Nobody would have believed that she had just been lying in her bed perfectly helpless. Her husband had not the courage to oppose her wishes, besides, how could things be worse than they were? They could never be worse than they were, and at all events she would never be able to reproach him any more that he had not loved the boy.
When, barely half an hour later, they got into the carriage Friedrich had telephoned for, she was less pale than, and did not look so old as, he.
CHAPTER XVII
Whenever Frida Lämke met Wolfgang Schlieben now, she cast down her eyes and he pretended not to see her. He was angry with her: the confounded little minx to betray him. She was the only one who could have put his parents on his track. How should they otherwise have ever guessed it? He could have kicked himself for having once given that viper hints about his acquaintance in Puttkammerstrasse. Frida and her friendship, just let her try to talk to him again about friendship. Pooh, women on the whole were not worth anything.
A fierce contempt for women had taken possession of the young fellow. He would have liked to spit in their faces--all venal creatures--he knew quite enough about them now, ay, and loathed them.
The boy, who was not yet nineteen, felt tired and old; strangely tired. When Wolfgang thought of the time that had just passed, it seemed to him like a dream; now that the rooms in Friedrichstrasse had been given up and he was living with his parents again, even like a bad dream. And when he met Frida Lämke--that could not be avoided as he drove to and fro regularly in office hours now--he felt a bitter pang every time. He did not even say how do you do to her, he could not bring himself to say even that.
If only he could throw of! the oppression that weighed him down. They were not unkind to him--no, they were even very good--but still he had always the feeling that they only tolerated him. That irritated him and made him sad at the same time. They had not reproached him, would probably not do so either, but his father was always grave, reserved, and his mother's glance had something that simply tortured him. He was filled with a morbid distrust: why did they not tell him straight out they despised him?
Something that was almost remorse troubled him during the nights when he could not sleep. At such times his heart would throb, positively flutter, he had to sit up in bed--he could not bear to lie down--and fight for breath. Then he stared into the dark, his eyes distended with terror. Oh, what a horrible condition that was. In the morning when the attack was over--this "moral sickness"--as he used to call it scornfully--he was vexed at his sentimentality. What wrong had he done? Nothing different from what hundreds of other young fellows do, only they were not so idiotic as he. That Frida, that confounded gossip. He would have liked to wring her neck.
After those bad nights Wolfgang was still more unamiable, more taciturn, more sulky, more reserved than ever. And he looked more wretched.
"He's run down," said Paul Schlieben to himself. He did not say so to his wife--why agitate her still more?--for he could see that she was uneasy from the way she took care of him. She did not make use of words or of caresses--those days were over--but she paid special attention to his food; he was positively pampered. A man of his age ought to be much stronger. His back no longer seemed to be so broad, his chest was less arched, his black eyes lay deep in their sockets and had dark lines under them. He held himself badly and he was always in very bad spirits. His spirits, yes, his spirits, those were at the root of all the evil, but no care could alter them and no medicine. The young fellow was dissatisfied with himself, that was it, and was it any wonder? He felt ashamed of himself.