The Light Heart (25 page)

Germans were likely to be so touchy. They called it
sensitiveness
. They had to be perpetually humoured and placated, both as a nation and as individuals. Even Conny, who had been out of Germany so much and presumably knew how to behave, took offence at the oddest things, and had to be coaxed into a good humour again. For instance, he had promised her an English nurse for the first baby, and then when the time came his Aunt Christa tried not to allow it, and it wasn’t until Rosalind had made herself quite ill and run up a fever that he had given in and kept his word—and then, because she had held out against him and got her own selfish way, he had not spoken to her for three days. (Well,
really,
said Phoebe in exasperation, reading that letter.) Also Aunt Christa thought it was nonsense to insist on sterilized milk, though even the German doctor had ordered it. Conny, said Aunt Christa, had drunk only raw milk fresh from their own cows, which had never set foot off the home farm where they were born and weaned and bred, and had therefore never associated with any
inferior cattle from which they might conceivably catch diseases—and look at Conny now, Aunt Christa would
conclude
triumphantly, could you ask for a man in better health and of a finer physique? And the answer was No, laughed Rosalind, and squeezed in at the bottom of the page the information that Conny’s son was drinking sterilized milk all the same, and doubtless the cows all had hurt feelings.

Phoebe smiled in the dark, while the Lusitania ploughed eastward and the wind began a faint shrill singing in the rigging. Rosalind wouldn’t change, not with all Germany trying to squash her. Prince Conrad must be mightily amused with her still, in spite of the passages with Aunt Christa. Fancy marrying a man who wouldn’t take your part in a family row. I wouldn’t stand for that, thought Phoebe comfortably on her pillow. I’d—well, I’d walk out on him if he wouldn’t stick up for me. What’s a husband for, anyway? Oliver’s wife would be like Cæsar’s—she couldn’t be wrong. But Oliver wasn’t a German.

Rosalind said Conny
would
smoke in her bedroom—even cigars—so that one’s sachet never had an earthly, and
sometimes
after an evening in the drawing-room with a houseful of guests and all the men puffing steadily, even one’s hair smelt of smoke when it was brushed out at bedtime. But how shocked they would all be if Rosalind herself had lighted a cigarette, though everyone knew that nowadays even Queen Alexandra smoked cigarettes. Everyone in Germany knew, and considered it merely a further symptom of the decadence and slackness of English society—they could go on about that for hours, and because you had married a German you had to sit still and say nothing, and even though Conny had lived in England and knew it was not decadent a bit he would not take up the cudgels, and fixed you with a glassy eye if you dared to fidget while the lies grew taller and taller.

It was very odd, Rosalind had once confided, how Conny sometimes reverted and behaved exactly like a German who had not travelled at all, German men put their heels together
and bowed and kissed your hand and paid elaborate
compliments
—but it never occurred to them to open doors for you, or wait on you at tea, or see that you had the most comfortable chair, or carry things for you. Of course Conny did all these things because he had been in the Diplomatic and because he knew she expected them of him—and of course at Heidersdorf the doors were opened by powdered footmen in knee-breeches who were there to do nothing else, and tea was handed round for you unless you were absolutely
en famille.
But in Germany you were “only” a woman, subject to a lord and master who
permitted
you to go on existing provided you were quiet and made no trouble, and always treated him with the proper respect.

There was one evening, with which Rosalind illustrated the foregoing point, when she had without thinking picked up Conny’s brandy glass and taken the first sip from it, when they were all sitting round chatting after dinner, and Aunt Christa had been altogether scandalized and scolded her in front of everybody for infringing (as near as one could make out) on her husband’s dignity. And Conny? He had only smiled, while Aunt Christa went on and on, and finally he had asked
Rosalind
rather coldly if she desired some brandy of her own, which she did not and never had—and by that time she wished that brandy had never been invented and it was all she could do to keep from bursting into tears before them all.

Phoebe recalled the description of this scene with a shudder, and hoped that nothing like it would happen while she was there. She also determined contrarily that she would smoke cigarettes herself, though she didn’t really care much for them, and drink wine and eat cheese—not considered a delicate thing for German young ladies to do—just to show Aunt Christa a thing or two about American women, who were entitled to do what they liked.

In Germany, Phoebe recalled drowsily, women weren’t supposed to play games, or to hunt, or even to ride much, which would be more of a hardship for Rosalind than for herself. The German
Herren
considered that the Almighty had
made pretty women to please their men, and their men did not like to see windblown hair and hot faces and muddy boots and skirts on creatures designed solely to ornament life….
Rosalind’
s visiting cards had to be in German, Polish, French, and English…. Conny had put in a pink and gold bathroom for his bride … her sitting-room had been done over in apple-blossom pink and old blue, the walls covered with hand-painted silk … a special rosewood piano with a gold trim had been made in Berlin for her private apartments at the
Schloss
… one almost
has
to love a man who gives one not only one’s bread and butter but diamond necklaces down to
here
and gold pianos, Rosalind had written during one of her more hopeful times … the castle was full of potted palms, huge ones like a conservatory, which were watered and tended like babies, and kept from draughts … and it had enclosed stoves of iron or porcelain which made less dirt and gave more heat and less comfort than open fireplaces, but Rosalind had had some of the fireplaces opened up and new, magnificent ones built into the rooms she used, and burned great logs in them … even in Berlin houses and flats with hot and cold water laid on were rare luxuries, and Rosalind insisted on staying at the Hotel Bristol in Unter den Linden when they went there because the impressive Louis XIV-style Palast Polkwitz in the Wilhelm-strasse had no bathrooms … but they always travelled in their own railway coach, often in a special train, with their own beds and linen and servants and food…. Conny had once been heard to say that he never went to see Shakespeare in London because the English knew nothing about him … surely that was sheer pose … at least it wasn’t the time of year when one would encounter the Kaiser at Heidersdorf, and that was a relief, Phoebe thought, sliding into sleep … it would be fun to be there for a German Christmas, though, and see Rosalind as chatelaine handing out innumerable gifts to the lower classes, who curtseyed and said
Gruss
Gott
… or
was
that what they said in Silesia … there had once been an awful row with Aunt Christa because Rosalind had taken the wrong, that is to say an
inferior, lady to sit with her on the sofa because they wanted to talk about music … and just as she lost herself Phoebe was wondering if Aunt Christa would consider Rosalind’s American friend sufficiently important to sit on the sofa beside Her Serene Highness the Princess Rosalind zu Polkwitz-Heidersdorf, who would not allow her husband’s family to call her Rosa, German fashion….

T
HE
castle at Heidersdorf stood on a jagged crag overlooking what Rosalind had described as a perfectly sickening gorge, and the elaborate gardens had to be terraced three quarters of the way round. The road up to it was a looping gravelled avenue handsomely planted and pruned and swept for miles.

Rosalind held to Phoebe’s hand in the motor all the way from Breslau where the train stopped, and they chattered like schoolgirls—for two people who had written to each other faithfully for years they still had a great deal to say, punctuated by exclamations of delight from Phoebe about the
mountainous
spring landscape through which they drove, and which Rosalind said was enough like parts of Scotland to make you ache. Warm weather had come early that year, and lilies of the valley were blooming in the woods like violets in Virginia, and the lilacs and laburnum were out. But as the motor swept up the long curving avenue towards the castle Rosalind suddenly burst out with something which lay heavy on her mind.

“Phoebe, I
am
so disappointed, but we’ve got family people coming next week, and if you don’t
promise
to outstay them we shall have no fun at all! Darling, you don’t simply have to be at Cannes at any definite date, do you?”

“No,” said Phoebe consideringly. “No rush about Cannes, I reckon. What do you mean, family people?”

“Relations. In-laws.” Rosalind made a face, and glanced at the chauffeur’s back and lowered her voice. “When they come it’s like walking on eggs—you get very careful and self-conscious, and you never know when something is going to set them off. The last time they all elected to use my sitting-room because it had just been done over and happened to take Aunt Nini’s fancy, and so I couldn’t play my piano because Conny said it disturbed their conversation. If they do that again next week I shall just have the piano moved into the library. Nobody ever goes there!”

“Shan’t I be in the way during a family visit?” Phoebe asked doubtfully, and Rosalind seized her with tense little hands.

“But, Phoebe, you’d save my life by being here! If you can weather it yourself, that is! One has to just shut the door of one’s mind and try not to think, or remember, or
reason,
while they talk! The conversation is all about other relations who aren’t present to defend themselves, and about who is going to marry whom and how much more suitable two other people would have been for the engaged pair, and about who has just bought a new motor car and how much better all the other kinds would have been than the one he got, and about what
everything
costs, and how superior their own possessions are to somebody else’s, and how
infinitely
superior
anything
German is to similar objects in England—and Phoebe, don’t try to argue with them about poor old England, you must just choke it back and hold your tongue if it kills you, because it isn’t any good to state facts to them, it only makes them worse. And
don’t
mind if they go on about the war, will you, sometimes I think they only do it the way a nursery maid tells goblin stories, to scare themselves and everybody else into fits for the fun of it.”

“What war?” Phoebe asked, bewildered.

“With England, of course.”

“But there isn’t any war—”

“I know, I know, but you’d almost think there
was,
to hear them! Just don’t take any notice, that’s all, and don’t let them
see that you’re surprised or upset by anything they say. I’ve got so I can go mentally
blank
like a imbecile and let it wash over me—till all of a sudden I feel as though I’ve
got
to get outside and scream, and some day I will, and they’ll send for a doctor and take me away in a straitjacket. Can you play
Skat
and pinochle and cribbage and those things?”

“No,” said Phoebe without regret. “But I can play poker.”

“Well, don’t say that, for heaven’s sake!” Rosalind cautioned her, and winced as the car swung perilously around a turn in the drive. “I
wish
he wouldn’t take this road as though he was driving a flying-machine! Conny’s always egging him on, and I know some day we’re going right over the edge! And Phoebe, I do think I ought to warn you about Uncle Eugen, he will try to paw you, and he arrives on Thursday.”

“Uncle Eugen,” said Phoebe, fixing the name grimly in her memory. “He would, would he!”

“I may not have to put him next you at table,” Rosalind went on anxiously. “Evelyn said he kept trying to get his leg over hers all during dinner last time she was here, but I can’t always manage about the table, because in Germany people have to be seated according to precedence or they take offence and complain to Conny. He’s in such a good temper today, by the way, and we shall have several more days all to ourselves anyway, before the deluge. I
entreated
him to put them off even a week so that your visit wouldn’t be spoilt, and he came over all pompous and Prussian and said he could not ask the Count and Countess von Kittlitztreben to suit their convenience to that of an American miss they had never even heard of. Conny can be very trying in those moods. But on the other hand, he’s had Laszlo come and do my portrait—at
great
expense—and it’s hung in the grand salon over the mantelpiece and I really look very nice. And he’s finally going to let me have my milk depot, no matter what Aunt Christa says.”

“What milk depot?” Phoebe asked, for it had not been mentioned in the letters.

“Oh, just a place where the poorer women can get properly
sterilized milk for their children,” Rosalind explained. “You see, I do try to take an interest in our people here the way we do in the big houses at home, but it’s very different from
England
, where all the tenants are friends with the family and like to be noticed and inquired into. Here they seem to think you’re only interfering, and Conny’s relations call it lowering
yourself
. But the way the poorer classes
live,
Phoebe, such conditions wouldn’t be tolerated by
anybody
in England, and the way they have their babies—” Rosalind broke off sharply and her expressive little face grew rigid. Her hand was tense in Phoebe’s. “Even the way I have
my
babies,” she added under her breath. “I won’t do it again, that way. I’ve told them so. If ever I have another baby it is going to be born in England, where the doctors are human beings.”

Before Phoebe could say anything to that, and she didn’t know what to say, the motor swung into the great forecourt of the castle and drew up at the foot of the stone steps. Lackeys in red livery smothered in silver lace, with powdered hair and white stockinged calves, ran out to open the doors and deal with Phoebe’s luggage. She followed Rosalind up the steps and a man in a cocked hat with a staff in his hand came to attention as they passed him at the door and entered the great hall.