Surely such a grown-up person could not remain in the second form any longer? And why should he? He was not to be a scholar. Wolfgang left school after passing the examination that admitted him to the top form.
Paul Schlieben had given up, for the present, his intention of sending him abroad as soon as he had finished school; he wished to keep him a little longer under his own eye first. Not that he wanted to guard him as carefully as Käte did, but the old doctor, their good friend whom he esteemed so highly, had warned him in confidence once when they were sitting quite alone over a glass of wine: "Listen, Schlieben," he had said, "you had better take care of the boy. I wouldn't let him go so far away as yet--he is so young. And he is a rampageous fellow and--after what he went through as a child, you know--hm, one can never tell if his heart will hold out."
"Why not?" Schlieben had asked in surprise. "So you look upon him as ill?"
"No, certainly not." The doctor had grown quite angry: at once this exaggeration! "Who says anything about 'ill'? All the same, the lad must not do everything in a rush. Well, and boys will be boys. We know that from our time."
And both men had nodded to each other, had brightened up and laughed.
Wolfgang had a horse to ride on, rode first at the riding-school and then a couple of hours each day out of doors. His father made a point of his not sitting too much at the office. He would easily learn what was necessary for him to know as a merchant, and arithmetic he knew already.
The two partners, old bachelors, were delighted with the lively lad, who came to the office with his whip in his hand and sat on his stool as if it were a horse.
Paul Schlieben did not hear any complaints of his son; the whole staff, men who had been ten, twenty years with the firm, all well-oiled machines that worked irreproachably, hung round the young fellow: he was their future chief. Everything worked smoothly.
Both father and mother were complimented on their son. "A splendid fellow. What life there is in him." "He's only in the making," the man would answer, but still you could see that he was pleased to hear it in his heart. He did not feel the torturing anxiety his wife felt. Käte only raised her eyebrows a little and gave a slight, somewhat sad smile of consent.
She could not rejoice in the big lad any longer, as she had once rejoiced in the little fellow on her lap. It seemed to her as though she had altogether lost the capacity for rejoicing, slowly, it is true, quite gradually, but still steadily, until the last remnant of the capacity had been torn out by the roots on one particular day, in one particular hour, at the disastrous moment when he had said: "I will go, I want to think of my mother--where is she?" Ever since then. She still wished him to have the best the earth could give, but she had become more indifferent, tired. He had trodden too heavily on her heart, more heavily than when in days gone by his small vigorous feet had stamped on her lap.