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How excellent it would be, then, if he stayed away and played indefinitely. I wanted to say this to the Grafin when she read the papers aloud to us at lunch, and I wonder what would have happened to me if I had. Well, though I've got to stay with her and be polite in the Sommerstrasse, I shall escape every other day to that happy, rude place, Kloster's flat, and can say what I like.
It's a great virtue, I should think, in a wife. From time to time, when Kloster has lese majestated a little too much, she murmurs Aber Adolf; or she announces placidly that she has just killed a mosquito; or that the sky is blue; and Kloster's talk goes on on the top of this little undercurrent without taking the least notice of it. They seem very happy.
She said how much she enjoyed these informal evenings at Kloster's, and that she had a daughter about my age who was devoted, too, to music, and a worshipper of Kloster's. I asked if she was there, for there was a girl away in a corner, but she looked shocked, and said "Oh no"; and after a pause she said again, "Oh no. One doesn't bring one's daughter here." "But I'm a daughter."
Bernd didn't come to dinner, but was able to be with me for half an hour afterwards, half an hour of comfort I badly needed, for where can one's feet be set firmly and safely in this upheaving world? The Colonel was at dinner; he comes to nearly every meal; and it was he who started talking about Kloster's audience with Majestat this afternoon. I jumped as though some one had hit me.
"That can't be true," I exclaimed, exactly as one calls out quickly if one is suddenly struck. They all looked at me. Somehow I saw that they had known about it beforehand, and Bernd told me tonight it was the Graf who had drawn the authorities' attention to the desirability of having tongues like Kloster's on the side of the Hohenzollerns.
Greatly doubting her Kaiser, after all I've heard of him at Kloster's, I was too polite to be anything but silent, and came up to my room obediently. If there is war, then Bernd oh well, I'm tired. I don't think I'll write any more tonight. But I do love you so very much, darling mother. Your Chris. What a mercy that mothers are women, and needn't go away and fight.
Not to each other, for contrary to the attitude at Kloster's they are knit together by the toughest band of uncritical and obedient admiration for everything German, but they are pugnacious to the Swede girl and myself. Especially to myself. There is a holy calm about the Swede girl that nothing can disturb. She has an enviable gift for getting on with her meals and saying nothing.
Think of your Chris, only the other day being put in a corner by you in just expiation of her offensiveness it really feels as if it were yesterday think of her being a new, or anything else, star! But I won't be too proud, because people are always easily kind after supper, and besides they had been greatly stirred all the evening at the concert by Kloster's playing.
We were very content, all of us I think, sitting on the grass by the water's edge, a tiny wind stirring our hair except Kloster's, because he so happily hasn't got any, which must be delicious in hot weather, and rippling along the rushes. "She grows less pale every hour," Kloster said to Herr von Inster, fixing his round eyes on me.
The strangest effect of all is when they happen, round about Easter, to be selling only lilies, and the unearthly purity of the lilies shines on the passersby from close to the seller's terrible face. Christ must often have looked like that, when he sat close up to Pharisees. But although Kloster's music was certainly as beautiful as the lilies, he himself wasn't like those tragic sellers.
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