When Frida went to business next morning--it was half past seven--she said to her mother: "Now he's gone," and she remained thoughtful the whole day. She had not spoken to Wolfgang for many weeks and she had not minded it at all during the time but since the evening before she had felt sad. She had thought much of him, she could not forget him at all.
CHAPTER XVIII
Käte was alone with her son. Now she had him all to herself. What she had striven for jealously before had now been given to her. Not even nature that looked in at the windows with such alluring eyes could attract him. It surprised her--nay, it almost saddened her now--that he did not show more interest. They travelled through Switzerland--he saw it for the first time--but those high mountains, whose summits were lost in the snow and the clouds and that moved her to tears of adoring admiration the first time she saw them, hardly wrung a glance from him. Now and then he looked out of the carriage window, but he mostly leant back in his corner reading, or dreaming with open eyes.
"Are you tired?"
"No," he said; nothing but "no," but without the surly abruptness which had been peculiar to him. His tone was no longer unpleasant and repellent.
Käte looked at her son with anxious eyes: was the journey tiring him? It was fortunate that she was with him. It seemed to her that she was indispensable, and a feeling of heartfelt satisfaction made her insensible to the fatigue of the long journey.
Wolfgang was not much interested in the cathedral at Milan. "Yes, grand," he said when she grew enthusiastic about the marvellous structure. But he would not go up to the platform with her, from which they would have a magnificent view all round as far as the distant Alps, as the weather was so clear. "You go alone, leave me here."
At first it seemed ridiculous to her that she, the old woman, should go up whilst he, the young man, remained below. But at last she could not resist the desire to see all those marvellous things again that she had already once enjoyed. She took a ticket for the platform, and he opened one of the camp stools that stand about in the enormous empty cathedral and sat down, his back against a marble pillar.
Oh, it was nice to rest here. After the market outside, with its noise and the buzzing of voices and all the gaudy colours, he found a twilight here filled with the perfume of incense. It did not disturb him that doors opened and closed, that people came in and out in crowds. That here a guide gave the visitors the information he had learnt by heart, drawling it quite loudly in a cracked voice without heeding that he meanwhile almost stumbled over the feet of those who were kneeling on low benches, confessing their sins in a whisper to a priest seated there. That there someone was celebrating mass--the priests were curtsying and ringing their bells--whilst here a cook chattered to a friend of hers, the fowls that were tied together by their legs lying beside her.
All that did not disturb him, he did not notice it even. The delicious twilight filled his senses, he was so sleepy, felt such a blessed fatigue. All the saints smiled before his closing eyes, sweet Marys and chubby little angels resembling cupids. He felt at his ease there. Milan Cathedral, that wonder of the world, lost its embarrassing grandeur; the wide walls moved together, became narrow and home-like, and still they enfolded the world a peaceful world in which sinners kneel down and rise again pure. Wolfgang was seized with a great longing to kneel down there also. Oh, there it was again, the longing he had had in his boyhood. How he had loved the church their maid Cilia had taken him to. He still loved it, he loved it anew, he loved it now with a more ardent love than in those days. He felt at home in this church, he had the warm feeling of belonging to it. Qui vivis et regnas in sæcula sæculorum. The golden monstrance gleamed as it was raised on high, those who were praying bowed low, blissful harmonies floated under the high arched dome, ever more and more beautiful--more and more softly. His eyelids closed.