“But time is passing,” said the Senator, and looked at his watch. “I’d like my tea. Will you come in with me? The house will be like a bee-hive after a while.”
His wife, who had given a sign to Ida Jungmann, held him back.
“Just a moment, Thomas. You know Hanno has to go to his lessons. He wants to say a poem to you first. Come here, Hanno. And now, just as if no one else were here—you remember? Don’t be excited.”
It was the summer holidays, of course, but little Hanno had private lessons in arithmetic, in order to keep up with his class. Somewhere out in the suburb of St. Gertrude, in a little ill-smelling room, a man in a red beard, with dirty fingernails, was waiting to discipline him in the detested “tables.” But first he was to recite to Papa a poem painfully learned by heart, with Ida Jungmann’s help, in the little balcony on the second floor.
He leaned against the piano, in his blue sailor suit with the white V front and the wide linen collar with a big sailor’s knot coming out beneath. His thin legs were crossed, his body and head a little inclined in an attitude of shy, unconscious grace. Two or three weeks before, his hair had been cut, as not only his fellow-pupils, but the master as well, had laughed at it; but his head was still covered with soft abundant ringlets, growing down over the forehead and temples. His eyelids drooped, so that the long brown lashes lay over the deep blue shadows; and his closed lips were a little wry.
He knew well what would happen. He would begin to cry, would not be able to finish for crying; and his heart would contract, as it did on Sundays in St. Mary’s, when Herr Pfühl played on the organ in a certain piercingly solemn way. It always turned out that he wept when they wanted him to do something—when they examined him and tried to find out what he knew, as Papa so loved to do. If only Mamma had not spoken of getting excited! She meant to be encouraging, but he felt it was a mistake. There they stood, and looked at him. They expected, and feared, that he would break down—so how was it possible not to? He lifted his lashes and sought Ida’s eyes. She was playing with her watch-chain, and nodded to him in her usual honest, crabbed way. He would have liked to cling to her and have her take him away; to hear nothing but her low, soothing voice, saying “There, little Hanno, be quiet, you need not say it.”
“Well, my son, let us hear it,” said the Senator, shortly. He had sat down in an easy-chair by the table and was waiting. He did not smile—he seldom did on such occasions. Very serious, with one eyebrow lifted, he measured little Hanno with cold and scrutinizing glance.
Hanno straightened up. He rubbed one hand over the piano’s polished surface, gave a shy look at the company, and, somewhat emboldened by the gentle looks of Grandmamma and Aunt Tony, brought out, in a low, almost a hard voice: “‘The Shepherd’s Sunday Hymn,’ by Uhland.”
“Oh, my dear child, not like that,” called out the Senator. “Don’t stick there by the piano and cross your hands on your tummy like that! Stand up! Speak out! That’s the first thing. Here, stand here between the curtains. Now, hold your head up—let your arms hang down quietly at your sides.”
Hanno took up his position on the threshold of the living-room and let his arms hang down. Obediently he raised his head, but his eyes—the lashes drooped so low that they were invisible. They were probably already swimming in tears.