"Who says that he's bad?" Käte started up, letting her hands fall from before her face. All the misery she had endured during those long years and the hopelessness of it all lay in her voice as she added: "He's been led astray, he has gone astray--he's lost, lost!"
Frida wept aloud. "Oh, don't say that," she cried. "He'll come back again, he's sure to come back. If only I--" she hesitated and frowned as she pondered--"knew for certain."
"Help me! Oh, can't you help me?"
Frau Lämke clasped her hands when she heard the poor woman's cry of "Help me!" and trembled with excitement: how terrible if a mother has to live to see her child do such things, the child she has brought into the world with such pain. Forgetting the respect with which she always regarded Käte she tottered up to her and grasped her cold hand as it hung at her side: "Oh dear, oh dear, I am so grieved, so terribly grieved. But calm yourself. You know a mother has still such power, quite special power, her child never forgets her quite." And she smiled with a certain security.
"But he isn't my son--not my own son--I'm not his real mother." Käte confessed now what she had never confessed before. Her fear dragged it out of her and the hope that the woman would say: "He won't forget such a mother either, certainly not."
But Frau Lämke did not say it. There was doubt written on her face and she shook her head. She had not thought of her not being Wolfgang's real mother at that moment.
There was a troubled silence in the room. All that could be heard was a sound of heavy breathing, until at last Frida broke the paralysing stillness in her clear voice. "Have you been to see the landlady to-day?" she asked. Käte shook her head in silence. "Well then, ma'am, you say it was two days ago yesterday, then he may have come back to-day. We shall have to make inquiries. Shall I run there quickly?"
And she was already at the door, and did not hear her mother call after her: "Frida, Frida, you must eat a mouthful first, you haven't eaten any dinner yet," but ran up the cellar steps in her good-natured haste and compassionate sympathy.
Käte ran after her.
But they got no further news in Friedrichstrasse. There were fires in the rooms, they had been dusted, the breakfast table had even been laid as if the young gentleman was expected to come any moment--the landlady hoped to receive special praise for her thoughtfulness--but the young gentleman had not returned.