Frau Lämke shook her head: "No, never." She did not feel at all at her ease, everything seemed so strange to her: Frau Schlieben in their cellar, and what did she want with Frida? Something had happened, there was something wrong. But whatever it was her Frida was innocent, Frau Schlieben must know that. And so she took courage: "If you think that my Frida has anything to do with it, ma'am, you're very much mistaken. My Frida has walked out a long time with Flebbe--Hans Flebbe, the coachman's son, he's a grocer--and besides, Frida is a respectable girl. What are you thinking about my daughter? But it's always like that, a girl of our class cannot be respectable, oh no!" The insulted mother got quite aggressive now. "My Frida was a very good friend of your Wolfgang, and I am also quite fond of him when I felt so wretched last summer he sent me fifty marks that I might go to Fangschleuse for three weeks and get better--but let him try to come here again now, I'll turn him out, the rascal!" Her pale face grew hot and red in her vague fear that something might be said against her Frida.
Frida rushed up to her and threw her arm round her shoulders: "Oh, don't get angry, mother. You're not to excite yourself, or you'll get that pain in your stomach again."
Frida became quite energetic now. With her arm still round her mother's shoulders she turned her fair head to Käte: "You'll have to go somewhere else, ma'am, I can't tell you anything about your son. Mother and I were speaking quite lately about his never coming here now. And I wrote him a note the other day, telling him to come and see us--because I had not seen him for ever so long, and--and--well, because he always liked to be with me. But he hasn't answered it. I've certainly not done anything to him. But he has changed greatly." She put on a knowing look: "I think it would be better if he still lived at home, ma'am."
Käte stared at her. What did she suspect? What did she know? Did she really know anything? Doubts rose in her mind, and then came the certainty: this girl was innocent, otherwise she would not have been able to speak like that. Even the most artful person could not look so ingenuous. And she had also confessed quite of her own accord that she had lately written to Wolfgang--no, this girl was not so bad, it must be another one with fair hair. But where was she to look for her?--where find Wolfgang?
And holding out both her hands to the girl as though she were begging her pardon, she said in a voice full of misery: "But don't you know anything? Have you no idea whatever where he might be? It was two days yesterday since he went away--since he disappeared--disappeared entirely, his landlady does not know where."
"Disappeared entirely--two days ago?" Frida opened her eyes wide.
"Yes, I've just told you so. That's why I am asking you. He has disappeared, quite disappeared."
A furious impatience took possession of his mother and at the same time the full understanding of her painful position. She put her hands before her face and groaned aloud.
Frau Lämke and her daughter exchanged glances full of compassion. Frida turned pale, then red, it seemed as if she were about to say something, but she kept silent nevertheless.
"But he's not bad, no, he's not bad," whispered Frau Lämke.