Christine | Page 3

Evening_.
It's very funny here, but quite comfortable. You needn't give a thought
to my comforts, mother darling. There's a lot to eat, and if I'm not in
clover I'm certainly in feathers,--you should see the immense sackful of
them in a dark red sateen bag on my bed! As you have been in
Germany trying to get poor Dad well in all those Kurorten, you'll
understand how queer my bedroom looks, like a very solemn and
gloomy drawingroom into which it has suddenly occurred to somebody
to put a bed. It is a tall room: tall of ceiling, which is painted at the
corners with blue clouds and pink cherubim--unmistakable
Germans--and tall of door, of which there are three, and tall of window,
of which there are two. The windows have long dark curtains of rep or
something woolly, and long coffee-coloured lace curtains as well; and
there's a big green majolica stove in one corner; and there's a dark
brown wall-paper with gilt flowers on it; and an elaborate chandelier
hanging from a coloured plaster rosette in the middle of the ceiling, all
twisty and gilt, but it doesn't light,--Wanda, the maid of all work, brings
me a petroleum lamp with a green glass shade to it when it gets dusk.
I've got a very short bed with a dark red sateen quilt on to which my
sheet is buttoned a11 round, a pillow propped up so high on a wedge
stuck under the mattress that I shall sleep sitting up almost straight, and
then as a crowning glory the sack of feathers, which will do beautifully
for holding me down when I'm having a nightmare. In a corner, with an
even greater air of being an afterthought than the bed, there's a very
tiny washstand, and pinned on the wall behind it over the part of the
wallpaper I might splash on Sunday mornings when I'm supposed
really to wash, is a strip of grey linen with a motto worked on it in blue

wool:
Eigener Heerd Ist Goldes Werth
which is a rhyme if you take it in the proper spirit, and isn't if you don't.
But I love the sentiment, don't you? It seems peculiarly sound when
one is in a room like this in a strange country. And what I'm here for
and am going to work for is an eigener Heerd, with you and me one
each side of it warming our happy toes on our very own fender. Oh,
won't it be too lovely, mother darling, to be together again in our very
own home! Able to shut ourselves in, shut our front door in the face of
the world, and just say to the world, "There now."
There's a little looking-glass on a nail up above the eigener Heerd
motto, so high that if it hadn't found its match in me I'd only be able to
see my eyebrows in it. As it is, I do see as far as my chin. What goes on
below that I shall never know while I continue to dwell in the
Lutzowstrasse. Outside, a very long way down, for the house has high
rooms right through and I'm at the top, trams pass almost constantly
along the street, clanging their bells. They sound much more aggressive
than other trams I have heard, or else it is because my ears are tired
tonight. There are double windows, though, which will shut out the
noise while I'm practising--and also shut it in. I mean to practise eight
hours every day if Kloster will let me,--twelve if needs be, so I've made
up my mind only to write to you on Sundays; for if I don't make a stern
rule like that I shall be writing to you every day, and then what would
happen to the eight hours? I'm going to start them tomorrow, and try
and get as ready as I can for the great man on Saturday. I'm fearfully
nervous and afraid, for so much depends on it, and in spite of knowing
that somehow from somewhere I've got a kind of gift for fiddling.
Heaven knows where that little bit of luck came from, seeing that up to
now, though you're such a perfect listener, you haven't developed any
particular talent for playing anything, have you mother darling; and
poor Dad positively preferred to be in a room where music wasn't. Do
you remember how he used to say he couldn't think which end of a
violin the noises came out of, and whichever it was he wished they
wouldn't? But what a mercy, what a real mercy and solution of our
difficulties, that I've got this one thing that perhaps I shall be able to do
really well, I do thank God on