Frau Wahnschaffe had grown pale. She approached her son and asked him whether he was hurt. He was not, although his jacket showed a long rent.
“He leads a charmed life,” she said that night after dinner to Crammon, with whom she had withdrawn to a quiet corner. “And that is my one consolation. His utter recklessness often frightens me. I have noticed with pleasure that you take an interest in him. Do try to guide him a little along reasonable ways.”
Her voice was hollow and her face immobile. Her eyes stared past one. She knew no cares and had never known any, nor had she, apparently, ever reflected concerning those of others. Yet no one had ever seen this woman smile. The utter absence of friction in her life seemed to have reduced the motions of her soul to a point of deadness. Only the thought of Christian gave her whole being a shade of warmth; only when she could speak of him did she grow eloquent.
Crammon answered: “My dear lady, it is better to leave a fellow like Christian to his own fate. That is his best protection.”
She nodded, although she disliked the colloquial carelessness of his speech. She told him how in his boyhood Christian had once gone to visit the lumbermen in the forest. The trunk of a mighty pine had been almost cut through, and the men ran to the end of the rope attached to the tree’s top. The great tree wavered when they first noticed the boy. They cried out in horror, and tried to let the tree crash down in another direction. It was too late. And while some tugged desperately at the rope and were beside themselves with fright, a few headed by the foreman ran with lifted and warning arms into the very sphere of danger. The boy stood there quietly, and gazed unsuspectingly upward. The tree fell and crushed the foreman to death. But the branches slipped gently over Christian as if to caress him; and when the pine lay upon the earth, he stood in the midst of its topmost twigs as though he had been placed there, untouched and unastonished. And those who were there said he had been saved literally but by the breadth of a hair.
Crammon could not get rid of the vision which he himself had seen: the proud young wielder of the whip amid the unleashed pack. He reflected deeply. “It is clear,” he said to himself, “that I need no longer go to Cordova to find out how the young muleteers laugh.”
VIII
At the castle of Waldleiningen there was a wine room in which one could drink comfortably. In it Crammon and Christian drank one evening to their deeper friendship. And when the bottle was emptied of its precious vintage Crammon proposed that, since it was a beautiful night, they should take a turn in the park. Christian agreed.
In the moonlight they walked over the pebbles of the paths. Trees and bushes swam in a silvery haze.
“Gossamers and the mist of autumn,” said Crammon. “Quite as the poets describe it.”