Such was the brief story of Herr Heinrich.
That story was over—just as Hugh’s story was over. That first volume would never now have a second and a third. It ended in some hasty grave in Russia. The great scheme for marginal indices would never be patented, the duets with the pianola would never be played again.
Imagination glimpsed a little figure toiling manfully through the slush and snow of the Carpathians; saw it staggering under its first experience of shell fire; set it amidst attacks and flights and fatigue and hunger and a rush perhaps in the darkness; guessed at the wounding blow. Then came the pitiful pilgrimage of the prisoners into captivity, captivity in a land desolated, impoverished and embittered. Came wounds wrapped in filthy rags, pain and want of occupation, and a poor little bent and broken Heinrich sitting aloof in a crowded compound nursing a mortifying wound. …
He used always to sit in a peculiar attitude with his arms crossed on his crossed legs, looking slantingly through his glasses. …
So he must have sat, and presently he lay on some rough bedding and suffered, untended, in infinite discomfort; lay motionless and thought at times, it may be, of Matching’s Easy and wondered what Hugh and Teddy were doing. Then he became fevered, and the world grew bright-coloured and fantastic and ugly for him. Until one day an infinite weakness laid hold of him, and his pain grew faint and all his thoughts and memories grew faint—and still fainter. …
The violin had been brought into Mr. Britling’s study that afternoon, and lay upon the further window-seat. Poor little broken sherd, poor little fragment of a shattered life! It looked in its case like a baby in a coffin.
“I must write a letter to the old father and mother,” Mr. Britling thought. “I can’t just send the poor little fiddle—without a word. In all this pitiful storm of witless hate—surely there may be one greeting—not hateful.
“From my blackness to yours,” said Mr. Britling aloud. He would have to write it in English. But even if they knew no English someone would be found to translate it to them. He would have to write very plainly.
§ 4
He pushed aside the manuscript of “The Better Government of the World,” and began to write rather slowly, shaping his letters roundly and distinctly:
Dear Sir,
I am writing this letter to you to tell you I am sending back the few little things I had kept for your son at his request when the war broke out. I am sending them—
Mr. Britling left that blank for the time until he could arrange the method of sending to the Norwegian intermediary.
Especially I am sending his violin, which he had asked me thrice to convey to you. Either it is a gift from you or it symbolised many things for him that he connected with home and you. I will have it packed with particular care, and I will do all in my power to ensure its safe arrival.
I want to tell you that all the stress and passion of this war has not made us here in Matching’s Easy forget our friend your son. He was one of us, he had our affection, he had friends here who are still his friends. We found him honourable and companionable, and we share something of your loss. I have got together for you a few snapshots I chance to possess in which you will see him in the sunshine, and which will enable you perhaps to picture a little more definitely than you would otherwise do the life he led here. There is one particularly that I have marked. Our family is lunching out-of-doors, and you will see that next to your son is a youngster, a year or so his junior, who is touching glasses with him. I have put a cross over his head. He is my eldest son, he was very dear to me, and he too has been, killed in this war. They are, you see, smiling very pleasantly at each other.
While writing this Mr. Britling had been struck by the thought of the photographs, and he had taken them out of the little drawer into which he was accustomed to thrust them. He picked out the ones that showed the young German, but there were others, bright with sunshine, that were now charged with acquired significances; there were two showing the children and Teddy and Hugh and Cissie and Letty doing the goose step, and there was one of Mr. Van der Pant, smiling at the front door, in Heinrich’s abandoned slippers. There were endless pictures of Teddy also. It is the happy instinct of the Kodak to refuse those days that are overcast, and the photographic record of a life is a chain of all its kindlier aspects. In the drawer above these snapshots there were Hugh’s letters and a miscellany of trivial documents touching on his life.
Mr. Britling discontinued writing and turned these papers over and mused. Heinrich’s letters and postcards had got in among them, and so had a letter of Teddy’s. …
The letters reinforced the photographs in their reminder how kind and pleasant a race mankind can be. Until the wild asses of nationalism came kicking and slaying amidst them, until suspicion and jostling greed and malignity poison their minds, until the fools with the high explosives blow that elemental goodness into shrieks of hate and splashes of blood. How kindly men are—up to the very instant of their cruelties! His mind teemed suddenly with little anecdotes and histories of the goodwill of men breaking through the ill-will of war, of
