Had the years also changed her in the same manner? Her looking-glass did not show her any very great change. There was still the same girlish figure, which seemed twice as slender beside her husband's stoutness. Her hair was still fair, and she still blushed like a young girl to whom a stray look is enough to make the blood, that flows so easily, invade her delicate cheeks. Yes, she had still remained young outwardly. But her mind was often weary. Wolf caused her too much anxiety. A mother, who was ten, fifteen years younger than she, would not perhaps feel how every nerve becomes strained when dealing with such a child as she did. Would not such a mother often have laughed when she felt ready to cry?
Oh, what a boisterous, inexhaustible vital power there was in that boy! She was amazed, bewildered, exhausted by it. Was he never tired? Always on his legs, out of bed at six, always out, out. She heard him tossing about restlessly at daybreak. He slept in the next room to theirs, and the door between the rooms always stood open, although her husband scolded her for it. The boy was big enough, did not want supervising. They need not have that disturbance at night, at any rate.
But she wanted to watch over his sleep too; she must do so. She often heard him talk in his dreams, draw his breath so heavily, as though something were distressing him. Then she would slip out of bed, softly, softly, so that her husband should not hear her; she did not light any candle, she groped her way into the other room on bare feet. And then she would stand at his bedside. He still had the pretty railed cot from his first boyhood--but how long would it be before it was too small? How quickly he was growing, how terribly quickly. She passed her hand cautiously and lightly over the cover, and felt the boy's long body underneath it. Then he began to toss about, groan, stiffen himself like one who is struggling with something. What could be the matter with him? Then he spoke indistinctly. Of what was he dreaming so vividly? He was wet through with perspiration.
If only she could see him. But she dared not light a candle. What should she say to her husband if he, awakened by the light, asked her what she was doing there? And Wölfchen would also wake and ask her what she wanted.
Yes, what did she really want? She had no answer ready even for herself. She would only have liked to know what was occupying his mind in his dream to such an extent that he sighed and struggled. Of what was he dreaming? Of whom? Where was he in his dream?
She trembled as she stood at his bedside on her bare feet listening. And then she bent over him so closely that his breath, uneven and hot, blew into her face, and she breathed on him again--did not they mingle their breath in that manner? Was she not giving him breath of her breath in that manner?--and whispered softly and yet so earnestly, imploringly and at the same time urgently: "Your mother is here, your mother is near you."
But he threw himself over to the other side with a jerk, turned his back on her and mumbled something. Nothing but incomprehensible words, rarely anything that was distinct, but even that was enough; she felt he was not there, not with her, that he was far away. Did his soul seek the home he did not know in his dreams? that he could not even know about, and that still had such a powerful influence that it drew him there even unconsciously?
Käte stood at Wolfgang's bedside tortured by such an anxiety as she had never felt before: a mother and still not mother. Alas, she was only a strange woman at the bedside of a strange child.
She crept back to her bed and buried her throbbing brows deep in the pillows. She felt her heart beat tumultuously, and she scolded herself for allowing her thoughts to dwell on such unavailing things. She did not change anything by it, it only made her weary and sad.
When Käte rose after such a night she felt her husband's eyes resting on her anxiously, and her hands trembled as she coiled up her thick hair. It was fortunate that she dropped a hair-pin, then she could stoop quickly and withdraw her tired face with the dark lines under the eyes from his scrutinising glance.