Christine | Page 2

to earn both our livings for us, and take care of you forever.
You've taken care of me till now, and now it's my turn. You don't
suppose I'm a great hulking person of twenty two, and five foot ten
high, and with this lucky facility in fiddling, for nothing? It's a good
thing it is summer now, or soon will be, and you can work away in
your garden, for I know that is where you are happiest; and by the time
it's winter you'll be used to my not being there, and besides there'll be
the spring to look forward to, and in the spring I come home, finished.
Then I'll start playing and making money, and we'll have the little
house we've dreamed of in London, as well as our cottage, and we'll be
happy ever after. And after all, it is really a beautiful arrangement that
we only have each other in the world, because so we each get the
other's concentrated love. Else it would be spread out thin over a dozen
husbands and brothers and people. But for all that I do wish dear Dad
were still alive and with you.
This pension is the top fiat of a four-storied house, and there isn't a lift,
so I arrived breathless, besides being greatly battered and all crooked
after my night sitting up in the train; and Frau Berg came and opened
the door herself when I rang, and when she saw me she threw up two
immense hands and exclaimed, "Herr Gott!"
"_Nicht wahr_?" I said, agreeing with her, for I knew I must be looking

too awful.
She then said, while I stood holding on to my violin-case and umbrella
and coat and a paper bag of ginger biscuits I had been solacing myself
with in the watches of the night, that she hadn't known when exactly to
expect me, so she had decided not to expect me at all, for she had
observed that the things you do not expect come to you, and the things
you do expect do not; besides, she was a busy woman, and busy
women waste no time expecting anything in any case; and then she said,
"Come in."
"_Seien Sie willkommen, mein Fraulein_," she continued, with a sort of
stern cordiality, when I was over the threshold, holding out both her
hands in massive greeting; and as both mine were full she caught hold
of what she could, and it was the bag of biscuits, and it burst.
"Herr Gott!" cried Frau Berg again, as they rattled away over the
wooden floor of the passage, "_Herr Gott, die schonen Kakes_!" And
she started after them; so I put down my things on a chair and started
after them too, and would you believe it the biscuits came out of the
corners positively cleaner than when they went in. The floor cleaned
the biscuits instead of, as would have happened in London, the biscuits
cleaning the floor, so you can be quite happy about its being a clean
place.
It is a good thing I learned German in my youth, for even if it is so
rusty at present that I can only say things like Nicht wahr, I can
understand everything, and I'm sure I'll get along very nicely for at least
a week on the few words that somehow have stuck in my memory. I've
discovered they are:
_Nicht wahr, Wundervoll, Naturlich, Herrlich, Ich gratuliere, and
Doch_.
And the only one with the faintest approach to contentiousness, or
acidity, or any of the qualities that don't endear the stranger to the
indigenous, is doch.
My bedroom looks very clean, and is roomy and comfortable, and I
shall be able to work very happily in it, I'm sure. I can't tell you how
much excited I am at getting here and going to study under the great
Kloster! You darling one, you beloved mother, stinting yourself,
scraping your own life bare, so as to give me this chance. _Won't_ I
work. And work. And work. And in a year--no, we won't call it a year,

we'll say in a few months--I shall come back to you for good, carrying
my sheaves with me. Oh, I hope there will be sheaves,--big ones,
beautiful ones, to lay at your blessed feet! Now I'll run down and post
this. I saw a letter-box a few yards down the street. And then I'll have a
bath and go to bed for a few hours, I think. It is still only nine o'clock in
the morning, so I have hours and hours of today before me, and can
practise this afternoon and write to you again this evening. So good-bye
for a few hours, my precious mother.
Your happy Chris.

_May 28th.