy.”
“What’s that?” asked Bertram.
“Love of humanity,” she said.
“It sounds good,” said Bertram. “But I seem to have heard of it before,
and it’s a little vague.”
He came to know more of her philosophy, even more of her love of
humanity, because Dorothy invited her often to the house, and to the
Opera, where she was placed next to Bertram, and to picnic parties in
the Grünewald, where she looked her prettiest in muslin frocks “made by
my own little fingers” (she told him), and to evening concerts in public
gardens outside Berlin.
Anna was her name, and because of her close friendship with
Dorothy—they were almost like sisters, it seemed—she insisted upon
Bertram calling her that and forgetting the _gnädiges Fräulein_. She
called him Bertram, after demurely asking his permission. He found her
amusing. She had a playful sense of humour and teased him because of his
English shyness. For England, in spite of being German, she had a
romantic admiration, and she confessed to him that the manners of
Englishmen seemed to be adorable, because of their courtesy to women.
“My manners are atrocious,” said Bertram, “as you may have observed.”
She did not agree. She thought he had the look of a Lancelot in
Tennyson’s “Idylls of the King,” which she read with exquisite delight.
It was impossible for Bertram to ignore the fact that she flirted with
him ardently, and that her eyes worshipped him. He was not annoyed. He
liked it. He liked the little curl that played about each cheek, and her
milky skin, and her laughing voice, and pretty, plump figure. She was
what Christy used to call, in his dry way, “a cuddlesome thing—and
highly dangerous.”
Bertram did not find her extremely dangerous, though he acknowledged to
himself that a little care might be necessary at times, if he wished to
avoid temptation. There was no need why he should avoid temptation,
being a free man, now that Joyce had flung him over, but always there
was that trick of conscience in him, or self-imposed repression, which
had held him back from easy amour, which meant no more to other men he
knew than a passing adventure, without consequence. In any case, this
girl was of high caste. A love affair would mean marriage, and he was
not as free as that, nor so inclined.
There was a moment of danger one evening in the Grünewald, that
wonderful woodland within a tram journey of Berlin. Dorothy and her
husband had wandered away, hand in hand, like two lovers of the humbler
class who came here also for their picnics and pleasure parties. Anna
and Bertram sat together in a little bower, hidden from the passers-by,
where they had all had tea together an hour or more ago. Birds were
singing in the boughs above their heads, and Bertram sat with his back
to a tree, listening to the pleasant twitter and watching the light play
through the leaves. Anna sat on the grass, a yard away from him, with
her muslin frock spread out and her straw hat by her side. The breeze
played softly with the little curl on each cheek, and she was like the
princess in a German fairy-tale.
“Bertram,” she said presently, “you are very silent. Talk to me, and
tell me pretty things.”
“Silence is good,” he said. “I like looking at your prettiness.”
“_So?_ Now that is what I like to hear you say!”
“I’ve said it.”
“Say it again. Do you think me pretty?”
“Wonderfully beautiful!”
“No, not that. That’s insincere. Dorothy is beautiful. I’m only a
_hübsches mädel_—a pretty maid. Do you like me, Bertram?”
“Very much.”
“You don’t hate me because I’m German?”
“I’ve finished with hate.”
“Do you love me a little?”
He laughed at her audacity.
“What do you mean by love?”
“I can only tell by what I feel.”
“How’s that?”
“I feel that I want to be with you always, and to go where you go.”
She was on her knees now, and moved a little way towards him, and
dropped down on the grass with her elbows up, and her dimpled chin in
the cup of her hands.
Bertram was startled. This was going a little too far, perhaps. It had
reached the danger point.
“I’m afraid if you went where I am going it would be to unpleasant
places. I’m off to Moscow next week.”
“To Moscow! And next week! Let me come with you, then. With you I should
feel safe, even in Moscow.”
The idea amused him. It would be pleasant enough to have Anna as his
travelling companion. It would be a cure for loneliness. But it was out
of the bounds of possibility, and not within his code of honour, or
mental liberty.
“My passport is only for one,” he said. “And it has taken me a month to
get.”
“Wait another month and get two!”
“_Nicht möglich!_ Let’s join Dorothy and her husband.”
“Cold Englishman!” she said, and sprang up with a vexed laugh.
“Not cold,” he said, taking her hand. “Only prudent. Or cowardly.”
They walked away, through the wood, hand in hand, as Dorothy and Von
Arenburg had gone before them. Anna held his hand tight, and presently
looked up at him with coaxing eyes and a childish pout.
“If you’re going so soon, we may as well begin to say good-bye.”
The meaning of her words was plain. She wanted him to kiss her, and
under a tree there the place was good and discreet. He rather liked the
idea of kissing her, but for a little warning that it could not end
there, if he began. She called him “cold Englishman.” He was not that.
He was too easily fired, and knew that if he once let a spark touch his
passion, it might blaze into something like a bonfire. He didn’t want to
make a blaze with this little German girl. So he compromised—the middle
of the road again!—and raised her hand to his lips, very gallantly, but
without ardour.
“Pooh!” she said, and taking her hand away, put it round his neck and
pulled his head down and kissed him, and then with a laugh ran from him
towards Dorothy and her husband, who appeared down one of the glades.
It was on the way home that evening that he told Dorothy of a telegram
he had received that morning from Bernard Hall of _The New World_. His
passport had been arranged with the Soviet authorities. Christy was
waiting for him to go down the Volga in the famine region. Bernard Hall
wanted the truth about the famine.
Dorothy received the news as a tragic blow.
“I can’t bear you to go away!” she cried. “Stay here, Bertram. Give up
the visit to Russia. It’s more dangerous than ever. Stay with us in
Germany, and make your home here.”
“My home?” he said, with a sudden pang of self-pity, “I have no home,
now Joyce has left me.”
Dorothy answered him in a low, emotional voice.
“There are good women in Germany. One of them loves you already.”
“Meaning Anna von Wegener?”
“You have guessed?”
She was astonished at the rapidity of his intuition, and surprised, and
rather hurt, when he laughed.
“It wasn’t a difficult guess. She doesn’t let concealment ‘like a worm
i’ the bud, feed on her damask cheek.’”
Then he spoke seriously to this sister who had always been his comrade.
“I’m still haunted by the thought of Joyce. I pretend I’ve done with
her, cut her image out of my heart and soul. But that’s bunkum. She
comes into my dreams at night, and stands between me and the sunlight. I
can’t play about with other women—or do more than play—until I’ve cut
out Joyce, and the wound is healed.”
She pressed his hand with a sympathy that was good to him.
“Explain to Anna,” he said, “or she’ll think I’m heartless.”
Perhaps she explained well enough. Anna von Wegener was very demure next
time she met Bertram, and only showed by her blush that she remembered
the scene in the wood. She was with Dorothy and Von Arenburg at the
Schlesische Bahnhof when Bertram took the train to Riga.
“I shall pray for you all the time,” said Dorothy. “Don’t stay too long
in that frightful country.”
“Take care of your health, my dear fellow,” said Von Arenburg, grasping
his hand.
“Remember your friends,” said Anna.
They waved hands to him until the train disappeared.
For a long time he sat motionless in his carriage, thinking of that
chapter of life in Germany, and of the new page he was about to turn. He
might never come back from Russia. Disease, starvation, crime, all kinds
of danger lurked in that unknown country. It was cut off from the outer
world. No letters passed, unless smuggled through or sent under official
seal. He doubted whether he would get any news while he was there.
Perhaps he would never hear the end of the story of Joyce, his wife. It
would be strange never to know, until he passed to that place where,
perhaps, everything was known, even the secret workings of the heart.
By his side was a bundle of letters from England, and some copies of
_The Times_, forwarded to Dorothy’s address. He opened them, but left
most of them unread. They were just trivial letters from acquaintances
and tradesmen. _The Times_ interested him more. The King had gone to
Belfast to open the Northern Parliament. He had made a speech, pleading
for forgetfulness and forgiveness. There was talk of a Truce—a Treaty
of Peace. At last! Thank God for that! . . . British trade returns were
still going down. Unemployment was going up. There were the usual lists
of births, marriages, and deaths. . . . Deaths! His eyes fell on four
lines of small print.
_Murless_, on the 19th of this month, at the British Embassy in
Paris, the Honourable Kenneth Murless, of pneumonia. Aged
twenty-seven.
Bertram read the lines three or four times before the meaning of them
fully reached his consciousness. He uttered a sharp exclamation,
startling the German folk in his carriage. In his mind was a strange
mingling of pity for Joyce and gladness for himself.
Kenneth had died not much more than a month after the dinner at the
Griffon. Perhaps Joyce had not gone to him so soon. . . .
That was a rotten way of looking at things. What a tragedy for Joyce!
And for Kenneth, that very perfect gentleman, who had tried to play the
game “according to the rules!”