"I am glad," he said. "So that's settled. It's really nice of you."The heat of the day was passing off, and over the sun-bleached plain the coolness of evening was beginning to steal. Overhead the wind stirred more resonantly in the pines, and in the bushes birds called to each other. Presently after, they rose from where they had lain all the afternoon and strolled along the needled slope to where, through a vista in the trees, they looked down on the lake and the hamlet that clustered near it. Down the road that wound through the trees towards it passed labourers going homeward from their work, with cheerful guttural cries to each other and a herd of cows sauntered by with bells melodiously chiming, taking leisurely mouthfuls from the herbage of the wayside. In the village, lying low in the clear dusk, scattered lights began to appear, the smoke of evening fires to ascend, and the aromatic odour of the burning wood strayed towards them up the wind.
Falbe, whose hand lay in the crook of Michael's arm, pointed downwards to the village that lay there sequestered and rural.
"That's Germany," he said; "it's that which lies at the back of every German heart. There lie the springs of the Rhine. It's out of that originally that there came all that Germany stands for, its music, its poetry, its philosophy, its kultur. All flowed from these quiet uplands. It was here that the nation began to think and to dream. To dreamt! It's out of dreams that all has sprung."He laughed.
"And then next week when we go to Munich, you will find me saying that this, this Athens of a town, with its museums and its galleries and its music, is Germany. I shall be right, too. Out of much dreaming comes the need to make. It is when the artist's head and heart are full of his dreams that his hands itch for the palette or the piano. Nuremberg! Cannot we stop a few hours, at least, in Nuremberg, and see the meadow by the Pegnitz where the Meistersingers held their contest of song and the wooden, gabled house where Albrecht Durer lived? That will teach you Germany, too. The bud of their dream was opening then; and what flower, even in the magnificence of its full-blowing, is so lovely?
Albrecht Durer, with his deep, patient eyes, and his patient hands with their unerring stroke; or Bach, with the fugue flowing from his brain through his quick fingers, making stars--stars fixed forever in the heaven of harmony! Don't tell me that there is anything in the world more wonderful! We may have invented a few more instruments, we may have experimented with a few more combinations of notes, but in the B minor Mass, or in the music of the Passion, all is said. And all that came from the woods and the country and the quiet life in little towns, when the artist did his work because he loved it, and cared not one jot about what anybody else thought about it. We are a nation of thinkers and dreamers."Michael hesitated a moment.
"But you said not long ago that you were also the most practical nation," he said. "You are a nation of soldiers, also.""And who would not willingly give himself for such a Fatherland?"said Falbe. "If need be, we will lay our lives down for that, and die more willingly than we have lived. God grant that the need comes not. But should it come we are ready. We are bound to be ready; it would be a crime not to be ready--a crime against the Fatherland. We love peace, but the peace-lovers are just those who in war are most terrible. For who are the backbone of war when war comes? The women of the country, my friend, not the ministers, not the generals and the admirals. I don't say they make war, but when war is made they are the spirit of it, because, more than men, they love their homes. There is not a woman in Germany who will not send forth brother and husband and father and child, should the day come. But it will not come from our seeking."He turned to Michael, his face illuminated by the red glow of the sinking sun.
"Germany will rise as one man if she's told to," he said, "for that is what her unity and her discipline mean. She is patient and peaceful, but she is obedient."He pointed northwards.
"It is from there, from Prussia, from Berlin," he said, "that the word will come, if they who rule and govern us, and in whose hands are all organisation and equipment, tell us that our national existence compels us to fight. They rule. The Prussians rule;there is no doubt of that. From Germany have come the arts, the sciences, the philosophies of the world, and not from there. But they guard our national life. It is they who watch by the Rhine for us, patient and awake. Should they beckon us one night, on some peaceful August night like this, when all seems so tranquil, so secure, we shall go. The silent beckoning finger will be obeyed from one end of the land to the other, from Poland on the east to France on the west."He turned away quickly.
"It does not bear thinking of," he said; "and yet there are many, oh, so many, who night and day concern themselves with nothing else. Let us be English again, and not think of anything serious or unpleasant. Already, as you know, I am half English; there is something to build upon. Ah, and this is the sentimental hour, just when the sun begins to touch the horizon line of the stale, weary old earth and turns it into rosy gold and heals its troubles and its weariness. Schon, Schon!"He stood for a moment bareheaded to the breeze, and made a great florid salutation to the sun, now only half-disk above the horizon.
"There! I have said my evensong," he remarked, "like a good German, who always and always is ridiculous to the whole world, except those who are German also. Oh, I can see how we look to the rest of the world so well. Beer mug in one hand, and mouth full of sausage and song, and with the other hand, perhaps, fingering a revolver. How unreal it must seem to you, how affected, and yet how, in truth, you miss it all. Scratch a Russian, they say, and you find a Tartar; but scratch a German and you find two things--a sentimentalist and a soldier. Lieber Gott! No, I will say, Good God! I am English again, and if you scratch me you will find a golf ball."He took Michael's arm again.
"Well, we've spent one day together," he said, "and now we know something of who we are. I put this day in the bank; it's mine or yours or both of ours. I won't tell you how I've enjoyed it, or you will say that I have enjoyed it because I have talked almost all the time. But since it's the sentimental hour I will tell you that you mistake. I have enjoyed it because I believe I have found a friend."
