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THE SON OF HIS MOTHER

BY CLARA VIEBIG

Authorised Translation by H. RAAHAUGE

LONDON: JOHN LANE THE BODLEY HEAD
NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY
TORONTO: BELL & COCKBURN MCMXIII

THE ANCHOR PRESS, LTD., TIPTREE ESSEX

BOOK I

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The Son of his Mother

CHAPTER I

The husband and wife were of a literary turn of mind, and as they had the money to cultivate their artistic tastes he wrote a little and she painted. They also played and sang duets together, at least they had done so when they were first married; now they went to concerts and the opera more frequently instead. They were liked wherever they went, they had friends, they were called "charming people," and still something was wanting to complete their happiness--they had no children.

And they would probably not have any now, as they had been married for some time, and the likelihood of children being born to them was very remote.

No doubt he sighed and knit his brow in unguarded moments when he sat at his desk in his office, but especially when he passed through the villages in the Brandenburg March on the rides he took in the more distant environs of Berlin--partly for his health, partly because he still retained the liking for riding from the time he was in the cavalry--and saw swarms of little flaxen-haired children romping on the sandy roads. However, he did not let his wife perceive that he missed something, for he loved her.

But she could not control herself in the same manner. The longer she was married the more nervous she became. At times she felt irritated with her husband for no reason. She persistently turned her eyes away from the announcement of births in the newspapers with a certain shrinking, and, if her glance happened once in a way to fall on one in which happy parents notified the birth of a son, she put the paper aside hastily.

In former years Käte Schlieben had knitted, crocheted, embroidered and sewn all sorts of pretty little children's garments--she used to be quite famous for the daintiness of her little baby jackets trimmed with blue and pink ribbons, all her newly married acquaintances would ask her for the wonderful little things--but now she had finally given up that sort of work. She had given up hope. What good did it do her to put her forefingers into the tiny sleeves of a baby's first jacket, and, holding it out in front of her, gaze at it a long, long time with dreamy eyes? It only tortured her.

And she felt the torture twice as much in those grey days that suddenly put in an appearance without any reason, that creep in silently even in the midst of sunshine. On those occasions she would lie on the couch in her room that was furnished with such exquisite taste--really artistically--and close her eyes tightly. And then all at once a shout, clear, shrill, triumphant, like the cry of a swallow on the wing, would ascend from the street, from the promenade under the chestnut-trees. She stopped her ears when she heard that cry, which penetrated further than any other tone, which soared up into the ether as swiftly as an arrow, and cradled itself up there blissfully. She could not bear to hear anything like that--she was becoming morbid.

Alas, when she and her husband grew old, with minds no longer so receptive and too weary to seek incitement in the world, who would bring it to them in their home? Who would bring them anything of what was going on outside? What youth with his freshness, with the joyousness that envelops those of twenty like a dainty garment, that beams from smooth brows like warmth and sunshine, would give them back a breath of their youth, which had already disappeared in accordance with the laws of Time? Who would wax enthusiastic at the things that had once made them enthusiastic, and which they would enjoy once more as though they were new for them too? Who would fill the house and garden with his laughter, with that careless laughter that is so infectious? Who would kiss them with warm lips, and make them happy by his tenderness? Who would carry them on his wings with him, so that they did not feel they were weary?

Alas, there is no second youth for those who are childless. Nobody would come into the inheritance of delight in what was beautiful, of taste for what was beautiful, of enthusiasm for art and artists which they would leave behind them. Nobody would guard reverently all those hundreds of things and nicknacks she had gathered together so tastefully in her house with the delight of a collector. And nobody would, alas, hold the hand that was fast growing cold with loving hands, in that last difficult hour which all dread, and cry: "Father, Mother, don't go! Not yet!" Oh, God, such loving hands would not close their eyes----

When Paul Schlieben used to come home from his office in those days he was co-partner in a large business that his grandfather had founded and his father raised to a high position--he often found his wife's sweet face stained with tears, her delicate complexion marred by constant weeping. And her mouth only forced itself to smile, and in her beautiful brown eyes there lurked a certain melancholy.

The doctor shrugged his shoulders. The lady was suffering from nerves, that was what was the matter with her. She had too much time for brooding, she was left to herself too much.

In order to alter this, her anxious husband withdrew from the business for an indefinite period. His partners could get on just as well without him. The doctor was right, he must devote himself more to his wife; they were both so lonely, so entirely dependent on each other.

It was decided they should travel; there was no reason whatever why they should remain at home. The beautiful house was given up, their furniture, all their costly things were stored. If they cared to do so they could remain away for years, get impressions, amuse themselves. Käte would paint landscapes in beautiful countries, and he--well, he could easily find compensation in writing, should he miss his usual work.

They went to Italy and Corsica--still further, to Egypt and Greece. They saw the Highlands, Sweden and Norway, very many beautiful places.

Käte pressed her husband's hand gratefully. Her susceptible mind waxed enthusiastic, and her talent for painting, which was by no means insignificant, felt powerfully stimulated all at once. How splendid to be able to paint, to keep hold of all that glow of colour, that wonderful effect of tone that revealed itself to her delighted eyes on her canvas.

She was so eager that she went out with her painting materials in the morning, whether it was at Capri, on the shores of the blue Bosphorus, in the yellow sand of the desert, facing the precipitous pinnacles in the Fjords, or in the rose gardens of the Riviera. Her delicate face got sunburnt; she no longer even paid any attention to her hands, which she used to take such care of. The ardent longing to manifest herself had seized hold of her. Thank God, she could create something now. The miserable feeling of a useless life did not exist any longer, nor the torturing knowledge: your life ceases the moment your eyes close, there is nothing of you that will survive you. Now she would at least leave something behind that she had produced, even if it were only a picture. Her paintings increased in number; quite a quantity of rolls of canvas were dragged about now wherever they went.

At first Paul Schlieben was very pleased to see his wife so enthusiastic. He politely carried her camp-stool and easel for her, and never lost patience when he remained for hours and hours near her whilst she worked. He lay in the scanty shadow of a palm-tree, and used to follow the movements of her brush over the top of his book. How fortunate that her art gave her so much satisfaction. Even though it was a little fatiguing for him to lie about doing nothing he must not say anything, no, he must not, for he had nothing to offer her as a compensation, nothing whatever. And he sighed. It was the same sigh that had escaped him when the numerous flaxen-haired little children were playing about on the sandy roads in the Brandenburg March, the same sigh which Sundays drew from him, when he used to see all the proletariat of the town--man and wife and children, children, children--wandering to the Zoo. Yes, he was right--he passed his hand a little nervously across his forehead--that writer was right--now, who could it be?--who had once said somewhere: "Why does a man marry? Only to have children, heirs of his body, of his blood. Children to whom he can pass on the wishes and hopes that are in him and also the achievements; children who are descended from him like shoots from a tree, children who enable a man to live eternally." That was the only way in which life after death could be understood--life eternal. The resurrection of the body, which the Church promises, was to be interpreted as the renewal of one's own personality in the coming generations. Oh, there was something great, something indescribably comforting in such a survival.

"Are you speculating about something?" asked his wife. She had looked up from her easel for a moment.

"Eh? What? Did you say anything, darling?" The man started up in a fright, as one who has been straying along forbidden paths.

She laughed at his absent-mindedness; it was getting worse and worse. But what was he thinking of? Business?--surely not. But perhaps he wanted to write a novel, a tale? Why should he not try his hand at that for once in a way? That was something quite different from sending short chatty accounts of one's journey to one of the papers. And of course he would be able to do it. People who had not half the education, not half the knowledge, not half the aesthetic refinement of feeling he had wrote quite readable books.

She talked brightly and persuasively to him, but he shook his head with a certain resignation: nonsense, neither novels nor any other kind of writing. And he thought to himself: it is always said that a piece of work is like a child--that is to say, only a truly great piece of work, of course. Was the work he and his wife created work in that sense? Work that would exist eternally? He suddenly found things to censure severely in her picture, which he had politely admired only the day before.

She got quite frightened about it. Why was he so irritable to-day? Was he going to develop nerves at the finish? Yes, it was evident, the warm air of the south did not suit him, he had lost his briskness, looked so tired. There was nothing for it, her husband was more to her than her picture, she would leave off her painting at once.

And that was what happened. They went away, travelled from one place to another, from one hotel to another, along the lakes, over the frontier, until they made a somewhat longer stay high up among the Alps in Switzerland.

Instead of lying under a palm-tree he lay in the shadow of a fir--now his wife was painting--and followed the movements of her brush with his eyes over the top of his open book.

She was busily painting, for she had discovered a delightful subject. That green alpine meadow, with its wealth of flowers as variegated as they could possibly be and the backs of the brown cows with the sun shining on them, was as full of charm as the Garden of Eden on the first day of creation. In her eagerness to see she had pushed her broad-brimmed hat back, and the warm summer sun was burning little golden spots on her delicate cheeks and the narrow bridge of her finely shaped nose. She held the brush that she had dipped into the green on her palette up against the green of the meadow in order to compare the two, and blinked with half-closed eyes to see if she had got the colour right.

At that moment a sound made her start--it was half a growl of displeasure at the disturbance, half a murmur of approval. Her husband had risen and was looking at a couple of children who had approached them noiselessly. They were offering rhododendrons for sale, the girl had a small basket full of them, the boy was carrying his nosegay in his hand.

What exceedingly pretty creatures they were, the girl so blue-eyed and gentle, the boy a regular little scamp. The woman's heart swelled. She bought all the rhododendrons from them, even gave them more than they asked for them.

That was a stroke of great luck for the little Swiss boy and girl--just think, to get more than they had asked for. They blushed with happiness, and when the strange lady asked them questions in a kind voice, they commenced to chatter ingenuously.

She would have to paint those children, they were really too delightful, they were a thousand times more beautiful than the most beautiful landscape.

Paul Schlieben looked on with a strange uneasiness whilst his wife painted the children, first the big girl and then the small boy. How intently she gazed at the boy's round face. Her eyes were brilliant, she never seemed to be tired, and only paused when the children grew impatient. All her thoughts turned on the painting. Would the children come again that day? Was the light good? Surely there would not be a storm to prevent the children from coming? Nothing else was of any interest to her. She displayed great zeal. And still the pictures turned out bad; the features were like theirs, but there was no trace of the child-mind in them. He saw it clearly: those who are childless cannot paint children.

Poor woman! He looked on at her efforts with a feeling of deep compassion. Was not her face becoming soft like a mother's, lovely and round when she bent down to the children? The Madonna type--and still this woman had been denied children.

No, he could not look on at it any longer, it made him ill. The man bade the children go home in a gruff voice. The pictures were ready, what was the good of touching them up any more? That did not make them any better, on the contrary.

That evening Käte cried as she used to cry at home. And she was angry with her husband. Why did he not let her have that pleasure? Why did he all at once say they were to leave? She did not understand him. Were the children not sweet, delightful? Was it because they disturbed him?

"Yes," was all he said. There was a hard dry sound in his voice--a "yes" that came with such difficulty--and she raised her head from the handkerchief in which she had buried it and looked across at him. He was standing at the window in the carpeted room of the hotel, his hands resting on the window-ledge, his forehead pressed against the pane. He was gazing silently at the vast landscape before him, in which the mountaintops covered with snow that glowed in the radiance of the setting sun spoke to him of immortality. How he pressed his lips together, how nervously his moustache trembled.

She crept up to him and laid her head on his shoulder. "What is the matter with you?" she asked him softly. "Do you miss your work--yes, it's your work, isn't it? I was afraid of that. You are getting tired of this, you must be doing something again. I promise you I'll be reasonable--never complain any more--only stop here a little longer, only three weeks longer--two weeks."

He remained silent.

"Only ten--eight--six days more. Not even that?" she said, bitterly disappointed, for he had shaken his head. She wound her arms round his neck. "Only five more--four--three days, please. Why not? Those few days, please only three days more." She positively haggled for each day. "Oh, then at least two days more."

She sobbed aloud, her arms fell from his neck--he must allow her two days.

Her voice cut him to the heart. He had never heard her beg like that before, but he made a stand against the feeling of yielding that was creeping over him. Only no sentimentality. It was better to go away from there quickly, much better for her.

"We're going away to-morrow."

And as she looked at him with wide-open horror-struck eyes and pallid cheeks, the words escaped from his lips although he had not intended saying them, drawn from him by a bitterness that he could not master any longer:

"They are not yours!"

CHAPTER II

And they went away.

But it seemed to the woman as though every joy had disappeared with the emerald green meadow in the Alps, in which she had painted the lovely children. There was the same old nervous twitch in her face, the corners of her mouth drooped slightly and she cried very easily. Paul Schlieben watched his wife with positive dismay. Oh dear, had it all been in vain, the giving up of his work, all this travelling about without making any plans that was so fatiguing? Had the old melancholy frame of mind taken possession of her again?

When he saw her sitting there so disinclined to exert herself, her hands lying idle in her lap, a feeling akin to fury came over him. Why did she not do something? Why did she not paint? That confounded meadow in the Alps was surely not the only place where she could work. Was it not beautiful here as well?

They had settled down in the Black Forest. But it was in vain that he hoped from day to day that one of the quiet green wooded valleys or one of the nut-brown maidens of the Black Forest with her cherry-red hat and enormous red umbrella, as Vautier has painted them, would tempt her to bring out her painting materials. She felt no inclination--nay, she had positively a kind of dread of touching her brushes again.

He reproached himself bitterly in secret. Would it not have been better to have left her that pleasure and not have interfered? Still--the thing would have had to end some time, and the longer it had lasted the more difficult the separation would have been. But he had made up his mind about one thing, they would return to Berlin again late in the autumn. With the best will in the world he would not be able to stand it any longer. He was heartily tired of this wandering from hotel to hotel, this lounging about the world with nothing to show for it but an occasional short article for the papers, a chatty account of a journey to some corner of the earth of which people knew but little. He longed for a home of his own again, and felt a great desire to return to his business, which he had often looked upon as a fetter and so prosaic whilst he was in it. But Käte! When he thought of her again spending many hours alone at home, with no interests beyond herself and her reading for in her state of hypersensitiveness she found little pleasure in associating with other women--a feeling of hopelessness came over him. Then there would be the same sad eyes again, the same melancholy smile, the old irritable moods from which the whole house used to suffer, herself the most.

And he subjected himself to an examination as though blaming himself for it. He passed his whole life in review: had he committed any crime that no son had been given to him, no daughter? Ah, if only Käte had a child everything would be right. Then she would have quite enough to do, would be entirely taken up with the little creature round which the love of parents, full of hope and entitled to hope, revolves in an ever-renewed circle.

Both husband and wife were torturing themselves, for the woman's thoughts especially always ended at that one point. Now that she had been separated from those dear children, from the, alas, much too short happiness she had experienced that summer, it seemed to have become quite clear to her what she missed--for had it not only weighed on her like a painful suspicion before? But now, now the terrible unvarnished truth was there: everything people otherwise call "happiness" in this world is nothing compared to a child's kiss, to its smile, to its nestling in its mother's lap.

She had always given the children in the meadow a tender kiss when they came and went, now she longed for those kisses. Her husband's kiss did not replace them; she would soon have been married fifteen years, his kiss was no longer a sensation, it had become a habit. But a kiss from a child's lips, that are so fresh, so untouched, so timid and yet so confiding, was something quite new to her, something, exceedingly sweet. A feeling of happiness had flowed through her soul on those occasions as well as the quite physical pleasure of being able to bury her mouth in those delicately soft and yet so firm cheeks, which health and youth had covered with a soft down like that on the cheeks of a peach. Her thoughts always wandered back to that meadow in the Alps, full of longing. And this longing of hers that was never stilled magnified what had happened, and surrounded the figures that had appeared in her life for so short a time with the whole halo of tender memories. Her idle thoughts spun long threads. As she longed for those little ones so they would also be longing for her, they would wander across the meadow weeping, and the large present of money she had left behind for each of them with the proprietor of the hotel--she had been obliged to leave without saying good-bye to them--would not console them; they would stand outside the door and cast their eyes up to the windows from which their friend so often had waved to them. No, she could not forgive Paul for showing so little comprehension of her feelings.

The stay in the Black Forest, whose velvety slopes reminded them too much of the Swiss meadows and from whose points of view you could look over to the Alps on a clear day, became a torture to both the man and woman. They felt they must get away; the dark firs, the immense green forest became too monotonous for them. Should they not try some seaside resort for once? The sea is ever new. And it was also just the season for the seaside. The wind blew already over the stubble in the fields, as they drove down to the plain.

They chose a Belgian watering-place, one in which the visitors dress a great deal, and in which quite a cosmopolitan set of people offer something new to the eye every day. They both felt it, they had remained much too long in mountain solitudes.

During the first days the gay doings amused them, but then Paul and his wife, between whom something like a barrier had tried to push itself lately, both agreed all at once: this sauntering up and down of men who looked like fools, of women who if they did not belong to the demi-monde successfully imitated it, was not for them. Let them only get away.

The man proposed they should give up travelling entirely and return to Berlin a little earlier, but Käte would not listen to it. She had a secret dread of Berlin--oh, would she have to go back to her old life again? So far she had never asked herself what she had really expected from these long months of travel; but she had hoped for something--certainly. What?

Oh dear, now she would be so much alone again, and there was nothing, nothing that really filled her life entirely.

No, she was not able to return to Berlin yet. She told her husband that she felt she had not quite recovered yet--she was certainly anæmic, she was suffering from poorness of blood. She ought to have gone to Schwalbach, Franzensbad or some other iron springs long ago--who knows, perhaps many things would be different then.

He was not impatient--at least he did not show it--for he was moved with a deep compassion for her. Of course she should go to some iron springs; they ought to have tried them long ago, have made a point of it.

The Belgian doctor sent them to the well-known baths at Spa.

They arrived there full of hope. In her the hope was quite genuine. "You will see," she said to her husband in a brighter voice, "this will do me good. I have a vague feeling--no, I really feel quite sure that something good will happen to us here."

And he hoped so too. He forced himself to hope in order to please her. Oh, it would be enough, quite enough if the characteristics of the landscape won so much interest from her that she took up her painting again, which she had neglected entirely. How pleased he would be at even that. If her former zeal for art showed itself again, that was a thousand times more health-bringing than the strongest iron springs at Spa.

The heather was in bloom, the whole plateau was red, the purple sun set in a mass of purple.

It happened as he had hoped, that is to say, she did not begin to paint, but she made expeditions into the Ardennes and the Eifel with him on foot and in a carriage, and enjoyed them. The Venn had bewitched her. In her light-coloured dress she stood like a small speck of light in the immense seriousness of the landscape, protected her eyes with her hand from the view of the sun, which is so open there, so unobstructed either by tree or mountain, and took deep breaths of the sharp clear air that has not yet been vitiated by any smoke from human dwellings, hardly by human breath. Around her the Venn blossomed like a carpet of one colour, dark, calm, refreshing and beneficial to the eye; it was only here and there that the blue gentian and the white quivering flock of the cotton-grass were seen to raise their heads among the heather.

"Oh, how beautiful!" She said it with deep feeling. The melancholy of the landscape flattered her mood. There was no gaudy tone there that disturbed her, no medley of colours. Even the sun, which sets there in greater beauty than anywhere else--blushing so deeply that the whole sky blushes with it, that the winding Venn rivulet hedged in by cushions of moss, that every pool, every peat-hole full of water reflects its beams ruddy-gold, and the sad Venn itself wears a mantle of glowing splendour--even this sun brought no glaringly bright light with it. It displayed its mighty disc in a grand dignified manner, a serious victor after a serious struggle.

Käte looked into this marvellous sun with large eyes bathed in tears, until the last beam, the last rosy streak in the grey mass of clouds had vanished. Now it had gone--the heavens were dead--but in the morning it would be there again, an eternal, imperishable, never-conquered hope. Then should not, ought not the human heart to beat again too, revived anew, always full of hope?

Clouds of mist sped across the moor, veiled, indescribable, vague shapes. There was a whispering before the coming of the wind, a lisping through the heather and the cotton-grass--it seemed to Käte as though the Venn had something to tell her. What was it saying? Ah, it must be for some reason that she had come there, that she felt she was being held fast as though by a strong and still kind hand.

She walked on with quicker, more elastic steps, as though she were searching for something.

Her husband was delighted that his wife was so pleased with the neighbourhood. True, the landscape had no special attraction for him--was it not very desolate, monotonous and unfertile there? But the characteristic scenery was certainly harmonious, very harmonious--well, if she found pleasure in it, it was better than a paradise to him.

They often drove up to Baraque Michel, that lonely inn on the borders between Belgium and Prussia, in which the douaniers drank their drams of gin when on the look-out for smugglers, and where the peat-cutters dry their smocks that the mist has wetted and their saturated boots at the fire that is always burning on the hearth.

So many crosses in the Venn, so many human beings who have met with a fatal accident. Käte listened to the men's stories with a secret shudder--could the Venn be so terrible? and she questioned them again and again. Was it possible that the man from Xhoffraix, who had driven off to get peat litter, had been swallowed up there so close to the road with cart and horse, and that they had never, never seen anything of him again? And that cross there, so weather-beaten and black, how had that come into the middle of the marsh? Why had that travelling journeyman, whose intention it was to go along the high road from Malmedy to Eupen, gone so far astray? Had it been dark or had there been a heavy fall of snow so that he could not see, or was it the cold, that terrible cold, in which a weary man can freeze to death? Nothing of the kind; only a mist, a sudden mist, which confuses a man so, that he no longer knows which is forward or which is backward, which is left or which is right, that he loses all idea of where he is going, gets away from the road and runs round in a circle like a poor, mad, terrified animal. And all the mists that rise in the Venn when daylight disappears, are they the souls of those who have never been buried, and who in garments that are falling to pieces rise every night from their graves, which have neither been consecrated by a benediction nor by holy water and in which they cannot find rest?

That was a fairy tale. But was not everything there as in the fairy tale? So quite different to everywhere else in the world, in reality ugly and yet not ugly, in reality not beautiful and yet so exceedingly beautiful? And she herself, was she not quite a different being there? Did she not wander about full of hope, in blissful dreams, like one to whom something wonderful is to happen?

It was in the sixth week of their stay at Spa. The nights were already as cold as in winter, but the days were still sunny. It was always a long journey up to the inn even for the strong Ardennes horses, but Paul and his wife were there again to-day. Would they have to leave soon? Alas, yes. Käte had to confess it to herself with sorrow. Everything was very autumnal, the heather had finished flowering, the air was raw; the grass that had already been frozen during the night rustled under her feet. They could have found use for their winter clothes.

"Ugh, how cold," said the man shivering, and he turned up the collar of his overcoat. He wanted to twist a shawl round his wife's neck, but she resisted: "No, no!" She ran on in front of him through the rustling heather with quick steps. "Just look."

It was a wide view that presented itself to their eyes there on the highest point in the Venn, that is adorned with a rickety wooden tower. The whole large plateau covered with heather lay before them, with here and there a group of dark firs that only showed spreading branches on the side away from the storm. These firs that cowered so timidly were trees that had been planted there; they were hardly higher than the heather, and only recognisable on account of their different colour. And, here and there, there was a stray grey boulder and a cross that the wind had carried to the side of it. And a calm lay over the whole in the pale midday autumn light as though it were God's acre.

When they had climbed up the tower they saw still more. From the plateau they looked down into the valley: a blue expanse around them, blue from the darkness of the forests and from autumn vapours, and in the beautiful blue outstretched villages the white houses half hidden behind tall hedges. And here, looking down on Belgium, with its grey fumes hanging like a cloud in the clear transparent autumn air, lay the large town of Verviers with its church-towers and factory chimneys towering above it.

Käte heaved a sigh and shuddered involuntarily: oh, was the workaday world so near? Was grey life already approaching nearer and nearer to her wonderful fairy world?

Her husband gave a slight cough; he found it very cold up there. They went down from the tower, but when he wanted to take her back to the inn she resisted: "No, not yet, not yet. That's only the midday bell."

The bell was ringing in Fischbach Chapel, that ancient little church with its slated roof, in whose tower the great red lantern was formerly hoisted to point out the safe harbour to the wanderer swimming in the wild sea of mists, and the bell rung unceasingly to save the man who had lost his way through his ear should his eye fail him. The bell rang out clear and penetrating in the solitude, the only sound in the vast stillness.

"How touching that sound is." Käte stood with folded hands and looked into the wide expanse, her eyes swimming in tears. What a charm there was in this Venn. It encircled the soul as the tough underwood of the heather and the creeping tendrils of the club moss entangled the foot. When she thought of how soon she would have to leave it, to go away from that immense stillness that seemed to be concealing a secret, to be cherishing something marvellous in its deep lap, her heart contracted in sudden fear. What would happen to her, what would become of her? Her seeking soul stood like a child on the threshold of fairyland asking for something--was there to be no gift for her?

"What was that?" All at once she seized hold of her husband's arm with a low cry of terror. "Didn't you hear it as well?"

She had grown quite pale; she stood there with dilated eyes, raising herself on her toes with an involuntary movement and craning her neck forward.

"There it is again. Do you hear it?" Something like a child's soft whimpering had penetrated to her ear.

No, he had not heard anything. "I suppose there are some people in the neighbourhood. How you do frighten a body, Käte." He shook his head a little angrily. "You know very well that all the women and children have left their villages in the Venn to gather cranberries. That's all the harvest they have, you see. Look, the berries are quite ripe." Stooping down he took up a plant.

The small cluster of berries of a deep coral in colour formed a beautiful contrast to the glossy dark green of the small oval leaf. But there were also some flowers on the plant, small pure white flowers.

"Like myrtle, just like the flower on a myrtle," she said, taking the plant out of his hand. "And the leaves are also exactly like myrtle leaves." Twisting the stalk round between her finger and thumb she gazed at it thoughtfully. "The Venn myrtle." And, raising the little flower to her mouth, she kissed it, full of delight.

"Do you still remember--that time--on the evening of our wedding-day, do you still remember? You kissed the myrtle that had been in my wreath and I kissed it too, and then we kissed each other. Then--then--oh, how happy we were then." She said it very softly, as though lost in sweet memories.

He smiled, and as she swayed towards him, with a dreamy look in her eyes that were fixed the whole time on the little green plant, he drew her closer and laid his arm round her. "And are we not--not"--he wanted to say "not just as happy," but all he said was: "not happy to-day, too?"

She did not answer, she remained silent. But then, hurling the plant with its glossy leaves away with a sudden movement, she turned and ran away from him blindly into the Venn, without noticing where she was going.

"What's the matter, Käte?" He hurried after her, terrified. She ran so quickly that he could not overtake her at once. "Käte, you'll fall. Wait, I say. Käte, what is the matter with you?"

No answer. But he saw from the convulsive movements of her shoulders that she was weeping violently. Oh dear, what was the matter now? He looked troubled as he ran after her across the desolate Venn. Was she never to get any better? It was really enough to make a fellow lose all pleasure in life. How stupid it had been to bring her to the Venn--real madness. There was no brightness to be found there. A hopelessness lurked in that unlimited expanse, a terrible hardness in that sharp aromatic air, an unbearable melancholy in that vast stillness.

The man only heard his own quickened breathing. He ran more and more quickly, all at once he became very anxious about his wife. Now he had almost reached her--he had already stretched out his hand to seize hold of her fluttering dress--then she turned round, threw herself into his arms and sobbed: "Oh, here's both, blossom and fruit. But our myrtle has faded and not borne fruit--not fruit--we poor people."

So that was it--the same thing again? Confound it. He who as a rule was so temperate stamped his foot violently. Anger, shame, and a certain feeling of pain drove the blood to his head. There he stood now in that lonely place with his wife in his arms weeping most pitifully, whilst he himself was deserving of much pity in his own opinion.

"Don't be angry, don't be angry," she implored, clinging more closely to him. "You see, I had hoped--oh, hoped for certain--expected--I don't know myself what, but still I had expected something here--and today--just now everything has become clear. All, all was in vain. Let me cry."

And she wept as one in whom all hope is dead.

What was he to say to her? How console her? He did not venture to say a word, only stroked her hot face softly whilst he, too, became conscious of a certain feeling, that feeling that he had not always the strength to push aside.

They stood like that for a long time without saying a word, until he, pulling himself together, said in a voice that he tried to make calm and indifferent: "We shall have to return, we have got quite into the wilds. Come, take my arm. You are overtired, and when we--"

"Hush," she said, interrupting him, letting go of his arm quickly. "The same as before. Somebody is in trouble."

Now he heard it as well. They both listened. Was it an animal? Or a child's voice, the voice of quite a small child?

"My God!" Käte said nothing more, but making up her mind quickly, she turned to the right and ran down into a small hollow, without heeding that she stumbled several times among the bushes, through which it was impossible for her to force a passage.

Her quick ear had led her right. There was the child lying on the ground. It had no pillow, no covering, and was miserably wrapt up in a woman's old torn skirt. The little head with its dark hair lay in the heather that was covered with hoar-frost; the child was gazing fixedly into the luminous space between the heavens and the Venn with its large clear eyes.

There was no veil, nothing to protect it; no mother either--only the Venn.

Nevertheless they had deceived themselves. It was not crying, it was only talking to itself as quiet contented children generally do. It had stretched out its little hands, which were not wrapped up like the rest of its body, and had seized hold of some of the red berries and squashed them. Then its little fists had wandered up to the hungry mouth; there were drops of the juice from the berries on its baby lips.

"Quite alone?" Käte had sunk down on her knees, her hands trembled as they embraced the bundle. "Oh, the poor child. How sweet it is. Look, Paul. How has it come here? It will die of cold, of hunger. Do call out, Paul. The poor little mite. If its mother came now I would give her a piece of my mind it's disgraceful to let the helpless little mite lie like this. Call--loud--louder."

He called, he shouted: "Heigh! Hallo! Is nobody there?"

No voice answered, nobody came. The whole Venn was as quiet as though it were an extinct, long-forgotten world.

"Nobody is coming," whispered Käte quite softly, and there was an expression of fear and at the same time trembling exultation in her voice. "Its mother does not trouble--who knows where the woman is? I wonder if she's coming?" She looked round searchingly, turned her head in all directions, and then stooped over the child again with a sigh of contentment.

What unpardonable thoughtlessness--no, what unspeakable barbarity to abandon such a mite in that place. If they had come only a few hours--only an hour later. It might already have been bitten by a snake then, might even have been torn to pieces by a wolf.

Then her husband had to laugh, although the sight of her over-excitement had slightly annoyed him. "No, my child, there are no poisonous snakes here and no more wolves either, so you can be at rest about that. But when the mists begin to rise, they would have done for him."

"Oh!" Käte pressed the foundling to her bosom. She was sitting on her heels holding the child in her lap; she stroked its rosy cheeks, its little downy head, and showered caresses and flattering words on it, but the child continued to gaze into the luminous space with its large, dark, and yet so clear eyes. It did not smile, but it did not cry either; it took no notice whatever of the strangers.

"Do you think it has been left here intentionally?" asked Käte suddenly, opening her eyes wide. The blood flew to her head in a hot wave. "Oh then--then"--she drew a trembling breath and pressed the child to her bosom, as though she did not want to let it go again.

"It will all be cleared up somehow," said the man evasively. "The mother will be sure to come."

"Do you see her--do you see her?" she inquired almost anxiously.

"No."

"No." She repeated it in a relieved tone of voice, and then she laughed. After that her eyes and ears belonged entirely to the helpless little creature. "Where's baby--where is he then? Laugh a little, do. Look at me once with those big, staring eyes. Oh, you little darling, oh, you sweet child." She played with it and pressed kisses on its hands without noticing that they were dirty.

"What are we to do now?" said the man, perplexed.

"We can't leave it here. We shall have to take it with us, of course." There was something very energetic about the delicate-looking woman all at once. "Do you think I would forsake the child?" Her cheeks glowed, her eyes gleamed.

Paul Schlieben looked at his wife with a certain awe. How beautiful she was at that moment. Beautiful, healthy, happy. He had not seen her like that for a long time. Not since he had folded her in his arms as a happy bride. Her bosom rose and fell quickly with every trembling breath she took, and the child lay on her breast and the Venn myrtle bloomed at her feet.

A strange emotion came over him; but he turned away: what had that strange child to do with them? Still he admitted in a hesitating voice: "We certainly can't leave it here. But do you know what we can do? We'll take it with us to the inn. Give it to me, I'll carry it."

But she wanted to carry it herself, she only let him help her up. "There--there--come, my sweet little babe." She raised her foot cautiously to take the first step--then a shout tied her to the spot.

"Hallo!"

A rough voice had shouted it. And now a woman came up to them; the figure in the fluttering skirt was outlined big and clear against the rarefied ether that flowed around it.

Where had she come from so suddenly? From there, from behind the mound of earth that had been thrown up near the peat pit. She had been creeping on all fours plucking berries; a pail that was almost ft 11 hung on her arm, and in her right hand she carried the wooden measure and the large bone curry-comb with which she stripped off the berries.

That was the mother! Käte got a terrible fright; she turned pale.

Her husband was taken by surprise too. But then he gave a sigh of relief: that was decidedly the best way out of it. Of course, they might have known it at once, how should the child have come into the desolate Venn all alone? The mother had been looking for berries, and had put it down there meanwhile.

But the woman did not seem to take it kindly that they had looked so carefully after the child during her absence. The strong bony arms took it away from the lady somewhat roughly. The woman's eyes examined the strangers suspiciously.

"Is it your child?" asked Paul. He need not have asked the question; it had exactly the same dark eyes as the woman, only the child's were brighter, not dulled as yet by life's dust as the mother's were.

The woman made no answer. It was only when the man asked once more, "Are you the mother?" and put his hand into his pocket at the same time, that she found it worth while to give a curt nod:

"C'est l' mi'n."^[A] Her face retained its gloomy expression; there was no movement of pride or joy.

[^A]C'est le mien.

Käte noticed it with a certain angry surprise. How indifferent the woman was. Was she not holding the child as though it were a useless burden? She was filled with envy, torturing envy, and at the same time with hot anger. That woman certainly did not deserve the child. She would have liked to have torn it out of her arms. How rough she looked, what coarse features she had, what a hard expression. She might really frighten anybody terribly with her black looks. But now--now her expression brightened; ah, she had seen the piece of money Paul had taken out of his purse.

Ugh, what a greedy expression she had now.

The fruit-picker stretched out her hand--there was a large shining silver coin--and when it was given to her, when she held it in her hand she drew a deep breath; her brown fingers closed round it tightly.

"Merci." A smile passed quickly across the sullen face in which the corners of the mouth drooped morosely, her blunted expression grew animated for a moment or two. And then she prepared to trudge away, the shapeless bundle containing the child on one arm, the heavy pail on the other.

They now saw for the first time how poor her skirt was; it had patches of all colours and sizes. Dried heather and fir-needles stuck to her matted and untidy plaits, as they hung out from the gaudily spotted cotton handkerchief; she had an old pair of men's hobnailed shoes on her feet. They did not know whether she was old or young; her stout body and hanging breasts disfigured her, but that her face had not been ugly once upon a time could still be seen. The little one resembled her.

"You've got a pretty child," said Paul. To please his wife he started a conversation again with this woman who was so inaccessible. "How old is the boy?"

The fruit-picker shook her head and looked past the questioner apathetically. There was no getting anything out of the woman, how terribly stupid she was. The man wanted to let her go, but Käte pressed up against him and whispered: "Ask her where she lives. Where she lives--do you hear?"

"Heigh, where do you live, my good woman?"

She shook her head once more without saying a word.

"Where do you come from, I mean? From what village?"

"Je ne co'pr nay,"^[A] she said curtly. But then, becoming more approachable--perhaps she hoped for a second gift of money--she began in a whining, plaintive voice: "Ne n'ava nay de pan et tat d's e'fa'ts."^[B]

"You're a Walloon, aren't you?"

"Ay^[C]--Longfaye." And she raised her arm and pointed in a direction in which nothing was to be seen but the heavens and the Venn.

Longfaye was a very poor village in the Venn. Paul Schlieben knew that, and was about to put his hand into his pocket again, but Käte held him back, "No, not her--not the woman--you must hand it over to the vestryman for the child, the poor child."

[^A]Je ne comprends pas.

[^B]Nous n'avons pas de pain et tant d'enfants.

[^C]Yes.

She whispered softly and very quickly in her excitement.

It was impossible for the woman to have understood anything, but her black eyes flew as quick as lightning from the gentleman to the lady, and remained fixed on the fine lady from the town full of suspicion: if she would not give her anything, why should she let them ask her any more questions? What did they want with her? With the curtest of nods and a brusque "adieu" the Walloon turned away. She walked away across the marsh calmly but with long strides; she got on quickly, her figure became smaller and smaller, and soon the faded colour of her miserable skirt was no longer recognisable in the colourless Venn.

The sun had disappeared with the child; suddenly everything became grey.

Käte stood motionless looking in the direction of Longfaye. She stood until she shivered with cold, and then hung heavily on her husband's arm; she went along to the inn with dragging feet, as though she had grown tired all at once.

The mist began to conceal the bright midday. Cold damp air, which wets more than rain, made their clothes clammy. The stinging flies from the swamps flew in big swarms through the door and windows of the inn; a smouldering peat-fire was burning within, fanned to a bright flame by means of dry fir twigs, and the flies clung to the wall near the fire-place and to the ceiling--no, they would not die yet.

Autumn had come, sun and warmth had disappeared from the Venn, it was wise to flee now.

But outside, in the depths of the wilds above the highest point in the Venn, a lonely buzzard was moving round and round in a circle, uttering the piercing triumphant cry of a wild bird. He was happy there in summer as in winter. He did not want to leave.

CHAPTER III

The vestryman of the small village in the Venn felt somewhat surprised and embarrassed when such a fine lady and gentleman drove up to his house and wished to speak to him. He went out to them, walking through the filthy water in his yard that splashed up to his knees. He did not know where he should take them to, as the little pigs and the calf were in the house and the old sow was wallowing in front of the door.

So they walked up and down the quiet village street from which the few farms lay somewhat back, whilst the carriage jolted slowly along in the deep ruts behind them.

Käte was pale, you could see from her eyes that she had only had very little sleep. But she was smiling, and a happy excitement full of expectation was written on her features, spoke in her gait; she was always a little ahead of the others.

Her husband's face was very grave. Was he not committing a great imprudence, acting in an extremely hasty manner for the sake of his wife? If it did not turn out all right?

They had had a bad night. He had brought Käte home from the inn the day before in a strangely silent and absent-minded mood. She had eaten nothing, and, feigning extreme fatigue, had gone early to bed. But when he retired to rest a few hours later he found her still awake. She was sitting up in bed with her beautiful hair hanging down her back in two long plaits, which gave her quite a youthful appearance. Her bewildered eyes gazed at him full of a strange longing, and then she threw both arms round his neck and drew his head down to her.

Her manner had been so strange, so gentle and yet so impetuous, that he asked her anxiously whether there was anything the matter with her. But she had only shaken her head and held him close in a silent embrace.

At last he thought she had fallen asleep--and she was asleep, but only for quite a short time. Then she woke again with a loud cry. She had dreamt, dreamt so vividly--oh, if he knew what she had been dreaming. Dreaming--dreaming--she sighed and tossed about, and then laughed softly to herself.

He noticed that she had something on her mind, which she would like to tell him but which she had hardly the courage to say. So he asked her.

Then she had confessed it to him, hesitatingly, shyly, and yet with so much passion that it terrified him. It was the child of which she had been thinking the whole time, of which she always must think--oh, if only she had it. She would have it, must have it. The woman had so many other children, and she--she had none. And she would be so happy with it, so unspeakably happy.

She had become more and more agitated in the darkness of the night, uninterrupted by a single word from him, by any movement--he had lain quite quietly, almost as though the surprise had paralysed him, although it could not really be called a surprise any more. What was her whole life? she had said. A constant longing. All the love he showered on her could not replace the one thing: a child, a child.

"My dear, good husband, don't refuse it. Make me happy. No other mother on earth will be so happy--my darling husband, give me the child." Her tears were falling, her arms clasped him, her kisses rained down on his face.

"But why just that child? And why decide so quickly? It's no trifle--we must think it over very carefully first."

He had made objections, excuses, but she had pertinent answers ready for all. What was to be thought over very carefully? They would not come to any other result. And how could he think for a moment that the woman would perhaps not give them the child? If she did not love it, she would be glad to give it, and if she did love it, then all the more reason for her to be glad to give it, and to thank God that she knew it was so well taken care of.

"But the father, the father. Who knows whether he will agree to it?"

"Oh, the father. If the mother gives it, the father is sure to agree. One bread-eater less is always a good thing for such poor people. The poor child, perhaps it will die for want of food, and it would be so well"--she broke off--"isn't it like a dispensation of Providence that just we should come to the Venn, that just we should find it?"

He felt that she was persuading him, and he strove against it in his heart. No, if she allowed herself to be carried away by her feelings in such a manner--she was only a woman--then he, as a man, must subordinate his feelings to common sense.

And he enumerated all the difficulties to her again and again, and finally said to her: "You can't guess what troubles you may be preparing for yourself. If the affection you now think you feel for the child should not last? If he is not congenial to you when he grows older? Bear in mind, he is and will always be the child you have adopted."

But then she had almost flown into a passion. "How can you say such things? Do you think I am narrow-minded? Whether it is my own child or a child I have adopted is quite immaterial, as it becomes mine through its training. I will train it in my own way. That it is of your own flesh and blood has nothing to do with it. Am I only to love a child because I have borne it? Oh no. I love the child because--because it is so small, so innocent, because it must be so extremely sweet when such a helpless little creature stretches out its arms to you." And she spread out her arms and then folded them across her breast, as though she was already holding a child to her heart. "You're a man, you do not understand it. But you are so anxious to make me happy make me happy now. Dear, darling husband, you will very soon forget that it is not our own child, you will soon not remember it any more. It will say 'Father,' 'Mother' to us--and we will be its father and mother."

If she were right! He was silent, thrilled by a strange emotion. And why should she not be right? A child that one trains according to one's own method from its first year, that is removed entirely from the surroundings in which it was born, that does not know but what it is the child of its present parents, that learns to think with their thoughts and feel with their feelings, cannot have anything strange about it any more. It will become part of oneself, will be as dear, as beloved as though one had begotten it oneself.

Pictures arose before his mind's eye which he no longer expected to see, no longer ventured to hope for. He saw his smiling wife with a smiling child on her lap; he saw himself smile, and felt a pride he had never known when he heard its soft childish voice lisp: "Fa-ther." Yes, Käte was right, all the other things that go by the name of happiness are nothing compared to this happiness. Only a father, a mother, knows what joy is.

He kissed his wife, and this kiss already meant half consent; she felt that.

"Let us drive there to-morrow, the first thing to-morrow morning," she implored, in a tone of suppressed rapture.

He endeavoured to remain calm: after they had maturely considered the matter, they would first have to talk it over with their lawyer in Berlin, and other intimate friends.

Then she lost her temper. She pouted, and then she laughed at him: was this a business matter? What had the lawyer and other people to do with such a very important, quite personal and private matter? Nobody was to be asked about it, nobody was to interfere with it. Not a single person must suspect where the child came from or who were its parents. They, he and she, were its parents, they were responsible for it, its life had begun when they took it, and they vouched for its future. This child was their work, their work entirely.

"We'll fetch it the first thing to-morrow. The sooner it gets out of that dirt and misery the better--don't you agree with me, Paul?" She did not give him a chance of saying anything more, she overwhelmed him with plans and proposals, in her sparkling vivacity; and her exuberant spirits overcame his scruples.

One can have too many scruples, be too cautious, and thus embitter every pleasure in life, he said to himself. There was surely nothing extraordinary in what they were doing? They only picked up something that had been laid at their feet; in that way they were obeying a hint given them by Fate. And there were really no difficulties in connection with it. If they did not betray it themselves nobody would find out about the child's antecedents, and there would not be any questions asked in the village either as to what had become of it. It was a nameless, homeless little creature they were going to take away with them, of which they would make what they liked. Later on when the little one was old enough they would formally adopt it, and thus confirm also in writing what their hearts had already approved of long ago. Now the only thing left to do was to get hold of the vestryman at Longfaye, and make arrangements with the parents for the surrender of the child with his assistance.

When Paul Schlieben had come to this decision, he was troubled with the same restlessness as his wife. Oh, if only it were morning, she groaned. If anybody should steal a march on them now, if the child should no longer be there next morning? She tossed about in her impatience and fear. But her husband also turned from side to side without sleeping. How could they know whether the child was healthy? For a moment he weighed anxiously in his mind whether it would not be advisable to confide in the doctor at the baths at Spa--he might drive with them and examine the child first of all--but then he rejected the thought again. The child looked so strong. He recalled its sturdy fists, the clear look in its bright eyes--it had lain on the bare ground in the cold and wind without any protection--it must have a strong constitution. They need not trouble about that.

It was very early in the morning when husband and wife rose--weary as though all their limbs were bruised, but driven on by a kind of joyful determination.

Käte ran about the room at the hotel, so busy, so happy and excited, as though she were expecting a dear guest. She felt so sure they would bring the child back with them straightway. At all events she would commence packing the trunks, for when they had got it they would want to get home, home as quickly as possible. "The hotel is no place for such a little darling. It must have its nursery, a bright room with flowered curtains--but dark ones besides to draw in front of the windows so as to subdue the light when it goes to sleep--otherwise everything must be bright, light, airy. And there must be a baby's chest-of-drawers there with all the many bottles and basins, and its little bath, its bed with the white muslin curtains behind which you can see it lying with red cheeks, its little fist near its head, slumbering soundly."

She was so young-looking, so lovely in her joyful expectation, that her husband was charmed with her. Did not the sunshine seem to be coming now for which he had been waiting so long in vain? It preceded the child, fell on its path, making it clear and bright.

Both husband and wife were full of excitement as they drove to Longfaye. They had taken a comfortable landau that could be closed that day, instead of the light carriage for two in which they generally made their excursions. It might be too cold for the child on the way back. Rugs and cloaks and shawls were packed in it, quite a large choice.

Paul Schlieben had taken his papers with him. They would hardly be likely to want any proof of his identity, but he stuck them into his pocket as a precaution, so as to provide against any delay that might be caused by their absence. He had been told that the vestryman was quite a sensible man, so everything would be settled smoothly.

As the rowan trees on both sides of the road bowed their tops under their autumn load of red berries, so the heads of both husband and wife were bowed under a flood of thoughts full of promise. The trees flew quickly past the carriage as it rolled along, and so did their lives' different stages past their agitated minds. Fifteen years of married life--long years when one is expecting something first with confidence, then with patience, then with faint-heartedness, then with longing, with a longing that is kept more and more secret as the years go by, and that becomes more and more burning on account of the secrecy. Now the fulfilment was at hand--a fulfilment certainly different from what husbands and wives who love each other picture to themselves, but still a fulfilment.

That old sentence in the Bible came into the woman's mind and would not be banished: But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth His Son. Oh, this child from a strange, from an unknown land, from a land that had neither fields nor fruits, and was not blessed with rich harvests, this child was a gift from God, given by His goodness. She bowed her head full of gratitude, as though she had received a blessing.

And the man pressed his wife's hand gently, and she returned the pressure. They remained sitting hand in hand. His glance sought hers and she blushed. She loved him again as in the first year of her marriage--no, she loved him much more now, for now, now he gave her the happiness of her life, the child.

Her eyes that were full of bliss swept over the poor Venn district, which looked brown and desolate, and which was still a fairyland full of the most glorious wonders.

"Didn't I know it?" she murmured triumphantly, although trembling with an agitation that was almost superstitious. "I felt it--here--here."

She could hardly wait until they reached the village hi the Venn, oh, how far away from the world it lay, so quite forgotten. And so poor. But the poverty did not terrify her, nor the dirt--the result of the poverty; she was going to take the child away with her now, to take him where there was culture and prosperity, and he would never know that he had lain on the bare ground instead of in a soft bed. She thought of Moses. As he had been found in the bulrushes on the banks of the Nile, so she had found him on the grass in the Venn--would he become a great man like him? Desires, prayers, hopes, and a hundred feelings she had not known before agitated her mind.

Paul Schlieben had some difficulty in making the vestryman understand him. It was not because the man was a Walloon who hardly understood German, for Nikolas Rocherath of "Good Hope"--his house having received that name because it could be seen a good distance off in the Venn, it being the largest in the village--was a German, but because he could not understand what the gentleman meant.

What did he want with Lisa Solheid's Jean-Pierre? Adopt him? He looked quite puzzled at first, and then he got offended. No, even if he was nothing but a simple peasant, he would not let the gentleman make a fool of him.

It was only by degrees that Schlieben could convince him that his intentions were serious. But the old man still continued to rub his stubbly chin doubtfully and cast suspicious glances at the lady and gentleman, who had broken in on his solitude so unexpectedly. It was only when Käte, wearied and tortured by the long explanation, seized hold of his arm impatiently, and looking into his face cried impetuously, almost angrily, "For goodness' sake do understand. We have no child, but we want a child--now do you understand it?"--that he understood.

No child--oh dear! No child! Then people do not know what they are living for. Now he nodded comprehendingly, and, casting a compassionate look at the lady who was so rich, so finely dressed and still had no children, he became much more approachable. So they were so pleased with Lisa Solheid's Jean-Pierre that they wanted to take him to Berlin with them? How lucky the boy was. Lisa would not be able to believe it. But nobody would begrudge her it. Nobody in Longfaye was as poor as she; many a day she did not know how to get sufficient food for herself and her five. Formerly, whilst her husband was alive----

What, her husband was not alive? She was a widow? Paul Schlieben interrupted the vestryman, and drew a long breath as though of relief. Although he had never spoken of it, he had always had a secret fear of the father: if he turned out to be a drunkard or a ne'er-do-well? A load fell from his mind now--he was dead, he could not do any more harm. Or had he died of an illness after all, of a wasting disease that is handed down to children and children's children? He had been told that the mists on the Venn and the sudden changes in the temperature may easily be injurious to the lungs and throat--added to that hard work and bad food--surely the young man had not died of consumption? He asked the question anxiously.

But Nikolas Rocherath laughed. No, Michel Solheid had never known a day's illness all his life, and had not died of any illness. He had worked at the machine factory at Verviers, covered with black soot and naked to the waist. Cold and heat had had no effect on him. And he used to come over from Verviers every Saturday and spend Sunday with his family. And it had been the Saturday before the festival of St. Peter and St. Paul somewhat over a year ago now, and Michel had bought his wife a side of bacon and one or two pounds of coffee for the money he had earned for overtime.

"You must know, sir, everything is much too dear for us here, and it is much cheaper on the other side of the frontier," said the old man in a troubled voice; then, raising his fist slowly, he shook it at the Venn that lay there so peaceful and remote from the world. "But they were soon on his tracks. They came after him from the Baraque--the accursed douaniers. Three, four of them. Now you must know that Michel could run as well as any of them. If he had thrown his parcel behind a bush and run, they would never have caught him. But no, he would not, he would have felt ashamed of himself if he had done so. So in order not to let them know where he was going, he ran to the left through the Walloon Venn in the direction of Hill instead of to the right. Then on through Clefay and Neckel,^[A] and so on in all directions, and in this manner he got away from the neighbourhood he knew as well as he knew his own pocket. They were close at his heels above the Pannensterz. And they ran after him calling out 'Stop!'

[^A]Wooded districts in the High Venn.

"Look you, sir, if he had run into the Great Haard then and hidden in the thicket there, they would never have found him without a dog. But he lost his head, and ran out of the bushes straight across the Venn.

"'Halt!--Stop!'--and a third time 'Halt!' But he bounded along like a stag. Then one of them pulled his trigger and--Jesus Christ have mercy upon us, now and at the hour of our death!"--the vestryman devoutly made the sign of the cross and then wiped his nose with the back of his hand--"the shot pierced the side of bacon and went into his back, in from behind, out at the front. Then Solheid turned a somersault. It was a shame. Such a fine fellow, for a side of bacon.

"He still lived for over an hour. He told them that he was Solheid from Longfaye, and that they should fetch his wife.

"I was just cutting my hedge that day, when somebody came running up. And I started off with Lisa, who was six months gone with Jean-Pierre at the time. But when we came there it was already too late.

"They had left him lying not far from the large cross. They had wanted to carry him to a house at Ruitzhof, but he had said 'Leave me. I'll die here.' And he gazed at the sun.

"Sir, it was as large and red in the sky that day--as large--as it will be on the Day of Judgment. Sir, he was bathed in sweat and blood--they had chased him for hours--but he still enjoyed gazing at the sun.

"Sir, the fellow who had shot him was almost out of his mind; he held him on his knees and wept. Sir, no,"--the vestryman gave himself a shake and his gestures expressed the aversion he felt--"I would not like to be a douanier!"

The old man's voice had grown deeper and hoarser--it was a sign of the sympathy he felt--now it got its former even-tempered ring again. "If it's agreeable to you, ma'am, we'll go now."

"Oh, the child, the poor child," whispered Käte, quite shaken.

"Do you think the widow will part with her youngest child?" asked Paul Schlieben, seized with a sudden fear. This child that had been born after its father's death--was it possible?

"Oh!" the old man rocked his head to and fro and chuckled. "If you give a good sum for it. She has enough of them."

Nikolas Rocherath was quite the peasant again now; it was no longer the same man who had spoken of the sun in the Venn and Solheid's death. The point now was to get as much out of these people as possible, to fleece a stranger and a townsman into the bargain to the best of his ability.

"Hundred thalers would not be too much to ask," he said, blinking sideways at the gentleman's grave face. What a lot of money he must have, why, not a muscle of his face had moved.

The old peasant had been used to haggling all his life when trading in cattle, now he gazed at the strange gentleman full of admiration for such wealth. He led the way to Solheid's cottage with alacrity.

CHAPTER IV

Like all the houses in the village, the Solheids' cottage stood quite alone behind a hedge that reached as high as the gable. But the hedge, which was to protect it against the storms that raged in the Venn and the heavy snowdrifts, was not thick any longer; you could see that there was no man's hand there to take care of it. The hornbeams had shot up irregularly; dead branches lashed by the wind from the Venn stretched themselves in the air like accusing fingers.

Ugh, it must be icy cold there in the winter. Käte involuntarily drew her cloak of soft cloth lined with silk more tightly round her. And it must be doubly dark there on dark days. Hardly any light found its way through the tiny windows owing to the protecting hedge, and the roof hung low over the entrance. There were no steps, you walked straight into the room.

The vestryman rattled the iron knocker on the door, which had once been painted green but had no colour left now. The sound reverberated through the building, but the door did not open when they tried it. The woman was probably among the berries, and the children with her. The hungry screams of the youngest one was all that was heard inside the locked cottage.

The poor child--oh, she had left it alone again. Käte trembled with excitement, its screams sounded to her like a call for help.

The vestryman sat down calmly on the chopping-block in front of the door and drew his pipe out of the pocket of his blue linen smock, which he had hastily drawn over his working coat in honour of the lady and the gentleman. Now they would have to wait.

The husband and wife looked at each other much disappointed. Wait? Käte had refused the seat on the chopping-block, which the old man had offered her with a certain gallantry. She could not rest, she walked restlessly up and down in front of the little window, trying in vain to look through the dark pane.

The child inside screamed more and more loudly. Old Rocherath laughed: what a roar that was to be sure, Jean-Pierre had powerful lungs.

Käte could not listen to the screams any longer, they tortured her both bodily and mentally. Oh, how they made her ears tingle. She covered them with her hands. And her heart trembled with compassion and anger: how could its mother remain away so long?

Her brow was wet with perspiration. She stared at the Venn, at the bare, treeless, tortuous path with burning impatient eyes. At last she saw some figures--at last!--and yet her breath stopped all at once, her heart ceased to beat and then suddenly went hammering on at a furious pace as if mad. There came the child's mother!

Lisa Solheid was carrying a bundle of fagots on her back, which was fastened round her shoulders with a rope The load was so heavy that it quite weighed her down, bending her head forward. Three children--their small feet in clumsy shoes with big nails in them--stamped along in front of their mother, whilst a fourth was clinging to her skirt. It had also been looking for cranberries, and its little hands were coloured red like those of its older sister and brothers, who were carrying pails, measure and comb.

Pretty children, all four of them. They had the same dark eyes as little Jean-Pierre, and they stared with them half boldly, half timidly at the strange lady who was smiling at them.

The woman did not recognise the lady and gentleman again who had given her a present in the Venn the day before--or did she only pretend not to?

The rope which had kept the bundle together had cut deep into her shoulders and bosom, now she undid it and threw off the burden with a powerful jerk; and then, seizing hold of the axe lying near the chopping-block, she began to chop up a couple of big branches with powerful strokes.

"Hallo, Lisa," said the vestryman, "when you have chopped sufficient wood to cook the cranberries, just wait a bit."

She looked up at him for a moment. The strange lady and gentleman had gone a little aside--without previous arrangement. Let the vestryman tell her first. It was not so simple a matter as they had imagined. She was not very approachable.

Not a feature changed in the woman's reserved face; she went on with her work in silence, her lips compressed. The wood was split up by means of her powerful blows, and the pieces flew around her. Was she listening at all to what the man was saying to her?

Yes--the spectators exchanged a hasty glance--and now she was answering too in a more lively manner than they would have supposed, judging from her sullen appearance.

Lisa Solheid raised her arm and pointed to the cottage in which the little one was still screaming. Her speech--an almost barbaric dialect--sounded rough, they understood nothing of it except a French word here and there. The vestryman spoke Walloon too. Both of them became excited, raised their voices and spoke to each other in a loud voice; it sounded almost like quarrelling.

They did not seem to agree. Käte listened in suppressed terror. Would she give it? Would he get it from her?

She pulled her husband's sleeve when nobody was looking. "Offer more, give her some more, a hundred thalers is much too little." And he must also promise the peasant something for his trouble. A hundred, two hundred, three hundred, a hundred times a hundred would not be too much. Oh, how the poor child was screaming. She could hardly bear to stand outside the door doing nothing any longer.

Little Jean-Pierre's sister and brothers--a beautiful girl with untidy hair and three younger brothers--stood with their fingers in their mouths, their dirty noses unwiped, and did not move from the spot.

Their mother spoke to them angrily, "Off with you!" And they darted off, one almost tumbling over another. They scraped the key out of the little hole under the door, and the biggest of them thrust it into the rusty lock, and, standing on her toes, turned it with all the strength of her small hands.

Then the woman turned to the strange lady and gentleman; she made a gesture of invitation with her thin right hand: "Entrez."

They stepped in. It was so low inside that Paul Schlieben had to bend his head so as not to knock against the beams in the ceiling, and so dark that it took a considerable time before they could distinguish anything at all. It could not have been poorer anywhere--one single room in all. The hearth was formed of unhewn stones roughly put together, above it hung the kettle in an iron chain that was made fast to the blackened beam; the smoke from the smouldering peat ascended into the wide sooty chimney. A couple of earthenware plates in the plate-rack--cracked but with gay-coloured flowers on them--a couple of dented pewter vessels, a milk-pail, a wooden tub, a long bench behind the table, on the table half a loaf of bread and a knife, a few clothes on some nails, the double bed built half into the wall, in which the widow no doubt slept with the children now, and little Jean-Pierre's clumsy wooden cradle in front of it--that was all.

Really all? Käte looked round, shivering a little in the cold dark room that was as damp as a cellar. Oh, how poor and comfortless. There were no ornaments, nothing to decorate it. Oh yes, there was a glaringly gaudy picture of the Virgin Mary--a coarse colour-print on thin paper--a vessel for holy water made of white china beneath it, and there on the other wall close to the window so that the sparse light fell on it the picture of a soldier. A framed and glazed picture in three divisions; the same foot-soldier taken three times. To the left, shouldering his arms, on guard before the black and white sentry-box--to the right, ready to march with knapsack and cooking utensils strapped on his back, bread-bag and field-flask at his side, gun at his feet--in the centre, in full dress uniform as a lance-corporal, with his hand to his helmet saluting.

That was no doubt the man, Michel Solheid as a soldier. Käte cast a timid glance at the picture--that man had been shot in the Venn whilst smuggling. How terrible! She heard the old man tell the story once more, saw the bleeding man lying in the heather, and the horror of his tragic end made her shudder. Her glance fell on the picture again and again, the usual picture of a soldier which told nothing whatever in its stereotyped inanity, and then on little Jean-Pierre's cradle. Did he resemble his father much?

Paul Schlieben had expected his wife to speak--she would of course know best what to say to the other woman--but she was silent. And the vestryman did not say anything either; as he had started the negotiations he considered it polite to let the gentleman speak now. And Lisa Solheid was also silent. All she did was to drive away the children, who wanted to fall upon the hard bread on the table with ravenous appetites, with a silent gesture. Then she stood quietly beside the cradle, her right hand, which still held the axe with which she had cut the wood, hanging loosely by her side. Her face was gloomy, forbidding, and still a struggle was reflected on it.

Paul Schlieben cleared his throat. He would have preferred some other person to have settled the matter for him, but, as this other person was not there and the vestryman only looked at him expectantly, he was compelled to speak. With an affability which might have been taken for condescension but which was nothing but embarrassment he said: "Frau Solheid, the vestryman will have told you what has brought us to you--do you understand me, my good woman?"

She nodded.

"It's our intention to take your youngest child away with us"--he hesitated, for she had made a movement as though she wanted to deny it--"as our own, to adopt it. Do you understand?"

She did not answer, but he continued with as much haste as if she had said yes. "We will treat it as if it really were our own. We shall be able to do more for it than you would, of course, and we----"

"Oh, and we'll love it so," his wife broke in.

The black-eyed woman turned her head slowly to the side where the fair-haired lady was standing. It was a peculiar look with which she scanned the stranger, who had now approached the cradle. Was it a scrutinising look or a forbidding one? A friendly or unfriendly one?

Käte looked at the child with longing eyes. It was no longer crying, it even smiled, and now--now it stretched out its little arms. Oh, it was already so intelligent, it was looking at her, it noticed already that she was fond of it. It tried to get up--oh, it wanted to go to her, to her!

Her face flushed with joy. She had already stretched out her hands to take the child, when its mother pushed herself in front of the cradle like a wall.

"Neni,"^[A] she said in Walloon, in a hard voice. She raised her empty left hand to ward Käte off. And then she made the sign of the cross on the child's forehead and then on its breast.

[^A]Non.

But why, why would she not give it all at once? Käte trembled with dismay. She cast an imploring look at her husband, as much as to say: "Help me. I must have the child."

And then her husband said what he wanted to say before when his wife had cut him short: "We will secure your child's future. Do you know what that means, my good woman? It will never have to trouble about its daily bread--never have to hunger. Never have to work to prolong its life--only work for the pleasure of working. Do you understand?"

Work--for the pleasure of working? The woman shook her head, she did not understand him. But then the words came into her mind: never hunger!--and a light shone in her dull eyes. Never hunger--ah, the woman understood that; and still she shook her head again: "Neni!"

She pointed to herself and the other children, and then to the great Venn outside with a comprehensive gesture:

"Nos avans tortos faim."^[A] She shrugged her shoulders with the equanimity of one who is accustomed to it, and it even looked as though she wanted to smile; the corners of her sullen mouth did not droop quite so much, her lips that were generally tightly closed showed her strong healthy teeth.

The vestryman stepped in now: "'Pon my word, Lisa, to hunger is surely no pleasure. Good heavens, how can you be so foolish! The child will be taken from hell to heaven. Remember what I've told you, the lady and gentleman are rich, very rich, and they are mad on the child--quick, give it to them, you still have four."

Still four! She nodded reflectively, but then she threw her head back, and a look--now it was plain, something like hatred flickered in it--flew to the others standing there so rich, so fine, with rings on their ringers, and at whom her Jean-Pierre was peeping. "Neni!" She repeated it once more and still more curtly and more obstinately than before.

But the vestryman was tenacious, he knew the people he had to deal with. "You must think it over," he said persuasively. "And they'll give you a good sum, I tell you--won't you?" he asked, turning to the gentleman. "Haven't you said you weren't particular to a coin or two in the case of such a poor woman?"

"No, certainly not," assured Paul. And Käte was too precipitate again. "It does not matter at all to us--we will gladly give what she asks--oh, the dear child!"

"Dju n' vous nin,"^[B] muttered the woman.

[^A]Nous avons tous faim.

[^B]Je ne veux pas.

"You won't? Oh, nonsense." The old peasant almost laughed at her. "You are just like my Mayflower when she won't stand, and kicks the milk-pail with her hind foot. Don't offend the people. What advantage will it be to you if they grow impatient and go away? None at all. Then you will have five who call out for bread, and the winter is near at hand. Do you want to have such a winter as you had last year? Didn't Jean-Pierre almost die of cold? The four others are already older, it's easier to rear them. And you can get a cow for yourself--just think of that, a cow. And you could have a better roof put on the house, which won't let the rain and the snow come through, and could have enough cranberries as well. It would certainly be a good stroke of business, Lisa."

Käte wanted to add something more--oh, what a lot of good she would do the woman, if she would only give the child to her!--but the old man cleared his throat and winked at her covertly to warn her that she was to be silent.

"Kubin m'e dinroz--ve?"^[A] inquired the woman all at once.

[^A]Combien me donnerez-vous donc?

She had been standing undecided for a long time with her head bowed, and a deep silence had reigned around her. The strange lady and gentleman had not moved, nor had the vestryman; no wind had whistled in the chimney, no fire crackled. A silent expectation weighed on them all. Now she raised her head, and her gloomy eyes glanced at the miserable room, the small quantity of bread on the table and then at the hungry four, as though examining everything. She no longer looked at the fifth child. She had grown pale, the deep sunburn on her face had turned a greyish colour.

"What's he going to give you? Well, what will you give her?" said the peasant encouragingly. "I think you'll see that two hundred is too little. The woman is very much attached to the child, it will not be easy for her to give it up." He watched Paul Schlieben out of the corner of his eye, and called out as they call out at an auction: "Two hundred, two hundred and fifty, three hundred. 'Pon my word, it isn't too much. Jean-Pierre is a fine boy--just look at his fists. And his thighs. A splendid fellow." He noticed the longing expression in Käte's eyes--"Three hundred thalers is not worth talking about for the boy, is it, ma'am?"

Käte had tears in her eyes and was very pale. The air in the cottage oppressed her, it was all very repugnant to her--let them only get away quickly from there. But not without the child. "Four hundred--five hundred," she jerked out, and she gazed imploringly at her husband as though to say: "Do settle it quickly."

"Five hundred, willingly." Paul Schlieben drew out his pocket-book.

The peasant craned his neck forward the better to see. His eyes were quite stiff in his head, he had never seen anybody pay so willingly before. The children, too, stared with wide-open eyes.

The woman cast a hasty glance at the notes the gentleman spread on the table near the bread; but the covetous light that flashed in her eyes disappeared suddenly again. "Neni," she said sullenly.

"Offer her some more--more," whispered the old man.

And Schlieben laid another couple of notes on the table beside the others; his fingers trembled a little as he did it, the whole thing was so unspeakably repugnant to him. He had never thought of haggling; they should have what they wanted, only let them get done with it.

Nikolas Rocherath could not contain himself any longer at the sight of such generosity--so much money on the table, and that woman could still hesitate? He rushed up to her and shook her by the shoulders: "Are you quite mad? Six hundred thalers on the table and you don't take them? What man here can say he has six hundred thalers in cash? What money, what a sum of money!" His emaciated face, which had grown very haggard from years of toil and a life lived in wind and storm and which was as sharply outlined as though cut out of hard wood, twitched. His fingers moved convulsively: how was it possible that anybody could still hesitate?

The axe which the woman still held fell out of her hand with a loud noise. Without raising her head, without looking at the table or at the cradle she said in a loud voice--but there was no ring in the voice: "Allons bon. Djhan-Pire est da vosse."^[A]

[^A]Eh bien. Jean-Pierre est à vous.

And she turned away, walked to the hearth with a heavy tread and raked up the smouldering peat.

What indifference! This woman certainly did not deserve to be a mother. Käte's gentle eyes began to blaze. Schlieben was angry too; no, they need not have any scruples about taking the child away from there. He was filled with disgust.

The woman behaved now as though the whole affair did not concern her any longer. She busied herself at the hearth whilst the vestryman counted the notes--licking his fingers repeatedly and examining both sides of each one--and then put them carefully into the envelope which the gentleman had given him.

"There they are, Lisa, put them into your pocket."

She tore them out of his hand with a violent gesture, and, lifting up her dress to a good height, she slipped them into her miserable ragged petticoat.

The last thing had still to be settled. Even if Paul Schlieben felt certain that nobody there would inquire about the child any more, the formalities had to be observed. Loosening his pencil from his watch-chain--for where was ink to come from there?--he drew up the mother's deed of surrender on a leaf from his pocketbook. The vestryman signed it as witness. Then the woman put her three crosses below; she had learnt to write once, but had forgotten it again.

"There!" Paul Schlieben rose from the hard bench on which he had sat whilst writing with a sigh of relief. Thank goodness, now everything was settled, now the vestryman had only to procure him the birth and baptismal certificates and send them to him. "Here--this is my address. And here--this is for any outlay." He covertly pressed a couple of gold coins into the old man's hand, who smiled when he felt them there.

Well, now they would take the boy with them at once? he supposed.

Käte, who had been standing motionless staring at the mother with big eyes as though she could not understand what she saw, woke up. Of course they would take the child with them at once, she would not leave it a single hour longer there. And she took it quickly out of the cradle, pressed it caressingly to her bosom and wrapped it up in the warm wide cloak she was wearing. Now it was her child that she had fought such a hard battle for, had snatched from thousands of dangers, her darling, her sweet little one.

Little Jean-Pierre's sister and brothers stood there in silence with eyes wide open. Had they understood that their brother was going away, going for ever? No, they could not have understood it, otherwise they would have shown how grieved they were. Their big eyes were only interested in the bread on the table.

Paul Schlieben pitied the little ones greatly--they would remain there in their wretchedness, their hunger, their poverty. He stuck a present into the hands of all four. None of the four thanked him for it, but their small fingers clasped the money tightly.

The woman did not thank him either. When the strange lady took Jean-Pierre out of the cradle--she had seen it without looking in that direction--she had started. But now she stood motionless near the empty cradle, on the spot where the axe had fallen out of her right hand before with a loud noise, looking on in silence whilst Jean-Pierre was being wrapped up in the soft cloak. She had nothing to give him.

Paul Schlieben had feared there would be a scene at the very last in spite of the mother's indifference--she surely could not remain so totally void of feeling, when they carried her youngest child away with them?--but the woman remained calm. She stood there motionless, her left hand pressed against the place in her skirt where she felt the pocket. Did not that money in her pocket--Paul felt very disturbed--give the lie to all the traditions about a mother's love? And still--the woman was so demoralised by her great poverty, half brutalised in the hard struggle for her daily bread, that even the feeling she had for the child she had borne had vanished. Oh, what a different mother Käte would be to the child now. And he pushed his wife, who had the little one in her arms, towards the door, in his tender anxiety for her.

Let them only get away, it was not a nice place to be in.

They hastened away. Käte turned her head once more when she reached the threshold. She would have to cast a glance at the woman who remained behind so stiff and silent. Even if she were incomprehensible to her, a compassionate glance was her due.

Then ... a short cry, but loud, penetrating, terrible in its brevity, a cry that went through nerve and bone. One single inarticulate cry that agony and hatred had wrung from her.

The woman had stooped down. She had snatched up the axe with which she had chopped the wood. She raised her arm as though to throw something--the sharp edge flashed past the lady's head as she hurried away, and buried itself in the door-post with a crash.

CHAPTER V

They had hastened away with the child as though they were running away. They had bundled it into the carriage--quick, quick--the coachman had whipped up the horses, the wheels had turned round with a creaking noise. The village in the Venn remained behind them, buried like a bad dream one wants to forget.

A dull grey lay over the Venn. The sun, which had been shining in the morning, had quite disappeared, as though not a single beam had ever been seen there. The Venn mist, which rises so suddenly, was there covering everything. There was a wall now where there had been a wide outlook before. A wall not of stone and not of bricks, but much stronger. It did not crack, it did not burst, it did not totter, it did not give way before the hammer wielded by the strongest hand. It shaped itself out of the morasses, powerful and impenetrable, and stretched from the moor up to the clouds--or was it the clouds that had lowered themselves to the earth?

The heavens and the Venn, both alike. Nothing but grey, a tough, damp, cold, liquid and still firm, unfathomable, mysterious, awful grey. A grey from which those who lose themselves on the moor never find their way out. The mist is too tenacious. It has arms that grip, that embrace so tightly, that one can neither see forward nor backward any more, neither to the left nor to the right, that the cry that wants to escape from a throat that is well-nigh choked with terror is drowned, and that the eye becomes blind to every road, every footprint.

The driver cursed and beat his horses. There was nothing more to be seen of the road, nothing whatever, no ditch at the side of it, no telegraph poles, no small rowan trees. The broad road that had been made with such difficulty had disappeared in the grey that enfolded the Venn. It was fortunate that the horses had not lost their way as yet. They followed their noses, shook their long tails, neighed shrilly and trotted courageously into the sea of mist.

Käte shuddered as she wrapped herself and the child up more tightly; they required all the warm covering now which they had taken with them so providently. Her husband packed her up still more securely, and then laid his arm round her as though to protect her. It was a terrible journey.

They had had the carriage closed, but the cold grey forced its way in notwithstanding. It penetrated through all the crevices, through the window-panes, filled the space inside so that their faces swam in the damp twilight like pale spots, and laid itself heavily, obstructively on their breath.

Käte coughed and then trembled. There was no joy in her heart now, all she felt was terror, terror on account of the possession she had had to fight so hard to obtain. If the mother were to come after them now--oh, that terrible woman with the glittering axe. She closed her eyes tightly, full of a horror she had never felt the like to before--oh, she could not see it again! And still she opened her eyes wide once more, and felt the cold perspiration on her brow and her heart trembling--alas, that sight would pursue her even in her dreams. She would not get rid of it until her last hour--never, never again--she would always see that woman with the glittering axe.

It had whizzed close past her head--the draught of air caused by it had made the hair on her temples tremble. It had done nothing to her, it had only buried itself in the door-post with a loud noise, splitting it. And still she had come to harm. Käte pressed both her hands to her temples in horror: she would never, never get rid of that fear.

Her heart was filled with an almost superstitious dread, a dread as though of a ghost that haunted the place. Let them only get away from there, never to return. Let them only destroy every trace as they went along. That woman must never know where they had gone. She knew it was to Berlin--they had unfortunately given the vestryman their address--but Berlin was so far away, the woman from the Venn would never come there.

And the Venn itself? Ugh! Käte looked out into the grey mist, trembling with horror. Thank God, that would remain behind, that would soon be forgotten again. How could she ever have considered this desolate Venn beautiful? She could not understand it. What charm was there about these inhospitable plains, on which nothing could grow except the coarse grass and tough heather? On which no corn waved its spikes, no singing-bird piped its little song, no happy people lived sociably; where there was, in short, no brightness, no loud tones, only the silence of the dead and crosses along the road. It was awful there.

"Paul, let us leave to-day--as quickly as possible," she jerked out, full of terror, whilst her eyes sought in vain for a glimpse of light.

He was quite willing. He felt ill at ease too. If this woman, this fury, had hit his wife in her sudden outburst of rage? But he could not help blaming himself: who had bade him have anything to do with such people? They were not a match for such barbarous folk.

And he was seized with a feeling of aversion for the child sleeping so peacefully on his wife's arm. He looked gloomily at the little face; would he ever be able to love it? Would not the memory of its antecedents always deter him from liking it? Yes, he had been too precipitate. How much better it would have been if he had dissuaded his wife from her wish, if he had energetically opposed her romantic idea of adopting this child, this particular child.

He frowned as he looked out of the window, whilst the grey mist clung to the pane and ran down it in large drops.

The wind howled outside; it had risen all at once. And it howled still louder the nearer they approached the top of the high Venn, whined round their carriage like an angry dog and hurled itself against the horses' chests. The horses had to fight against it, to slacken their trot; the carriage only advanced with difficulty.

The child must never, never know from whence it came, as otherwise--the new father was wrapped in thought as he stared into the Venn, whose wall of mist was now and then torn asunder by a furious gust of wind--as otherwise--what was he going to say? He passed his hand over his brow and drew his breath heavily. Something like fear crept over him, but he did not know why.

As he cast a look at his wife, he saw that she was quite absorbed in the contemplation of the sleeping child, which did not lessen his ill humour. He drew away her right hand, with which she was supporting its head that had fallen back: "Don't do that, don't tire yourself like that. It will sleep on even without that." And as she gave an anxious "Hush!" terrified at the thought that the little sleeper might have been disturbed, he said emphatically, "I must tell you one thing, my child, and must warn you against it, don't give him your whole heart at once--wait a little first."

"Why?" Something in his voice struck her and she looked at him in surprise. "Why do you say that so--so--well, as if you were vexed?" Then she laughed in happy forgetfulness. "Do you know--yes, it was horrible, awful in those surroundings--but thank God, now it's over. A mother forgets all she has suffered at the birth of her child so quickly--why should I not forget those horrors to-day too? Do look"--and she stroked little Jean-Pierre's warm rosy cheek carefully and caressingly as he slept--"how innocent, how lovely. I am so happy. Come, do be happy too, Paul, you are generally so very kind. And now let's think about what we are to call the boy"--her voice was very tender--"our boy."

They no longer heard the wind that had increased to a storm by now. They had so much to consider. "Jean-Pierre," no, that name should not be kept in any case. And they would go from Spa to Cologne that evening, as they would not dare to engage a nurse before they were there; not a single person there would have any idea about the Venn, of course. And they would also buy all the things they required for the child in Cologne as soon as possible.

How were they to get on until then? Paul looked at his wife quite anxiously: she knew nothing whatever about little children. But she laughed at him and gave herself airs: when Providence gives you something to do, it also gives you the necessary understanding. And this little darling was so good, he had not uttered a sound since they left. He had slept the whole time as though there was nothing called hunger or thirst, as though there was nothing but her heart on which he felt quite at ease.

It gradually became more comfortable in the carriage. It seemed as though a beneficial warmth streamed forth from the child's body, as it rested there so quietly. The breath of life ascended from its strong little chest that rose and fell so regularly; the joy of life glowed in its cheeks that were growing redder and redder; the blessings of life dropped from those tiny hands that it had clenched in its sleep. The woman mused in silence and with bated breath as she gazed at the child in her lap, and the man, who felt strangely moved, took its tiny fist in his large hand and examined it, smiling. Yes, now they were parents.

But outside the carriage the air was full of horrors. It is only in the wild Venn that there can be such storms in autumn. Summer does not depart gently and sadly there, winter does not approach with soft, stealthy steps, there is no mild preparatory transition. The bad weather sets in noisily there, and the warmth of summer changes suddenly into the icy cold of winter. The storm whistles so fiercely across the brown plateau that the low heather bends still lower and the small juniper trees make themselves still smaller. The wind in the Venn chases along whistling and shrieking, clamouring and howling, pries into the quagmires and turf pits, whips up the muddy puddles, throws itself forcibly into the thickets of fir trees that have just been replanted, so that they groan and moan and creak as they cower, and then rages on round the weather-worn crosses.

The blast roars across the moor like the sound of an organ or is it like the roar of the foaming breakers? No, there is no water there that rises and falls and washes the beach with its white waves, there is nothing but the Venn; but it resembles the sea in its wide expanse. And its air is as strong as the air that blows from the sea, and the shrill scream of its birds is like the scream of the sea-mew, and nature plays--here as there--the song of her omnipotence on the organ of the storm with powerful touch.

The small carriage crept over the top of the high Venn. The winds wanted to blow it down, as though it were a tiny beetle. They hurled themselves against it, more and more furiously, yelped and howled as though they were wolves, whined round its wheels, snuffed round its sides, made a stand against it in front and tugged at it from behind as though with greedy teeth: away with it! And away with those sitting inside it! Those intruders, those thieves, they were taking something away with them that belonged to the Venn, to the great Venn alone.

It was a struggle. Although the driver lashed away at them the brave horses shied, then remained standing, snorting with terror. The man was obliged to jump off and lead them some distance, and still they continued to tremble.

Something rose out of the pits and beckoned with waving gauzy garments, and tried to hold fast with moist arms. There was a snatching, a catching, a reaching, a tearing asunder of mists and a treacherous rolling together again, a chaos of whirling, twirling, brewing grey vapours; and plaintive tones from beings that could not be seen.

Had all those in the graves come to life again? Were those rising who had slept there, wakened by the snorting of the horses and the crack of the whip, indignant at being disturbed in their rest? What were those sounds?

The quiet Venn had become alive. Piercing sounds and whistling shrill cries and groaning and the flapping of wings and indignant screams mingled with the dull roar of the organ of the storm.

A flight of birds swam through the sea of mist. They rowed to the right, they rowed to the left, looked down uneasily at the strange carriage, remained poised above it for some moments with wings spread out ready to strike it to the ground, and then uttered their cry, the startled, penetrating cry of a wild bird. There was nothing triumphant about it to-day--it sounded like a lamentation.

And the Venn wept. Large drops fell from the mist. The mist itself turned into tears, to slowly falling and then to rushing, streaming, never-ending tears.

CHAPTER VI

The Schliebens had reached Berlin safely. Käte was exhausted when she got out of the train; her hair was untidy, she did not look quite so smart as usual. It had been no trifle to make that long journey with the child. But they had been fortunate hi finding a good nurse so quickly in Cologne--a widow, fond of children and experienced, a typical, comfortable-looking nurse; however, the mother had had enough to see to all the same. Had the child caught cold, or did it not like its bottle? It had cried with all the strength of its lungs--no carrying about, rocking, dandling, singing to it had been of any avail--it had cried with all its might the whole way to Berlin.

But, thank goodness, now they were at home. And everything was arranged as quickly as if by magic. True, the comfortable house they had had before was let, but there was villa after villa in the Grunewald, and, as they required so much more room now, they moved into one of those. They rented it to begin with. Later on they would no doubt buy it, as it was quite impossible to take a child like this one into a town. It would have to have a garden.

They called him Wolfgang. "Wolf" had something so concise, vigorous, energetic about it, and--Käte gave a slight happy shudder as she thought of it--it was like a secret memory of the Venn, of that desolate spot over which they had triumphed, and to which they made only this slight concession. And did not "Wölfchen"--if they made that the diminutive of Wolf--sound extremely affectionate?

"Wölfchen"--the young mother said it about a hundred times every day.

The young mother? Oh yes, Käte felt young. Her child had made her young again, quite young. Nobody would have taken her for thirty-five, and she herself least of all. How she could run, how she could fly upstairs when they said: "The child is awake. It's screaming for its bottle."

She, who had formerly spent so many hours on the sofa, never found a moment's time to lie down the whole day; she slept all the more soundly at night as a result. It was quite true what she had heard other women say: a little child claims its mother's whole attention. Oh, how empty, colourless those days had been in which she had only existed. It was only now that there was meaning, warmth, brilliancy in her life.

She walked every day beside the child's perambulator, which the nurse pushed, and it was a special pleasure to her to wheel the light little carriage with its white lacquer, gilt buttons and blue silk curtains herself now and then. How the people stared and turned round when they saw the handsome perambulator--no, the beautiful child. Her heart beat with pleasure, and when her flattered ear caught the cries of admiration, "What a fine child!" "How beautifully dressed!" "What splendid eyes!"--it used to beat even more quickly, and a feeling of blissful pride took possession of her, so that she walked along with head erect and eyes beaming with happiness. Everybody took her to be the mother, of course, the young child's young mother, the beautiful child's beautiful mother. How often strangers had already spoken to her of the likeness: "The exact image of you, Frau Schlieben, only its hair is darker than yours." Then she had smiled every time and blushed deeply. She could not tell the people that it really could not resemble her at all. She hardly remembered herself now that not a drop of her blood flowed in Wölfchen's veins.

It looked at her the first thing when it awoke. Its little bed with its muslin curtains stood near the nurse's, but its first look was for its mother and also its last, for nobody knew how to sing it to sleep as well as she did.

"Sleep sound, sweetest child,
Yonder wind howls wild.
Hearken, how the rain makes sprays
And how neighbour's doggie bays.
Doggie has gripped the man forlorn
Has the beggar's tatter torn----"

sounded softly and soothingly in the nursery evening after evening, and little Wolf fell quietly asleep to the sound of it, to the song of the wind and the rain round defenceless heads, and of beggars whose garments the dog had torn.

Paul Schlieben had no longer any cause to complain of his wife's moods. Everything had changed; her health, too, had become new, as it were, as though a second life had begun. And he himself? He felt much more inclination for work now. Now that he had returned to business he felt a pleasure he had never experienced before when he saw that they were successful in their new ventures. He had never been enterprising before--what was the good? He and his wife had ample for all their requirements. Of course he had always been glad to hear when they had done a good stroke of business, but he could not say it had ever pleased him to make money. He had always found more pleasure in spending it.

His father had been quite different in that respect. He had never been so easy-going, and as long as he lived he had always reproached himself for having let his only son serve as a soldier in a cavalry regiment. Something of a cavalryman's extravagance had clung to him, which did not exactly agree with the views of the very respectable well-to-do merchant of the middle class. And his daughter-in-law? Hm, the old gentleman did not exactly approve of her either in his heart. She had too much modern stuff in her head, and Paul had followed her lead entirely. You could be cultured--why not?--and also take an interest in art without necessarily having so little understanding for the real things of life.

This honest man, this merchant of the old stamp and true son of Berlin, had not had the joy of seeing what his partners now saw with unbounded astonishment. They had no need to shrug their shoulders at the man's lack of interest in the business any longer, and make pointed remarks about the wife who took up his attention so entirely; now he felt the interest they wished him to have. He was pleased to fall in with their plans now. He himself seemed to want, nay, even found it necessary to form new connections, to extend the calm routine of their business right and left, on all sides. He showed a capacity for business and became practical all at once. And in the middle of his calculations, whilst sitting absorbed at his desk, he would catch himself thinking: "that will be of use to the boy in the future." But at times this thought could irritate him so much that he would throw down his pen and jump up angrily from his desk: no, he had only adopted the child to please his wife, he would not love him.

And yet when he came home to dinner on those delightful afternoons, on which he could smell the pines round his house and the pure air still more increased the appetite he had got from his strenuous work, and the boy would toddle up to him patting his little stomach and cry: "Daddy--eat--taste good," and Käte appear at the window, laughing, he could not refrain from swinging the hungry little chatterbox high up into the air, and only put him down on his feet again after he had given him a friendly slap. He was a splendid little chap, and always hungry. Well, he would always have sufficient to eat, thank God.

A certain feeling of contentment would come over the man on those occasions. He felt now what he had never felt before, that one's own home means happiness. And he felt the benefit of having an assured income, that allowed him to enrich his life with all sorts of comforts. The house was pretty. But when he bought it shortly he would certainly add to it, and buy the piece of ground next to it as well. It would be extremely disagreeable if anybody settled down just under their noses.

It had been difficult for Paul to make up his mind to take a house in the Grunewald at the time, after he had lived in Berlin itself as long as he could remember. But now he looked upon his wife's idea of going out there as a very good one. And not only for the child's sake. One enjoyed one's home in quite a different manner out there; one realised much more what it meant to have a home. And how much healthier it was--one's appetite certainly became enormous. In time one would think of nothing but material comforts. And the man followed the hungry boy into the house, as he also felt quite ready for his dinner.

Wolfgang Solheid, called Schlieben, received his first trousers. It was a grand day for the whole house. Käte had him photographed in secret, as there had never been a boy who looked prettier in his first trousers. And she placed the picture of the little fellow who was not yet three years old--white trousers, white pleated tunic, horse under his arm, whip in his hand--in the middle of her husband's birthday table, surrounded by a wreath of roses. That was the best she could give him among all the many presents. How robust Wölfchen was. They had not noticed it so much before; he was as big as a boy of four. And how defiant he looked, as bold as a boy of five, who is already dreaming of fighting other boys.

The woman showed the man the picture full of delight, and there was such a gleam in her eyes that he felt very happy. He thanked her many times for the surprise and kissed her: yes, this picture should stand near hers on his writing-table. And then they both played with the boy, who romped about on the carpet in his first pair of trousers, which he still found rather uncomfortable.

Paul Schlieben could not remember ever having spent such a pleasant birthday as this one. There was so much brightness around him, so much merriment. And even if Wolf had torn his first pair of trousers by noon--how and where it had been done was quite incomprehensible to the dismayed nurse--that did not disturb the birthday; on the contrary, the laughter became all the gayer. "Tear your trousers, my boy, tear away," whispered his mother, smiling to herself as the damage was pointed out to her, "just you be happy and strong."

There was a party in the evening. The windows of the pretty villa were lighted up and the garden as well. The air was balmy, the pines spread their branches motionless under the starry sky, and bright coloured lanterns glittered in the bushes and along the paths that were overgrown with trees like large glow-worms.

Wölfchen was asleep on the first floor of the villa, in the only room that was not brightly lighted up. There was nothing but a hanging lamp of opal there, and every noise was kept away by thick curtains and Venetian blinds. But they drank his health downstairs.

The guests had already drunk the health of the master of the house at the table, and then that of his amiable wife--what greater honour could they pay their popular host and hostess now than to drink the health of the boy--their boy?

Dr. Hofmann, the tried doctor and friend of the family for many years, asked if he might have the privilege of saying a few words. He, as doctor, as counsellor on many an occasion, was best able to say what had always been wanting there. Everything had been there, love and complete understanding and also outward happiness, everything except--here he paused for a moment and nodded to his hostess who was sitting opposite to him, in a friendly manner full of comprehension--except a child's laughter. And now that was there too.

"A child's laughter--oh, what a salvation!" he cried with twinkling eyes and voice full of emotion, as he thought of his own three, who were certainly already independent and had chosen their paths in life, but their laughter still sounded in his heart and ear.

"No child--no happiness. But a child brings happiness, great happiness. And especially in this case. For I, as a doctor, have hardly ever feasted my eyes on a more magnificent chest, a more splendidly developed skull, straighter legs and brighter eyes. All his senses are sharp; the lad hears like a lynx, sees like a falcon, smells like a stag, feels--well, I've been told that he is already up in arms against the slightest corporal punishment. It is only his taste that is not so finely developed as yet--the boy eats everything. However, this is again a new proof to me of his very great physical superiority, for, ladies and gentlemen"--at this point the doctor gave a jovial wink--"who does not agree with me? a good stomach that can stand everything is the greatest gift a kind Providence can give us on our journey through life. The boy is a favourite of fortune. A favourite of fortune in the two-fold meaning of the word for not only is he perfectly happy in himself, but his entry on the scene has also brought happiness to those around him. Our dear hostess, for example, have we ever seen her like this before? So young with those who are young, so happy with those who are happy? And our honoured friend here--nobody could imagine that he had climbed to the middle of the forties--he is as full of energy, of plans and enterprise as a man of twenty. And at the same time he has the beautiful calm, the comfortable appearance of the happy father who has had his desires gratified. And this fortunate boy is the cause of it all. Therefore thanks be to the hour that gave him, the wind that brought him here. From whence----?"

The doctor, who had a small vein of malice in his nature, here made a pause intentionally, cleared his throat and straightened his waistcoat, for he saw many curious eyes fixed on him full of expectation. But he also saw the quick perturbed look the husband and wife exchanged, saw that Frau Schlieben had grown pale and was hanging anxiously, almost imploringly, on his lips, so he continued hastily with a good-natured laugh: "From whence, ladies--only have patience. I'll tell you now: he fell from the skies. Just as the falling star falls to earth on a summer night. And our dear hostess, who was just going for a walk, held out her apron and carried him home to her house. And so he has become the star of this house, and we all and I especially--even if I have become superfluous here in my capacity of doctor--are pleased with him without asking from whence he came. All good gifts come from above--we learnt that already in our childhood--so here's to the health of the boy who fell down to our friends from the sky."

The doctor had grown serious, there was a certain solemnity about him as he raised his champagne glass and emptied it: "God bless him! To the health of the child, the son of the house. May this fortunate lad grow, thrive and prosper."

The finely cut glasses gave a clear and melodious sound as they clinked them. There was a buzzing, laughter and cheering at the table, so that the little fellow upstairs in his bed began to toss about restlessly. He murmured impatiently in his sleep, pouted and lowered his brow.

The chairs were moved downstairs. The guests had risen, and, going up to the parents, had shaken hands with them as though to congratulate them. Dr. Hofmann had done that really very nicely, really exceedingly well. But the little fellow was awfully sweet. All the women present agreed they had rarely seen such a pretty child.

Käte's heart had beaten a little anxiously when the doctor commenced to speak--surely he would not betray what had only been confided to him and the lawyer under the influence of a good glass of wine and a good dinner?--but it was now full of happiness. Her eyes sought her husband's, and sent him tender, grateful glances covertly. And then she went to their old friend, the doctor, and thanked him for all his good, kind words. "Also in Wölfchen's name," she said in a soft, cordial voice.

"So you are satisfied with me all the same? Well, I'm glad." He drew her arm into his and walked up and down with her somewhat apart from the others. "I saw, my dear lady, that you grew uneasy when I began about the boy's antecedents. What kind of an opinion can you have of me? But I did so intentionally, I have been burning to find an opportunity to say what I did for a long time. Believe me, if I got a two-shilling bit every time I've been questioned about the boy's parentage--either openly or in a roundabout way--I should be a well-to-do man by now. I've often felt annoyed at the questions; what I said just now was the answer to them all. I trust they have understood it. They can keep their surmises to themselves in the future."

"Surmises?" Käte knit her brows and pressed the doctor's arm. What did those people surmise?--did they already know something, did they guess about the Venn? She was seized with a sudden terror. Pictures passed before her mental vision with lightning speed--there in that bright festive room--dark pictures of which she did not want to know anything more.

"How terrible," she said in a low voice that quivered. If the people got to know anything, oh, then she did not put her thought into words, for the sudden dread was almost choking her--then they would not get rid of the past. Then that woman would come and demand her right, and could not be shaken off any more. "Do you think," she whispered hesitatingly, "do you think they--they guess--the truth?"

"Oh no, they're very far off the mark," laughed the doctor, but then he grew grave again directly. "My dear lady, let us leave those people and their surmises alone." Oh dear, now he had meddled with a delicate subject, he felt quite hot--what if she knew that they thought that her Paul, that most faithful of husbands, had duties of a special kind towards the child?

"Surmises--oh, what is it they surmise?" She urged him to tell her, whilst her eyes scrutinised his, full of terror.

"Nonsense," he said curtly. "Why do you want to trouble about that? But I told you and your husband that at once. If you make such a secret of the boy's parentage, all kinds of interpretations will be placed on it. Well, you would not hear of anything else."

"No." Käte closed her eyes and gave a slight shudder. "He's our child--our child alone," she said with a strange hardness in her voice. "And nobody else has anything to do with him."

He shook his head and looked at her questioningly, surprised at her tone.

Then she jerked out: "I'm afraid."

He felt how the hand that was lying on his arm trembled slightly.

Amid the gaiety of the evening something had fallen on Käte's joy that paralysed it, as it were. Many questions were asked her about little Wolf--that was so natural, they showed her their friendly interest by means of these questions--and they watched her quietly at the same time: it was marvellous how she behaved. They had hardly believed the delicate woman capable of such heroism. How much she must love her husband, that she took his child--for the boy must be his child, the resemblance was too marked, exactly the same features, the same dark hair--this child of a weak hour to her heart without showing any ill-will or jealousy. She, the childless woman, to take another woman's child. That was grand, almost too grand. They did not understand it quite.

And Käte felt instinctively that there was something concealed behind the questions they asked her--was it admiration or compassion, approval or disapproval?--something one could not get hold of, not even name, only suspect. And that embarrassed her. So she only gave reserved answers to their friendly questions about Wölfchen, was concise in what she told them, cool in her tone, and still she could not hinder her voice vibrating secretly. That was the tender happiness she felt, the mother's pride she could not suppress, the warmth of her feelings, which lent her voice its undertone of emotion. The others took if for quite a different emotion.

The ladies, who took a walk in the garden after the dinner was over, were chatting confidentially together. The paths that smelt of the pines and in which the coloured lanterns gave a gentle subdued light were just suitable for that. They wandered about in twos and threes, arm in arm, and first of all looked carefully to see if there were any listeners, for their hostess must on no account hear it. There was hardly one among the ladies who had not made her observations. How well she bore up. It was really pathetic to see how resentment and affection, dislike and warmth struggled to get the mastery as soon as there was any talk about the child. And how a restless look would steal into her bright eyes--ah, she must have had and still have much to contend with, poor thing.

There was only one lady there who said she had known Paul Schlieben much too long and well not to feel sure that it was ridiculous--nay, even monstrous--to suppose he would do such a thing. He who was always such a perfect gentleman, not only in his outward behaviour and appearance but also in his thoughts, he, the most faithful of husbands, who even now, after a long married life, was as much in love with his wife as though they had just been married. The thing was quite different. They had always wished for children, what was more natural than that they should adopt one, now that they had finally given up all hope? Did not other people do the same?

Of course that happened, there was no doubt about it. But then the particulars were always given as to whether it was an orphan or the illegitimate offspring of some one moving in the highest circles, whether it had been offered in the newspaper--"to be given away to noble-minded people"--or whether it was the child of a girl who had been left in the lurch or the unwished-for child of parents belonging to the labouring classes, who had already been too richly blessed with children, and so on. Something at least was always known about it. But in this case why was such a secret made of it? Why did they not say openly: we have got it from there or there, it happened in such and such a manner?

It was difficult to question Frau Schlieben quite openly about the little one's parentage. They had already gone to her once with that intention, but as soon as they had introduced the subject such a terrified expression had come into the woman's eyes, something so shy and reserved into her manner, that it would have been more than tactless to continue the conversation. They were compelled to desist from questioning her--but it was peculiar, very peculiar.

And the gentlemen in the smoking-room, whom the host had left alone for a moment, discussed the same theme. The doctor was catechised.

"I say, doctor, your speech was excellent, worthy of a diplomatist, but you can't deceive us. You don't know anything about the little chap's antecedents either? Now come!" It especially puzzled both partners that Schlieben had told them so little. When everything under the sun was discussed in business, one had also a certain right to know the man's private affairs too, especially as they had already worked with the old gentleman. Where would Paul have been now, if they two had not safeguarded his interests so energetically at the time when he put everything else before business? Herr Meier, who was already elderly and very corpulent, and whose good-natured, intelligent face bore signs of his fondness for a glass of wine, felt really very hurt at such a want of confidence: "As though we should have placed any difficulties in the way--absurd! Doctor, just tell us one thing. Did he get the boy here?"

But the other partner, Herr Bormann, who was somewhat choleric and had to go to Carlsbad every year, interrupted him sharply. "Well, really, Meier! And what's it to us? They say they have brought him with them from their last journey, when they were away so long--good. Where were they last? They went from Switzerland to the Black Forest and then to Spa, didn't they?"

"No, to the North Sea," said the doctor quietly. "You can see it as well, the boy has quite the Frisian type."

"That boy? With his black eyes?" No, there was nothing to be got out of Hofmann. He looked so innocent that you might have thought he was speaking seriously instead of joking. Aha, he had taken his stand; he had made up his mind not to say anything. They would have to let the subject drop.

The doctor, who had already taxed himself with stupidity in his heart--oh dear, now he had aroused everybody's curiosity instead of helping the Schliebens--heard the gentlemen pass on to politics with great relief.

It was midnight before the last guests left the villa. Their bright talk and laughter could still be heard distinctly from the end of the street in the silence of the night, as husband and wife met at the foot of the stairs leading up to the first floor.

All the windows of the lower rooms were still open, the silver was still on the table, the costly china stood about--let the servants put it away for the time being. Käte felt a great longing to see the child. She had seen so little of him that day--there had been visitors the whole day. And then what a number of questions she had had to listen to, what a number of answers she had had to give. Her head was burning.

As she and her husband met--the man was hurrying out of his room, he had not even given himself time to lock away the cigars--she had to laugh: aha, he wanted to go upstairs too. She hung on his arm and they went up together keeping step.

"To Wölfchen," she said softly, pressing his arm. And he said, as though excusing himself: "I shall have to see if the noise has not awakened the boy."

They spoke in an undertone and moved along cautiously like thieves. They stole into the nursery--there he lay, so quietly. He had thrown off the covering in his sleep so that his naked rosy little legs were visible, and a warm, strong and wonderfully fresh smell ascended from the child's clean healthy body and mingled with the powerful odour of the pines, that the night sent into the room through the slightly open window.

Käte could not restrain herself, she bent down and kissed the little knee that showed dimples in its firm roundness. As she looked up again, she saw her husband's eyes fixed on the sleeping child with a thoughtful expression.

She was so used to knowing everything that affected him, that she asked, "What are you thinking of, Paul? Does anything trouble you?"

He looked at her absently for a few moments and then past her; he was so lost in thought that he had not heard her question at all. At last he murmured, "I wonder if it would not be better to be open about it? Hm." Then he shook his head and thoughtfully stroked his beard into a point.

"What are you saying? What do you mean? Paul!" She laid her hand on his.

That aroused him. He smiled at her and said then: "Käte, we must tell people the truth. Why shouldn't we say where he comes from? Yes, yes, it's much better, otherwise I fear we shall have a good deal of unpleasantness. And if the boy does find out in good time that he is not really our child--I mean our own child--what does it matter?"

"Good gracious!" She threw up her hands as though horrified. "No--not for the world--no! Never, never!" She sank down on the bed, spread both her arms over the child's body as though protecting it, and nestled her head on the warm little breast. "Then he would be lost to us, Paul."

She took a deep breath and trembled. Her voice expressed such horror, such a terrible fear and prophetic gravity that it startled the man.

"I only thought--I mean--I have really long felt it to be my duty," he said hesitatingly, as though making a stand against her fear. "I don't like that the--that people--well, that they talk. Don't be so funny about it, Käte; why shouldn't we tell?"

"Not tell! You ask why we shouldn't tell? Paul, you know that yourself. If he gets to know it--oh, that mother! that Venn!"

She clasped the boy even more tightly; but she had raised her head from his breast. Her face was pale, and her eyes looked quite bewildered as they stared at her husband. "Have you forgotten her?"

Her tremulous voice grew hard. "No, he must never know it. And I swear it and you must promise me it as well, promise it sacredly now, here at his bedside whilst he's sleeping peacefully--and if I should die, not then either, Paul"--her voice grew louder and louder in her excitement, and its hard tone became almost a scream--"we'll never tell him it. And I won't give him up. He's my child alone, our child alone."

Then her voice changed. "Wölfchen, my Wölfchen, surely you'll never leave your mother?"

Her tears began to stream now, and whilst she wept she kissed the child so passionately, so fervently that he awoke. But he did not cry as he generally did when he was disturbed in his sleep.

He smiled and, throwing both his little arms round her neck as she bent down to him, he said, still heavy with sleep, but yet clearly, plainly, "Mammy."

She gave a cry of rapture, of triumphant joy. "Do you hear it? He says 'Mammy.'"

She laughed and cried at the same time in her excessive joy, and caught hold of her husband's hand and held it fast. "Paul--daddy--come, give our child a kiss as well."

And the man also bent down. His wife threw her arm round his neck and drew his head still further down quite close to hers. Then the child laid the one arm round his neck and the other round hers.

They were all three so close to each other in that calm summer night, in which all the stars were gleaming and the moonbeams building silver bridges from the peaceful heavens down to the peaceful earth.

CHAPTER VII

Those were days of the purest happiness at the Schliebens'. The villa had been bought now, some rooms had been built on to it, and another piece of land had been added to the garden as a play-ground. They could not think of not giving the boy sufficient space to romp about in. Some sand was brought there, a heap as high as a dune in which to dig. And when he was big enough to do gymnastics they got him a swing and horizontal and parallel bars.

But still it was not sufficient. He climbed over all the fences round the neighbouring villas, over all the walls that were protected by barbed wire and pieces of glass.

"A splendid lad," said Dr. Hofmann when he spoke of Wolfgang. When he spoke to him he certainly said: "What a little ruffian you are! Just you wait till you go to school and they'll soon teach you to sit still."

Wolf was wild--rather too wild, his mother considered. The boy's high spirits amused her husband: that was because there was such a large amount of surplus energy in him. But Käte felt somewhat surprised at so much wildness--no, she was not really surprised, she knew too well where all that wildness came from; it frightened her.

She did not scold him when he tore his trousers--oh, they could be replaced--but when he came home with the first hole in his head she became incredibly agitated. She scolded him angrily, she became unjust. She was quite unable to stop the blood--ugh, how it ran!--she felt as if she were going to have a fit; she dragged herself into her room with difficulty and remained sitting silently in a corner, her eyes staring into space.

When her husband reproached her for exaggerating in that manner, she never answered a word. Then he comforted her: she could feel quite easy now, the thing was of no moment, the hole was sewn up and the lad as happy as though it had never happened.

But she shuddered nervously and her cheeks were pale. Oh, if Paul knew what she had been thinking of, was forced to think of the whole time! How strange that the same memory did not obtrude itself on him. Oh, Michel Solheid had laid bleeding on the Venn--blood had dripped on the ground to-day as on that day. The little boy had not complained, just as little as his--she fought against using the word even in her thoughts--as his father, as Michel Solheid had complained. And still the red blood had gushed out as though it were a spring. How much more natural it would have been for him to have cried. Did Wolf feel differently from other children?

Käte went through the list of her acquaintances; there was not a single child that would not have cried if he had got such a wound, and he would not have been considered a coward on that account. There was no doubt about it, Wölfchen was less sensitive. Not only more insensible to bodily pain, no--and she thought she had noticed it several times--also more insensible to emotion. Even in the case of joy. Did not other children show their happiness by clapping their hands and shouting? Did not they dance round the thing they wanted--the toy, the doll, the cake--with shouts of delight? He only held out his hand for it in silence.

He took it because he had been told to do so, without all the childish chatter, without the rapturous delight that makes it so attractive and satisfactory to give children gifts.

"As a peasant," her husband used to say. That cut her to the quick every time he said it. Was Wölfchen really made of such different material? No, Paul must not say "peasant." Wölfchen was not stupid, only perhaps a little slow in thinking, and he was shrewd enough. He had not been born in a large town, that was it; where they lived now was just like the country.

"You peasant!" The next time his father said it--it was said in praise and not to blame him, because he was pleased the boy kept his little garden so well--Käte flew into a passion. Why? Her husband did not understand the reason for it. Why should he not be pleased? Had not the boy put a splendid fence round his garden? He had made a palisade of hazel-sticks into which he had woven flexible willow-twigs, and then he had covered the whole with pine branches to make it close. And he had put beans and peas in his garden, which he had begged the cook to give him; and now he meant to plant potatoes there as well. Had anybody told him how to do it? No, nobody. The first-rate cook and the housemaid were both from a town, what did they know about sowing peas and planting potatoes?

"He's a born farmer," said the father laughing.

But the mother turned away as though in pain. She would much, much rather have seen her son's garden a mass of weeds than that he should plant, weed and water so busily.

She had made him a present of some flowers; but they did not interest him and he was not so successful with them either. There was only a large sunflower that grew and grew. It was soon as high as the boy, soon even higher, and he often stood in front of it, his childish face raised, gazing earnestly into its golden disc for quite a long time.

When the sunflower's golden petals withered--then its seeds ripened instead and were examined every day and finally gathered--Wolfgang went to school. He was already in his seventh year, and was big and strong; why should he not learn with other children now?

His mother had thought how wonderful it would be to teach him the rudiments herself, for when she was a young girl with nothing to do at home and a great wish to continue her studies, she had gone to a training college and even passed her examination as a teacher with distinction; but--perhaps that was too long ago, for her strength was not equal to the task. Especially her patience. He made so little progress, was so exceedingly slow. Was the boy stupid? No, but dull, very dull. And it often seemed to her as though she were facing a wall when she spoke to him.

"You are much too eager," said her husband. But how on earth was she to make it clear to him that that was an "A" and that an "O," and how was she to explain to him that if you put one and one together it makes two without getting eager? She became excited, she took the ball-frame and counted the blue and red balls that looked like round beads on a string for the boy. She got hot and red, almost hoarse, and would have liked to cry with impatience and discouragement, when Wölfchen sat looking at her with his large eyes without showing any interest, and still did not know that one bead and one bead more make two beads after they had worked at it for hours.

She saw to her sorrow that she would have to give up the lessons. "He'll do better with a master," said her husband, consolingly. And it was better, although it could not exactly be termed "good."

Wolfgang was not lazy, but his thoughts were always wandering. Learning did not interest him. He had other things to think about: would the last leaves in the garden have fallen when he got home from school at noon? And would the starling, for whom he had nailed the little box high up in the pine-tree, come again next spring? It had picked off all the black berries from the elderberry, and had then gone away screaming; if it did not find any more elderberries, what would it eat then? And the boy's heart was heavy with grief--if only he had given it a little bag of berries when it went away.

Now the pines in the Grunewald were covered with snow. When Wolfgang had gone to school that morning, his knapsack on his back, the housemaid at his side, the white layer had crackled and broken under his boots. It was very cold. And then he had heard a bird's shriek, that sounded like a hungry croak. The housemaid thought it was an owl--pooh, what did she know about it? It was a raven, the hungry beggar in the jet-black coat, like the one in the primer.

And the boy was thinking of it now as he sat on the bench, staring with big eyes at the blackboard, on which the teacher was writing words they were to find out. How nice it must be under the pines now. There flew the raven; brushing the snow off the branches with its black wings, so that it looked like powder as it fell. Where was he going to fly to? His thoughts flew far, far away after the raven, as they had done after the starling. The boy's eyes shone, his chest rose with the deep breath he drew--at that moment the teacher called to him.

"Wolfgang, are you asleep with your eyes open? What's this?" The boy gave a start, got red, then pale and knew nothing.

The other boys almost died of laughing--"Are you asleep with your eyes open?"--that had been too funny.

The teacher did not punish him, but Wolfgang crept home as though he had been punished. He had hidden from the housemaid, who always came to fetch him--no, he would not go with her to-day. He had also run away from his comrades--let them fight without him today, to-morrow he would throw all the more snowballs at them.

He walked quite alone, turned off from the street and wandered about aimlessly among the pines. He looked for the raven, but it was far away, and so he began to run too, run as quickly as he could, and tore the knapsack off his back with a loud cry, hurling it far from him up into the broad branches of a pine, so that it hung there and nothing but snow fell down silently in large lumps. That amused him. He filled both his hands with snow, made hard balls of it and began to regularly bombard the pine that kept his knapsack a prisoner. But it did not give it up, and when he had grown hot and red and tired but very much cheered, he had to go home without his knapsack.

The housemaid had been back a long time when he arrived. She opened the door for him with a red face--she had run so hard after him--and an angry look. "Hm," she said irritably, "you've been kept, I suppose?"

He pushed her aside. "Hold your tongue!" He could not bear her at that moment, when coming in from outside where everything had been so quiet, so free.

His parents were already at table. His father frowned as he looked at him, his mother asked in a voice of gentle reproach in which there was also a little anxiety: "Where have you been so long? Lisbeth has been looking for you everywhere."

"Well?" His father's voice sounded severe.

The boy did not give any answer, it seemed to him all at once as though his tongue were paralysed. What should he tell those people sitting indoors about what he had been doing outside?

"He's sure to have been kept at school, ma'am," whispered the housemaid when she handed the meat. "I'll find it out from the other boys to-morrow, and tell you about it, ma'am."

"Oh, you!" The boy jumped up; although she had whispered it in a low voice, he had heard it all the same. His chair fell down behind him with a crash, and rushing up to the girl with clenched fist he seized hold of her so roughly that she gave a shrill scream and let the dish fall out of her hand.

"You goose, you goose!" he howled in a loud voice, and wanted to strike her. His father only pulled him away with difficulty.

"Wölfchen!" Käte's fork had fallen out of her hand with a clatter, and she was staring at her boy with dilated eyes.

The maid complained bitterly. He was always like that, he was unbearable, he had said before to her: "Hold your tongue!" No, she could not put up with it, she would rather leave. And she ran out of the room crying.

Paul Schlieben was extremely angry. "You are to be civil to inferiors. You are to be polite to them, just because they have to serve. Do you hear?" And he seized hold of the boy with a strong hand, laid him across his knees and gave him the whipping he so well deserved.

Wolfgang ground his teeth together and bore the punishment without uttering a sound and without a tear.

But every stroke fell on his mother's heart. She felt as if she herself had been beaten and severely bruised. When her husband took his usual rest after the stormy dinner, smoked, read the paper and took a little nap between whiles, she crept up to the nursery in which the boy had been locked. Was he crying?

She turned the key softly--he was kneeling on the chair near the window, his nose pressed flat against the pane, looking attentively out at the snow. He did not notice her at all. Then she went away again cautiously. She went downstairs again, but her mind was not sufficiently at rest to read in her room; she crept about the house softly as though she had no peace. Then she heard Lisbeth say to the cook in the kitchen between the rattling of plates: "I shall certainly not put up with it. Not from such a rude boy. What has he got to do here?"

Käte stood rigid, overcome by a terror that paralysed her: what did she know? She became glowing hot and then icy cold. "Not from such a rude boy--what has he got to do here?" oh, God, was that the way she spoke about him?

She ran up to the nursery; Wölfchen was still kneeling at the window.

No other villa obstructed the view there as yet; from the window one looked out on a large piece of waste ground, where dandelions and nettles grew in the sand between hedge mustard in the summer time, but where the snow lay now, deep and clean, untouched by any footstep. The short winter evening was already drawing to a close, that white field was the only thing that still glittered, and it seemed to the mother that the child's face was very wan in the pale light of the luminous snow.

"Wölfchen," she called softly. And then "Wölfchen, how could you say 'goose' and 'hold your tongue' to Lisbeth? Oh, for shame! Where did you get those words from?" Her voice was gentle and sad as she questioned him.

Then he turned round to her, and she saw how his eyes burned. Something flickered in them, that looked like a terrified, restless longing.

She noticed that as well, and quite against all rules of pedagogy she opened her arms and whispered--after it had escaped from her lips she did not know herself why she had said it, for he had everything, everything his heart desired--"You poor child!"

And he ran into her arms.

They held each other tightly, heart beating against heart. They were both sad, but neither of them knew the reason why, nor why the other one was sad.

"It's not the whipping," he murmured.

She stroked his straight hair away from his forehead with her soft hand; she did not ask him any more questions. For--did not something rise out of that field covered with snow, hover outside the window and lay its finger on its lips: "Be quiet, do not ask, do not touch it"?

But she remained with the boy and played with him; she felt as though she ought not to leave him alone to-day. Yes, she must pay still more attention to him in the future. All at once the thought fell on her heart like a heavy weight: she had already left him much too much to himself. But then she consoled herself again: he was still so young, his mind was still a piece of quite soft wax, which she could mould as she liked. He must never again be allowed to stand at the window staring out at that desolate field with such burning eyes. What was he longing for? Was not a wealth of love showered on him? And everything else that delights a child's heart?

She looked round his pretty room. Such a quantity of toys were piled up in it, trains and steamers, tin soldiers and picture books and all the newest games.

"Come, we'll play," she said.

He was quite ready to do so; she was surprised how quickly he had forgotten his sorrow. Thank God, he was still quite an innocent, unsuspecting child. But how restlessly he threw the toys about. "That's stupid," and "that's tiresome"--nothing really absorbed his attention. She soon felt quite exhausted with all her proposals and her endeavours to induce him to play this or that game. She did not think she had been so difficult to satisfy as a child. She had wanted to get up and go away half a dozen times already--no, she really could not stand it any longer, she had a frantic headache, it had got on her nerves, it was certainly much easier to stand at the fire and cook or do housework than play with a child--but her sense of duty and her love kept her back every time.

She must not leave him alone, for--she felt it with a gloomy dread--for then somebody else would come and take him away from her.

She remained sitting with him, pale and exhausted; he had tormented her a great deal. At last he found a woolly sheep that had been quite forgotten in the corner of the toy cupboard, a dilapidated old toy from his childhood with only three legs left. And he amused himself with that; that pleased him more than the other costly toys. He sat on the carpet as though he were quite a little child, held the sheep between his knees and stroked it.

When he lay in bed at last, she still sat beside him holding his hand. She sang the song with which she had so often sung him to sleep:

"Sleep sound, sweetest child,
Yonder wind howls wild.
Hearken, how the rain makes sprays
And how neighbour's doggie bays.
Doggie has gripped the man forlorn,
Has the beggar's tatter torn--"

She sang it more and more softly. At last she thought he had fallen asleep, but then he tore his hand away impatiently: "Stop that song! I'm not a baby any longer!"

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

It was fortunate that there were no street boys in the Grunewald colony, as Wölfchen would assuredly have played with them; as it was, his playfellows were only a hall-porter's children. There was certainly no want of nicer children to play with; school-fellows whose parents lived in similar villas to theirs used to invite him; and the families in Berlin, with whom the Schliebens were on friendly terms and who were pleased when their children could get out to the Grunewald on their holidays, often asked him to come and see them too.

All children liked to come to the shady garden, where Auntie Käte was always so kind to them. There was always plenty of cakes and fruit and hoops and balls and croquet and tennis, ninepins and gymnastic appliances. On sunny afternoons gay laughter and shrieks used to ascend high up into the green tops of the pines, but--Käte noticed it with surprise--her boy, who was generally so wild, was the quietest of them all on those occasions. He did not care for those visits. He did not care for those well-behaved boys in white and blue sailor-suits, with their fresh faces showing above their dazzling collars; he never felt really at home with them. He would have preferred to have run away to a place far away from there, where nobody else went except now and then a beggar with a large bag, who would turn over every bit of paper with his wire hook to see whether something of value had not been left there the Sunday before. He would have liked to help that man. Or fill the large bag with pine-cones.

But still Wolfgang had some friends. There was Hans Flebbe--his father was coachman at the banker's, who owned the splendid villa on the other side of the road and lived in Bellevuestrasse in Berlin in the winter--and there were also Artur and Frida. But their father was only porter in a villa that was let out to different families.

As soon as these three came home from school, they would stand outside the Schliebens' villa. They could not be driven away, they would wait there patiently until Wolfgang joined them.

"He's like a brother to my Hans," the coachman used to say, and he would greet him with a specially condescending flick of his whip from his high seat. And the porter and his wife used to state with much satisfaction: "Yes, old Schlieben always touches his hat, and she, his lady, also says 'how do you do?' to us in a very friendly style, but the little one, oh, he's quite different."

Those were wild games the four comrades played together, and in which Frida was reckoned to be quite a boy: catch, hide and seek, but best of all, robbers and policemen. How Wolf's eyes sparkled when he, as the robber captain, gave the policeman, Hans Flebbe, a kick in the stomach, so that he fell backwards on the ground and lay for a time without moving from pain.

"I've shot him," he said to his mother proudly.

Käte, who had been called to the window by the noisy shrieks of the children who were rushing about wildly in the waste field behind the villa, had beckoned to her boy to come in. He had come unwillingly; but he had come. Now he stood breathless before her, and she stroked the damp hair away from the face that was wet with perspiration: "What a sight you look! And here--look."

She pointed reproachfully to his white blouse that was covered with dirt. Where in all the world had he made himself so filthy? there were no real pools there. And his trousers. The right leg was slit open the whole way down, the left one had a three-cornered hole in the knee.

Pooh, that was nothing. He wanted to rush away again, he was trembling with impatience; his playfellows were crouching behind the bush, they dared not come out before he, their captain, came back to them. He strove against the hand that was holding him; but his struggles were of no avail that time, his father came out of the next room.

"You are to stop here. You ought to feel ashamed of yourself to resist your mother like that. Off with you, go to your room and prepare your lessons for tomorrow."

Paul Schlieben spoke sharply. It had made him angry to see how the boy had striven with hands and feet against his delicate wife.

"You rude boy, I'll teach you how to behave to your mother. Here"--he seized hold of him by the scruff of his neck and dragged him up to her--"here, beg her pardon. Kiss your good mother's hand. And promise not to be so wild again, not to behave like a street-boy. Be quick--well, are you soon going to do it?"

The veins on the man's forehead began to swell with anger. What a stubborn fellow he was. There he stood, his blouse torn open at front so that you could see the rapid rise and fall of his chest that was wet with perspiration--he was not breathing quietly even now, he was still panting from the rough game--and looking so wild, so turbulent, not at all like the child of nice parents. This could not go on any longer.

"You must not tear about like that any more, do you hear?" said his father severely. "I forbid it. Play other games. You have your garden, your gymnastic appliances and a hundred things others would envy you. And now come here, beg your mother's pardon."

The boy went to his mother. She met him half way, she held out her hand to him already. He kissed it, he mumbled also, "I won't do it again," but the man did not hear any repentance in his voice. There was something in the sullen way he said it that irritated him. And he lost control of himself a little.

"That wasn't an apology. Ask your mother's pardon again--and distinctly."

The boy repeated it.

"And now promise that you will not rush about like that again. 'Dear mother, I promise'--well?"

Not a word, no promise.

"What's the meaning of this?" The man shook the boy, beside himself with anger. But the boy pressed his lips together. He gave his father an upward look out of his dark eyes.

The woman caught the look--oh, God, that was the look!--that look--the woman's look!

She put both her arms round the boy protectingly: "Don't, don't irritate him." She drew him nearer to her and covered his eyes with her hands, so that he had to close them, and then she cast an imploring glance at her husband: "Go, do go."

Paul Schlieben went, but he shook his head angrily.

"You'll see what your training will make of the boy." He raised his hand menacingly once more: "Boy, I tell you, you'll have to obey." And then he closed the door behind him--he could not even have his midday rest undisturbed now.

He heard his wife's voice in the next room. It sounded so gentle and trembled as though with a secret dread. "Wölfchen, Wölfchen, aren't you my good boy?"

No answer. Good heavens, had the unfeeling scamp no answer to give to that question uttered in that tone?

Then again the soft trembling voice: "Won't you be my good boy?"

If the boy did not answer now, then--! The blood surged to his head as he listened against his will, his fingers twitched, he wanted to jump up and rush in again and--ah, he must have answered now. It was probably nothing but a silent nod, but Käte's voice sounded intensely happy: "There you see, I knew you were my good boy, my darling child, my--my----"

Hm, it was certainly not necessary for Käte to lavish such endearing tones on the boy, after he had just been so naughty. And she must have kissed him, put her arms round him. Her voice had died away in a tender breath.

Paul Schlieben did not hear anything more now; neither the rustling of her dress nor any other sound--ah, she was probably whispering to him now. How she spoiled the scamp.

But now--somebody was weeping softly. Was that Wolf's hard, defiant voice? Yes, he was actually crying loudly now, and between his sobs he jerked out pitifully--you could hardly understand what he was saying: "I had to--to shoot him--he's the policeman, you know."

And now everything was quiet again. The man took up his paper once more, which he had thrown aside before, and commenced to read. But he could not fix his attention on it, his thoughts wandered obstinately again and again to the next room. Had the scamp come to his senses now? Did he see that he had been naughty? And was not Käte much too weak? There was nothing to be heard, nothing whatever. But still--was not that the door that creaked? No, imagination. Everything was quiet.

After waiting a little longer he went into the next room. It was indeed very quiet there, for Käte was quite alone. She was sitting at the window, her hands in her lap, pondering. Her thoughts seemed to be far away.

"Where's the boy?"

She gave a terrified start, and thrust both hands forward as though to ward off something.

He saw now that she was pale. The vexation she had had on account of the child had probably shaken her a good deal--just let him wait until he got hold of him, he should do twice as many sums to-day as a punishment.

"Is the boy at his lessons?"

She shook her head and got red. "No."

"No? Why not?" He looked at her in amazement. "Didn't I tell him that he was to go to his lessons at once?"

"You said so. But I told him to run away. Paul, don't be angry." She saw that he was about to fly into a passion, and laid her hand on his arm soothingly. "If you love me, leave him. Oh Paul, believe me, do believe me when I say he can't help it, he must run about, rush about, be out of doors--he must."

"You always have some excuse. Just think of the story of the knapsack when first he went to school--the rascal had thrown it up into a pine-tree. If a labourer had not found it by accident and brought it to us, because he read our name on the primer, we might have looked for it for a long time. You excused that--well, that was nothing very bad--a fit of wantonness--but now you are excusing something quite different; and everything." The man, who generally yielded to his wife in all points, grew angry in his grave anxiety. "I implore you, Käte, don't be so incredibly weak with the boy. Where will it lead to?"

"It will lead him to you and me." She pointed gravely to him and herself. And then she laid her hand on her heart with an expression of deep emotion.

"What do you mean? I don't understand you. Please express yourself a little more clearly, I'm not in a humour to guess riddles."

"If you can't guess it, you'll not understand it either if I say it more clearly." She bent her head and then went back to her former seat. But she was not lost in thought any longer, it seemed to him as if she were leaning forward to catch the shrill shouts of triumph that rose high above the roof from the waste field at the back of the house.

"You'll never be able to manage the boy."

"Oh yes, I shall."

"Of course you will, if you let him do exactly what he likes." The man strode quickly out of the room; his anger was getting the mastery of him.

Paul Schlieben was seriously angry with his wife, perhaps for the first time in their married life. How could Käte be so unreasonable? take so little notice of his orders, as though he had never given them--nay, even act in direct opposition to him? Oh, the rascal was cunning enough, he drew his conclusions from it already. And if he did not do so as yet, still he felt instinctively what a support he had in his mother. It was simply incredible how weak Käte was.

His wife's soft sensitive nature, which had attracted him to her in the first instance and which had had the same charm for him all the years they had been married, now seemed exaggerated all at once--childish. Yes, this timorousness, this everlasting dread of what was over and done with was childish. They had not heard anything more about the boy's mother, why then conjure up her shade on all occasions? They had the boy's birth and baptismal certificates safely in their hands, and the Venn was far away--he would never see it--why then this constant, tremulous anxiety? There was no reason whatever for it. They lived in such pleasant surroundings, their financial position was so sound, Wolf possessed everything that fills and gladdens a child's heart, that it was real madness for Käte to suppose that he had a kind of longing for his home. How in the world should he have got that longing? He had no idea that this was not really his home. It was sad that Käte was so hypersensitive. She could positively make others nervous as well.

And the man passed his hand over his forehead, as though to drive disagreeable thoughts away with a movement of his hand. He lighted a cigar. It was an extra fine one to-day, those he generally left for his guests; he had the feeling that he must have something to help him over an unpleasant hour. For the thing was unpleasant, really unpleasant and difficult, even if he hoped in time to solve the question of how to train such a child satisfactorily. At any rate not as Käte was doing. That was clear to him already.

Paul Schlieben sat in the corner of the sofa in his study, blowing blue rings of smoke into the air. His brows were still knit. He had come home very tired from the office that day, where there had been all sorts of complications--quite enough annoyance--he had had to dictate some hurried letters, had not allowed himself a moment's repose, and had hoped to have a pleasant rest at home--but in vain. Strange how one child can alter the whole household, one's whole life. If the boy had not been there?... Ah, then he would have had a short peaceful nap by now, stretched out on the divan with the newspaper in front of his face, and would be going across to Käte's room for a cosy chat and a cup of coffee, which she prepared herself so gracefully on the humming Viennese coffee-machine. He had always liked to sit and watch her slender, well-cared-for hands move about so noiselessly. It was a pity.

He sighed. But then he conquered the feeling: no, one ought not to wish he were away because of a momentary annoyance. How many happy hours little Wölfchen had given them. It had been charming to watch his first steps, to listen to his first connected words. And had not Käte been very happy to have him--oh, who said been happy?--she was still so. Nothing could be compared to the boy. And that the hours of cloudless happiness they had had through him were not so numerous now as formerly was quite natural. He was not the same little boy any longer, who had taken his first bold run from that corner over there to this sofa, and had clung to his father's legs rejoicing at his own daring; that was all. He was now beginning to be an independent person, a person with wishes of his own, no longer with those that had been inculcated; he showed a will of his very own. Now he wanted this and now he wanted that, and no longer what his teachers wanted. But was not that natural? On the whole, when a child begins to go to school, what a great many changes take place. One would have to make allowances, even if one did not wish to have one's whole way of living influenced by it first the parents, then the child.

The man felt how he gradually became calmer. A boy--what a compound of wildness, roughness, unrestraint, ay, unmannerliness is included in that word! And all, all who were now men had once been boys.

His cigar went out; he had forgotten to smoke it. The man thought of his own boyhood with a strangely gentle feeling not entirely free from a faint longing. Let him only be honest: had he not also rushed about and made a terrible noise, dirtied himself, got hot and torn his trousers and been up to pranks, more than enough pranks?

Strange how he all at once remembered some of the severe lectures he had had given him and the tears he had forced from his mother's eyes; he also very clearly remembered the whipping he had once got for telling a lie. His father had said at the time--all at once he seemed to hear his voice, which had generally sounded anything but solemn, in fact very commonplace, but which had then been ennobled by the gravity of the situation, echo in the room: "Boy, I can forgive you everything else except lies." Ah, it had been very uncomfortable that day in the small office, where his father had leant against the high wooden desk holding the stick behind his back. He had pushed the little cap he wore on account of his baldness to one side in his agitation, his friendly blue eyes had looked at him penetratingly, and at the same time sadly.

"One can forgive everything except lies"--well, had the boy, had Wolfgang told a lie? Certainly not. He had only been naughty, as the best children are now and then.

The man felt ashamed of himself: and he, he had been so displeased with the boy simply because he had been naughty?

He got up from the sofa, threw the remains of his cigar into the ash-tray and went out to look for Wolfgang.

He came across the four in the height of the game. They had lighted a small fire on the waste piece of ground close behind the garden railing, so that the overhanging bushes in the garden formed a kind of roof over them.

They were crouching close together; they were in camp now. Frida had some potatoes in her pinafore, which were to be roasted in the ashes; but the fire would not burn, the twigs only smouldered. Wolfgang lay on his stomach on the ground, resting on his elbows, and was blowing with all the strength of his lungs. But it was not enough, the fire would not burn on any account.

Paul Schlieben had come up softly, the children had not noticed him at all in their eagerness. "Won't it burn?" he asked.

Wolfgang jerked himself up, and was on his feet in a moment. He had been red and fresh-looking, but now he grew pale, his frank look fell timidly, a miserable expression lengthened his round, childish face and made him look older.

"Have I to go in?" It sounded pitiful.

The man pretended not to hear the question; he had really intended fetching him in, but all at once he hesitated to say so. It was hard for the boy to have to go away now before the fire burnt, before the potatoes were roasted. So he said nothing, but stooped down, and as he was not far enough down even then he knelt down and blew the fire, that was faintly crackling, with all the breath he had in his broad chest. Sparks began to leap out at once, and a small flame shot up and soon turned into a big one.

There was a shout of glee. Frida hopped about in the circle, her plaits flying: "It's burning, it's burning!" Artur and Hans chimed in too; they also hopped from the one foot to the other, clapped their dirty hands and shouted loudly: "It's burning, it's burning!"

"Be quiet, children." The man was amused at their happiness. "Bring me some twigs, but very dry ones," he ordered, full of eagerness, too, to keep alive this still uncertain flame, that now disappeared, now flared up again. He blew and poked and added more twigs. The wind drove the smoke into his face so that he had to cough, but he wiped his eyes, that were full of tears, and did not mind that his trousers got wet green spots from kneeling on the ground, and that chance passers-by would be greatly surprised to see Herr Paul Schlieben occupied in that manner. He, too, found it fun now to keep up a fire for roasting potatoes under the pale, blue autumn sky, in which the white clouds were scudding along and the twittering swallows flying. He had never known such a thing--he had always lived in a town--but it was splendid, really splendid.

The children brought twigs. Wolfgang took them and broke them across his knee--crack!--the sticks broke like glass. What a knack the boy had at it.

The flames flared up, the little fire emitted an agreeable warmth; one could warm one's hands at it--ah, that was really very nice.

And then the man followed the smoke, which the wind raised from the field like a light cloud, with his eyes. It seemed grey at first, but the higher it flew the lighter it became, and the friendly sunshine shone through it, transforming it. It floated upwards, ever upwards, ever more immaterial, more intangible, until it flew away entirely--a puff, a whiff.

Now it was about time to bury the potatoes; Wolfgang busied himself with it. They had not poked the fire any more, the flame had sunk down, but the ashes hid all the heat. The children stood round with wide-open eyes, quite quiet, almost holding their breath and yet trembling with expectation: when would the first potatoes be done? Oh, did they not smell nice already? They distended their nostrils so as to smell them. But Paul Schlieben brushed his trousers now and prepared to go away--it would take too long before the potatoes were ready. He felt something that resembled regret. But it really would not do for him to stand about any longer; what would people think of him?

He was himself again now. "That's enough now," he said, and he went away, carefully avoiding the impracticable parts of the field where the puddles were. Then he heard steps close behind him. He turned round. "Wolf? Well, what do you want?"

The boy looked at him sadly out of his dark eyes.

"Are you going home too?" There was astonishment in the man's question--he had not said that the boy was to go with him.

The pines emitted a splendid smell, you could breathe the air so freely, so easily, and that pale blue sky with the fleecy white clouds had something wonderfully clear about it, something that filled the eyes with light. White threads floated over the countryside, driven from the clean east, and hung fast to the green branches of the pines, shimmering there like a fairy web. And the sun was still agreeably warm without burning, and an invigorating pungent odour streamed from the golden-coloured leaves of the bushes that enclosed the gardens at the back.

The man drew a deep breath; he felt as if he had suddenly grown ten, twenty--no, thirty years younger. Even more.

"Well, run along," he said.

The boy looked at him as if he had not quite understood him.

"Run," he said once more curtly, smiling at the same time.

Then the boy gave a shout, such a shrill, triumphant shout that his playfellows, who were crouching round the potato fire, joined in immediately without knowing why.

There was a gleam in the dark eyes of the boy, who loved freedom, the free air and to run about free. He did not say his father had made him happy, but he drew a deep breath as if a load had fallen off his chest. And the man noticed something in his face, that was now commencing to grow coarser, to lose the soft contours of childhood and get the sharp ones of youth, that made it refined and beautiful.

Wolfgang flew back across the field as quick as lightning, as if shot from a tightly strung bow.

The man went back into his garden. He opened the gate cautiously so that it should not creak, and closed it again just as quietly--Käte need not know where he had been. But she was already standing at the window.

There was something touchingly helpless in her attitude, such an anxious scrutiny in her eyes--no, she need not look at him like that, he was not angry with her.

And he nodded to her.

When the housemaid asked whether the master did not know where the young gentleman was--she had had the milk warmed three times already for him and had run up and downstairs with it--he said in a low voice with an excuse in the tone: "Oh, that does not matter, Lisbeth. Warm it for a fourth time later on. It is so healthy for him to be out of doors."

BOOK II

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CHAPTER VIII

It was Frida Lämke's birthday. "If you may come we are to have buns with raisins in, but if you mayn't there'll only be rolls like we have every day," she said to her friend Wolfgang. "Mind you get them to let you come." It was of most importance to her that Wolfgang came; no differences were made on account of Flebbe, although he always said he was going to marry her.

And Wolfgang teased his mother. "Let me go--why not? I should like to so much--why mayn't I?"

Yes, why not? He had kept dinning this "why not?" into her ears for the last twenty-four hours; it had quite worn her out. What should she say to him? that she disliked Frida? But what had the girl done that she had taken a dislike to her? Nothing. She always curtseyed politely, was always tidily dressed, had even plaited the blue ribbon into her fair hair with a certain taste. The parents were also quite respectable people, and still--these children always hung about the streets, always, both summer and winter. You could pass their house whenever you liked, those Lämkes were always outside their door. Was it the life of the streets this snub-nosed girl, who was very developed for her age, reminded her of? No, he must not go to those people's house, go down into the atmosphere of the porter's room.

"I don't wish you to go there," she said. She had not the heart to say: "I won't allow it," when he looked at her with those beseeching eyes.

And the boy saw his advantage. He felt distinctly: she is struggling with herself; and he followed it up with cruel pertinacity.

"Let me--oh, do let me. I shall be so sorry if I can't. Then I shan't care to do anything. Why mayn't I? Mammy, I'll love you so, if you'll only let me go. Do let me--will you? But I will."

She could not escape from him any more, he followed her wherever she went, he took hold of her dress, and even if she forbade him to ask her any more, she felt that he only thought of the one thing the whole time. So he forced her in that way.

Paul Schlieben was not so averse to his accepting the invitation from the Lämkes. "Why not? They're quite respectable people. It won't harm the boy to cast a glance at those circles for once in a way. I also went to our hall-porter's home as a boy. And why not?"

She wanted to say: "But that was something quite different, there was no danger in your case"--but then she thought better of it and said nothing. She did not want to bring him her fears, her doubts, her secret gnawing dread so soon again, as there was no manifest reason for them, and they could not be explained as every other feeling can be after all. Something like a depressing mist always hung over her. But why should she tell him so? She neither wanted to be scolded nor laughed at for it; she would resent both. He was not the same man he used to be. Oh--she felt it with a slight bitterness--how he used to understand her. He had shared every emotion with her, every vibration of her soul. But he had not the gift of understanding her thoughts now--or did she perhaps not understand him any longer?

But he was still her dear husband, her good, faithful husband whom she loved more than anyone else in the world--no, whom she loved as she loved Wölfchen. The child, oh, the child was the sun round which her life revolved.

If Paul only had been as he was formerly. She had to cast a covert glance at him very frequently now, and, with a certain surprise, also grow accustomed to his outward appearance. Not that his broadening-out did not suit him; the slight stoutness his slender figure with its formerly somewhat stiff but always perfect carriage had assumed suited his years, and the silver threads that commenced to gleam in his beard and at his temples. It suited also the comfortable velvet coat he always put on as soon as he came home, suited his whole manner of being. Strange that anybody could become such a practical person, to whom everything relating to business had formerly been such a burden, nay, even most repugnant. He would not have picked up the strange child from the Venn now, and--Käte gave her husband a long look--he would not have taken it home with him now as a gift from fairyland.

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.

"I'm not at all satisfied with my wife's health again," Paul Schlieben complained to the doctor. "She's in a terribly nervous state again."

"Really?" Dr. Hofmann's friendly face became energetic. "I'll tell you one thing, my dear friend, you must take vigorous measures against it at once."

"That's no use." The man shook his head. "I know my wife. It's the boy's doing, that confounded boy!"

And he took Wolfgang in hand. "Now listen, you must not always be worrying your mother like that. If I notice once more that she is grieving about you because you are naughty, you shall see what I'll do to you."

Did he worry his mother? Wolfgang looked very blank. And surely it was not naughty of him to want to go to the Lämkes? It worried him to have to sit indoors, whilst the wind was whistling outside and playing about with one's hair in such a jolly manner. And it worried him, too, that he was not going to the Lämkes that day.

"Well then, go," said Käte. She even drove into Berlin before dinner and bought a doll, a pretty doll with fair locks, eyes that opened and shut, and a pink dress. "Take it to Frida for her birthday when you go," she said in the afternoon, putting it into the boy's hands. "Stop! Be careful!"

He had seized hold of it impetuously, he was so delighted to be able to bring Frida something. And in a rare fit of emotion--he was no friend of caresses--he put up his face in an outburst of gratitude and let his mother kiss him. He did not want her kiss, but he submitted to it, she felt that very well, but still she was glad, and she followed him with her eyes with a smile that lighted up her whole face.

"But you must be home again before dark," she called out to him at the last moment. Had he heard her?

How he ran off, as light-footed as a stag. She had never seen any child run so quickly. He threw up his straight legs that his heels touched his thighs every time. The wind blew his broad-brimmed sailor hat back, then he tore it off and ran on bareheaded, he was in such a hurry.

What was it that drew him so powerfully to those people?

The smile disappeared from Käte's face; she left the window.

Wolfgang was happy. He was sitting with the Lämkes, in the room in which they also did the cooking when the weather was cold. The parents' bed was divided off by means of a curtain, Frida slept on the sofa, and Artur in the little room next to it in which were also kept the shovels and brooms which Lämke used for cleaning the house and street.

It was not winter yet, still pleasant autumn, but the room was already warm and cosy. The stronger smell of the coffee, which Frau Lämke was making in the large enamelled pot, mingled with the delicate fragrance of the pale monthly rose and carnation, myrtle and geranium, which had been pushed close to the window that was almost level with the ground and were all in flower. At home Wolfgang never got coffee, but he got some there; and he sipped it as he saw the others do, only he was even more delighted with it than they. And no fine pastry had ever tasted so good as did that plain bun, that was more like bread than like a cake. He ate it with his mouth open, and when Mrs. Lämke pushed a second one to him, the guest of honour, he took it with radiant eyes.

Frau Lämke felt much flattered at his visit. But she had not made much of the doll; she had taken it from Frida at once and locked it into the cupboard: "So that you don't smash it at once. Besides, your father isn't a gentleman that you can play with dolls every day." But later on when her husband came down from the lodge, in which he sat in his leisure hours mending boots and shoes, to drink a cup of coffee and eat a bun on Frida's birthday, the doll was fetched out again and shown him.

"Fine, isn't it? She's got it from Wolfgang's mamma. Just look, Lämke"--the woman lifted the doll's pink dress up and showed the white petticoat trimmed with a frill edged with narrow lace--"such trimming. Just like that I sewed round the dress Frida wore at her christening. She was the first one; bless you, and you think at the time it's something wonderful. Oh dear!"--she sighed and laid the doll back in the cupboard in which the clean pillowcases and Frida's and her Sunday hats were together with all kinds of odds and ends--"how time flies. Now she's already nine."

"Ten," corrected Frida. "I'm ten to-day, mother."

"Right--dear me, are you already ten?" The woman laughed and shook her head, surprised at her own forgetfulness. And then she nodded to her husband: "Do you still remember, Lämke, when she was born?"

"If I remember!" he said, pouring another cup out of the inexhaustible coffee-pot. "Those were nice carryings-on when she was born--none of that again, thanks. The girl gave you a lot of trouble. And me too; I was terribly afraid. But that's ten years since, old woman--why, it's almost forgotten."

"And if it had happened a hundred years ago I shouldn't have forgotten it, oh no." The woman put out her hand as though to ward off something. "I was just going to make myself some coffee about four o'clock in the afternoon, like to-day, I had got such a longing for it, and then it started. I just got as far as the passage--do you remember, you were still working in Stiller's workshop at the time, and we lived in the Alte Jakob, fifth storey to the left?--and I knocked at Fritze's, the necktie maker's, whose door was opposite ours, and said: 'Oh, please,' I said, 'send your little one as quickly as you can to Frau Wadlern, 10, Spittelmarkt, she knows all about it'--oh dear, how bad I felt. And I fell down on the nearest chair; they had the greatest difficulty to get me home again. And now it began, I could not control myself however much I tried; I believe they heard me scream three houses off. And it lasted, it lasted--evening came on--you came home--it was midnight--five, six, seven in the morning--then at last at nine o'clock Frau Wadlern said: 'The child, it'll soon be----'"

"That's enough now, mother," interrupted the man, glancing sideways at the children, who were sitting very quietly round the table listening, with wide-open, inquisitive eyes. "All that's over long ago, the girl's here, and has been a credit to you so far."

"She was born at eleven sharp," said Frau Lämke dreamily, nodding her head at the same time and then drawing a deep breath as if she had climbed a high mountain. And then, overwhelmed by the pain and pleasure of a memory that was still so extremely vivid after the lapse of ten years, she called her daughter, her first-born, to come to her on this her tenth birthday.

"Come here, Frida." And she gave her a kiss.

Frida, who was quite abashed at this unexpected caress, giggled as she cast a glance at her brother Artur and the two other boys, and then ran to the door: "Can we go and play now?"

"Be off with you."

Then they rushed out of the dark cellar, where the Lämkes lived, in high spirits.

It was so light in the street, the sun shone brightly, a fresh wind was blowing and somebody was flying a kite far away across the field. There were very few people on foot and no carriages. The road belonged to them, and they rushed to it with a loud hallo. The one who reached the lamp-post at the corner first was captain.

Wolfgang had never allowed anyone to deprive him of this honour before, but he had to be policeman to-day, he had been the last. He had followed the others slowly and silently. He had got something in his head to think about, which made him dull and hindered him from running; he had to think about it the whole time. He could not get rid of it even when he was in the midst of his favourite game; the only time he forgot it was when he was having a good scuffle with Hans Flebbe. The latter had scratched him in the face, and so he tore a handful of his hair out. They gripped hold of each other near the next garden-gate.

Artur, a feeble little creature, had not taken part in the fight, but he stood with his hands in his pockets giving advice in a screeching voice to the two who fought in silence.

"Give him it hard, Flebbe. Your fist under his nose--hard."

"On with you, Wolfgang. Settle him. Show him what you can do."

Frida hopped from one leg to the other, laughing, her fair plait dancing on her back. But all at once her laugh became somewhat forced and anxious: Hans, who was several years older than Wolfgang, had got him down on the ground and was hammering him in the face with his fist.

"Flebbe, you--!" She pulled his blouse, and as that did not help she nimbly put her foot out. He stumbled over it, and Wolfgang, quickly taking advantage of it, swung himself up and belaboured his enemy.

It was no game any longer, no ordinary scuffle between two boys. Wolfgang felt his face burn like fire, he had a scratch on his cheek that went down to his chin, there were sparks before his eyes. All that had made him so silent before was forgotten, he felt a wild delight and gave a loud roar.

"Wolfgang, Wolfgang, no, that's not fair," cried the umpire. "That's no longer fun." Artur prepared to catch hold of Wolfgang, who was kneeling on his opponent's chest, by his two legs.

A jerk and off he flew. Wolf now turned against him, trembling with rage; his black eyes gleamed. This was no longer a well-dressed child of better-class parents, this was quite an elementary, unbridled, unconquered force. He snorted, he panted--at that moment somebody called.

"Wolfgang, Wolfgang."

"Wolfgang," cried Frida warningly, "mother's calling. And your maid is standing near her beckoning."

Frau Lämke's voice was again heard, coming from the door of her house: "Wolfgang, Wolfgang." And now Lisbeth's sharp tones were also heard: "Well, are you soon coming? You're to come home."

Frau Lämke laughed. "Oh, leave them, they were so happy." But she got a fright all the same when she saw the boy's dirty clothes, and began to brush them. "My goodness, what a sight your pretty blouse looks--and the trousers." She turned red, and still redder when she noticed the fiery scratch on the young gentleman's cheek. "They've made a nice mess of you, the brats. Just you wait until I get hold of you." She shook her fist at Hans Flebbe and her own children, but her threat was not meant seriously. Then she said to Lisbeth in an undertone and with a twitching smile round the corners of her mouth, as she stood there motionless with indignation: "Wild brats, aren't they? Well, it'll always be like that, we were all like that when we were young." And, turning to Wolfgang again, she passed her gnarled hand over his fiery scratch: "That was fine fun, eh, Wolfgang?"

"Yes," he said from the bottom of his heart. And when he saw her looking at him with eyes so friendly and full of comprehension, a great liking for the woman sprang up in his heart.

It had been a splendid afternoon. But he did not speak of it as he went home with Lisbeth; she would have been sure to have turned up her nose at it.

"Hm, the mistress is nice and angry," said Lisbeth--she never said anything but "the mistress" when speaking to the boy. "Why did you stop there such an everlasting time? Didn't you hear the mistress say you were to come home before it was dark?"

He did not answer. Let her chatter, it was not at all true. He stared past her into the twilight. But when he came into the room on reaching home, he noticed that his mother had waited for him. She was certainly not angry, but his evening meal, an egg, a ham sandwich, the milk in a silver mug, everything neatly prepared, was already there, and she sat opposite his place with her hands folded on the white table cloth, frowning impatiently.

The large hanging-lamp, which cast a bright light on the table and made her bent head gleam like gold, did not brighten up her face.

His mother was in silk, in light silk, in a dress trimmed with lace, which only had something that looked like a very transparent veil over the neck and arms. Oh, now he remembered, she was to meet his father, who had not come home to dinner that day, in town at eight o'clock, and go to a party with him. Oh, that was why he had had to come home so early. As if he could not have got into bed alone.

"You've come so late," she said.

"You could have gone," he said.

"You know, my child, that I'm uneasy if I don't know that you are at home." She sighed: "How could I have gone?"

He looked at her in surprise: why did she say that? Had somebody been telling tales about him again? Why was she so funny?

He gazed at her with wide-open eyes, as though she were a perfect stranger to him in that dress that left her neck and arms so bare. He put his food into his mouth lost in thought, and munched it slowly. All at once he had to think a great deal of what he had heard Frau Lämke tell. His father and mother had never told anything about when he was born.

And suddenly he stopped eating and launched the question into the stillness of the room, into the stillness that reigned between him and her: "When I was born, did it last such a long time too?"

"When what?--who?--you?" She stared at him.

She did not seem to have understood him. So he quickly swallowed the food he still had in his mouth and said very loudly and distinctly: "Did it last such a long time when I was born? It lasted very long when Frida was. Did you scream too, like Frau Lämke?"

"I?--who?--I?" She turned crimson and then very pale. She closed her eyes for a moment, she felt dizzy; there was a buzzing in her ears. She jumped up from her chair, she felt she must run away, and still she could not. She clutched hold of the table with shaking hands, but the strong oak table had turned into something that shook uncertainly, that moved up and down, slid about. What--what was the boy saying? O God!

She bit her lips, drew a deep breath, and was about to say: "Leave off asking such stupid questions," and yet could not say it. She struggled with herself. At last she jerked out: "Nonsense. Be quick, finish eating. Then off to bed at once." Her voice sounded quite hoarse.

The boy's astonished look fell on her once more. "Why are you all at once so--so--so horrid? Can't I even ask a question?" And he pushed his plate aside sulkily and stopped eating.

Why did she not answer him? Why did she not tell him something like what Frau Lämke had told her Frida? Had he not been born as well? And had not his mother been pleased, too, when he was born? It was very nasty of her that she did not tell him anything about it. Could she not see how much, how awfully much he wanted to know something about it?

A burning curiosity was aroused in the child all at once. It tortured him, positively devoured him. He would not be able to sleep the whole night, he would have to think of it again and again. And he wanted to sleep, it was tiresome to lie awake--he wanted to know it he must know it.

Käte saw how gloomy the boy's face had grown. Oh, the poor, poor boy. If only she had not let him go to those people. What had he been told there? What did he know? Had they made him suspicious? What

did those people know? Oh, they had made him suspicious, otherwise why should he have tormented her with such questions?

A burning dread filled her mind, and yet her hands and feet were growing as cold as ice. But her compassion was even greater than her dread--there he sat, looking so sad and with tears in his eyes. The poor child, who wanted to know something about his birth, and whom she could not, would not, dared not tell anything. Oh, if only she could think of something to say, only find the right word.

"Wölfchen," she said gently, "you are still too young to hear about it--I can't tell you about it yet. Another time. You don't understand it yet. When you're older--I'll tell you it another time."

"No, now." She had gone up to him, and he caught hold of her dress and held her fast. He persisted with the dull obstinacy that was peculiar to him: "Now. I will know it--I must know it."

"But I--I've no time, Wölfchen. I have to go--yes, I really must go, it's high time." Her eyes wandered about the room, and she felt quite flustered: "I--no, I can't tell you anything."

"You will not," he said. "And still Frau Lämke told her Frida it." The sulky peevish expression had disappeared from the boy's dark face, and made way for one of real sadness. "You don't love me half so much, not in the same way as Frau Lämke loves her Frida."

She did not love him?--she did not love him?--Käte could have screamed. If any mother loved her child it was surely she, and still this child felt instinctively that something was wanting. And was not that mysterious bond wanting that binds a real mother so indissolubly and mysteriously, so intimately to her real child?

"Wölfchen," she said in a soft tremulous voice, "my dear Wölfchen," and she stroked his hot forehead with her icy cold hand. "You don't mean what you are saying. We love each other so much, don't we? My child--my darling child, tell me."

She sought his glance, she hung on his answer.

But the answer she longed for did not come. He looked past her. "You see, you won't tell me anything."

He seemed to harp on that. This burning desire had taken possession of him all at once. Somebody had instilled it into him, there could be no other explanation for it. "Who--" she asked hesitatingly--"who has told you--you should question me in this manner? Who?"

She had taken hold of his shoulders, but he wriggled away from under her touch. "Oh, why are you so funny? No-nobody. But I should like to know it. I tell you, I should like to know it. It worries me so. I don't know why it worries me, that's all."

It worried him--already? So early? Oh, then it was a suspicion, a suspicion--who knew from whence it came? He suspected what had happened in his earliest childhood unconsciously. What would happen? "O God, help me!" she cried to herself. The point now was to invent something, make something up, devise something. Those torturing questions must never, never be asked again.

And she forced herself to smile, and when she felt that her smile was no smile, she stepped behind his chair and laid her cheek on the top of his head and both her hands round his neck. He could not look round at her in that way. And she spoke in the low voice in which fairy tales are told to children.

"Father and I had been married a long time--just think, almost fifteen years!--and father and I wanted so much to have a dear boy or a dear little girl, so that we should not be so much alone. One day I was very sad, for all the other women had a dear child, and I was the only one who had not, and I walked about outside and cried, and then I suddenly heard a voice it came from heaven--no, a voice--a voice that--and--and----" She got bewildered, stammered and hesitated: what was she to say now?

"Hm," he said impatiently. "And--? Tell me some more. And--?"

"And next day you were lying in our cradle," she concluded hastily and awkwardly, in an almost stifled voice.

"And"--he had pushed her hands away, and had turned round and was looking into her face now--"that's all?"

"Well--and we--we were very happy."

"How stupid!" he said, offended. "That's not 'being born.' Frau Lämke told it quite differently. You don't know anything about it." He looked at her doubtfully.

She evaded his glance, but he kept his eyes fixed on hers. It seemed to her as if those scrutinising eyes were looking right down into her soul. She stood there like a liar, and did not know what more to say.

"You don't know anything about it," he repeated once more, bitterly disappointed. "Good night." And he slouched to the door.

She let him go, she did not call him back to give her his good-night kiss. She remained sitting without moving. She heard his steps in the room above. Now he opened the door to throw his boots into the corner outside, now she heard them fall--now everything was quiet.

Oh, what was she to say to him later on when he asked her questions with full knowledge, a man justified in asking questions and demanding an answer to them? She let herself fall into the chair on which he had been sitting, and rested her head in her hands.

CHAPTER IX

The boy's friendship with the Lämkes was restricted. Her boy should never go there again. In a manner Käte had grown jealous of the woman who spoke of such improper things and did not mind what she said when children were present.

Frau Lämke could not boast any longer of receiving a friendly greeting from the fine lady. Frau Schlieben walked past her house now without looking at her, and did not seem to hear her respectful: "Good morning, ma'am."

"Tell me, Wolfgang, what have I done to your mother?" she asked the boy one day when she had been out shopping and saw him again for the first time for several months. He was leaning against the railing that enclosed the plot of ground opposite their house, staring fixedly at their door.

He gave a start; he had not heard her coming. And then he pretended not to see her, and stood flicking the whip he held in his hand.

"Are you never coming to see us again?" she went on. "Have you been having a fight with Artur or been quarrelling with Frida? No, it can't be that, as they've been looking out for you so long. I suppose your mother won't let you, is that it? Hm, we're not good enough any more, I suppose? Of course not. Lämke's only a porter and our children only a porter's children."

Her good-natured voice sounded mortified, and the boy listened attentively. He turned scarlet.

"Oh, I see, you are not allowed to. All right, stop away then, it's all the same to me." She turned round to go, full of anger.

"Well, what do you want now?" A sound from him made her stop; she remained against her will. There was something in the glance the boy gave her, as he looked her full in the face, that kept her standing. "I know, my dear," she said good-naturedly, "it's not your fault. I know that."

"She won't let me," he muttered between his teeth, cracking his whip with a loud noise.

"Why not?" inquired the woman. "Hasn't she said why you're not to play with Artur and Frida any more? Artur has got a new humming top--oh my, how it dances. And Frida a splendid ball from the lady who lives in our house."

The boy's eyes flashed. He put out his foot and gave such a violent kick to a stone in front of him that it flew over to the other side of the street. "I shall play with them all the same."

"Come, come, not so defiant," said the woman admonishingly. "It may be the children were naughty--bless you, you can't be answerable for all they do. Listen, little Wolfgang, you must obey your mother if she won't hear of your coming." She sighed. "We've been very fond of you, my dear. But it's always like that, the friendship is very warm to begin with, and then all of a sudden the rich think better of it. And you really are too big to sit with us in the cellar now----"

She was chattering on, when she felt someone seize hold of her hand. The boy held it in a very firm grip. Bending down to him--for she was tall and thin and her eyes were no longer very good owing to the demi-obscurity of their room--she saw that he had tears in his eyes. She had never seen him cry before, and got quite a fright.

"Hush, hush, Wölfchen. Now don't cry, for goodness' sake don't, it isn't worth it." Taking hold of a corner of her coarse blue working-apron--she had just run away from the wash-tub--she wiped his eyes and then his cheeks, and then she stroked the hair that grew so straight and thick on his round head.

He stood quite still in the street that was already so sunny, so spring-like, as though rooted to the spot. He who had shrunk from caresses allowed her to stroke him, and did not mind if others saw it too.

"I shall come to see you again, Frau Lämke. She can say what she likes. I will come to you."

As he went away, not running as he usually did, but slowly and deliberately, the woman followed him with her eyes, and was surprised to see how big he had grown.

Käte had no easy time. However much she fought against Wölfchen having any intercourse with the Lämkes--positively stood out against it--the boy was stronger than she. He succeeded in gaining his end; the children were to come to him, even if he might not go to them. In the garden, at any rate--he had wrung that concession from his mother.

They had had a struggle, as it were--no loud words and violent scenes, it is true, no direct prohibitions on her side, no entreaties on his, but a much more serious, silent struggle. She had felt that he was setting her at defiance, that the opposition in him increased more and more until it became dislike--yes, dislike of her. Or did she only imagine it?

She would have liked to speak to her husband about it--oh, how she wanted to do it!--but she dreaded his smile, or his indirect reproach. He had said a short time ago: "It's no trifle to train a child. One's own is difficult enough, how much more difficult"--no, he should not say "somebody else's" again, no, never again. This child was not somebody else's, it was their own--their beloved child. She gave way to Wolfgang. Anyhow there was no danger if the children came to him in the garden; she could always see and hear them there. And she would be good to them, she made up her mind the children should not suffer because she had already had to weep many a secret tear at night on her pillow on account of their friendship. She would make her boy fond of the garden, so fond that he would never long to go out into the street again.

But when she hid the coloured eggs on Easter Sunday, the day she had given Wölfchen permission to invite the Lämkes and also the coachman's son into the garden, and put the nests and hares and chickens into the box-tree that was covered with shoots and among the clusters of blue scyllas that had just commenced to flower, something like anger rose in her heart. Now these children would come with their bad manners and clumsy shoes and tread down her beds, those flower-beds with which they had taken so much trouble, and in which the hyacinths were already showing buds under the branches that protected them and the tulips lifting up their heads. What a pity! And what a pity they would not be able to enjoy this first really spring day quietly, listening undisturbed to the piping blackbird. And they had even refused to come. Hans Flebbe had certainly accepted the invitation without showing any resentment--the coachman knew what was the right thing to do--but the Lämkes did not want to come on any account--that is to say, their mother did not wish it. Lisbeth had been sent there twice; the second time she had come back quite indignant: "Really, what notions such people have." "Dear boy, it's no good, they won't come," Käte had had to say. But then she had noticed how downcast he looked, and in the night she had heard him sigh and toss about. No, that would not do. She wanted to feel his arm, which he had flung so impetuously round her waist when she gave him permission to invite the children, round her neck too. And then she had sat down and written--written to this uneducated woman, addressing her as "Dear Madam," and had asked her to let the children look for eggs to please Wolfgang.

Now they were there. They stood stiff and silent on the path dressed in their best clothes, and did not even look at the flower-beds. Käte had always imagined she understood how to draw out children extremely well, but she did not understand it in this case. She had praised Frida's bran-new, many coloured check frock, and had lifted up her fair plait on which the blue bow was dangling: "Oh, how thick!"--and she had remarked on Artur's shiny boots and Flebbe's hair, which was covered with pomade and which he wore plastered down on both sides of his healthy-looking footman's face with a parting in the middle. She had also made inquiries about their school report at Easter, but had never got any longer answer than "yes" and "no."

The children were shy. Especially Frida. She was the eldest, and she felt how forced the friendly inquiries were. She made her curtsey as she always did, quickly and pertly like a water wagtail bobbing up and down, but her high girl's voice did not sound so clear to-day; the tone was more subdued, almost depressed. And she did not laugh. Artur copied his sister, and Hans Flebbe copied the girl too, for he always considered all she did worthy of imitation. The two boys stood there, poor little wretches, staring fixedly at the points of their boots and sniffing, as they dared not take out their handkerchiefs and use them.

Käte was in despair. She could not understand that her Wolfgang could find pleasure in having such playfellows. Moreover, he was exactly like the others that day, taciturn and awkward. Even when they commenced to look for the eggs, the children set about it very stupidly; she had positively to push them to the hiding-place.

At last, tired out and almost irritable, Käte went indoors; she would only stop there a short time. No, she could not stand it any longer, always to have to talk and talk to the children and still not get any answer out of them.

But hardly had she reached her room, when she pricked up her ears; a cry reached her from outside that was as clear, as piercing and triumphant as a swallow's when on the wing. Children shouted like that when they were thoroughly happy--oh, she knew that from former times, from the time before Wölfchen had come. Then she had often listened to such shouts full of longing. Oh--she had only to go, then the children were merry, then Wolfgang was merry. She felt very bitter.

She had gone to the window and was looking out into the garden, with her forehead pressed against the pane. How they ran, jumped, hopped, laughed. As though they had been set free. They were trying to catch each other. Frida darted behind the bushes like a weasel, came into sight again with a sharp piercing laugh, and then disappeared once more with a shriek. Wolfgang set off after her wildly. He took no notice of the beds in which the flowers were growing, his mother's delight; he jumped into the middle of them, caring little whether he broke the hyacinths or the tulips, his one thought being to prevent Frida escaping.

And the two others copied him. Oh, how they trampled on the beds now. All three boys were after the girl. The fair plait flew up and down in the sunshine like a golden cord, now here, now there. At last Wolfgang seized hold of it with a triumphant shout. Frida endeavoured to get it away, but the boy held it fast. Then she turned round as quick as lightning, and, laughing all over her face, grasped him firmly round the body with both hands.

It was a harmless merry embrace, a trick of the game--the girl did not wish to be caught, she wanted to pretend that she had been the captor--it was quite a childish innocent embrace, but Käte reddened. She frowned: hardly had she turned her back, when the girl from the street showed herself.

And the mother went into the garden again with a feeling of hatred towards the girl who, in spite of her youth, already endeavoured to attract her boy.

If Käte had thought she would earn her boy's boisterous gratitude that evening after the children had gone home, loaded with Easter eggs and having had plenty to eat, she was disappointed. Wolfgang did not say a word.

She had to ask him: "Well, was it nice?"

"Hm."

That might just as well mean yes as no. But she learnt that it had meant no when she bade him goodnight. It was his father's wish that he should kiss her hand; he did so that evening as usual with an awkward, already so thoroughly boyish, somewhat clumsy gesture. His dark smooth head bent before her for a moment-- only a short moment--his lips just brushed her hand. There was no pressure in the kiss, no warmth.

"Haven't you enjoyed yourself at all?" She could not help it, she had to ask once more. And he, who was candid, said straight out:

"You always came just when it was nice."

"Well then, I won't disturb you in the future." She tried to smile. "Good night, my son." She kissed him, but after he had gone there was a great terror in her heart, besides a certain feeling of jealousy at the thought of being superfluous. If he were like that now, what would he be later on?

Wolfgang could not complain, his mother let the children come to him in the garden as often as he wanted them--and he wanted them almost every day. The friendship that had languished during the winter became warmer than ever now that it was summer.

"Pray leave them," Paul Schlieben had said to his wife, as she looked at him with anxious eyes: what would he say? Would he really not mind Wolfgang rushing about with those children in his garden? "I think it's nice to see how the boy behaves to those children," he said. "I would never have thought he could attach himself to anybody like that."

"You don't think it will do him any harm only to associate with those--those--well, with those children who belong to quite a different sphere?"

"Nonsense. Harm?" He laughed. "That will stop of its own accord later on. I infinitely prefer him to keep to the children of such people than to those of snobs. He'll remain a simple child much longer in that manner."

"Do you think so?" Well, Paul might be right in a manner. Wölfchen was not at all fanciful, he liked an apple, a plain piece of bread and butter just as much as cake. But all the same it would have been better, and she would have preferred it, had he shown himself more dainty with regard to his food--as well as to other things. She took great trouble to make him more fastidious.

When the cook came to her quite indignant one day: "Master Wolfgang won't have any more of the good saveloy on his bread now, nor of the joint from dinner either, ma'am he says it's 'always the same.' What am I to do now?" she was delighted. At last she had succeeded in instilling into him that people do not swallow everything thoughtlessly without making any choice, just for the sake of eating something.

If she had seen how he stuffed bread and dripping with liver and onion sausage on it down his throat at Frau Lämke's, or gobbled up potato cake baked in oil hot from the pan, she would not have been so delighted. But now she was grateful for every finer feeling she thought she observed in him, be it ever so small. She did not notice at all what tortures she caused herself in this manner.

Oh, why did not her husband help her to train him? If only he would. But he no longer understood her.

Paul Schlieben had given up remonstrating with his wife. He had done so several times, but what he had said had had no effect owing to the obstinacy with which she held fast to her principles. Why should he quarrel with her? They had lived so many years happily together--it would soon be their silver wedding--and was this child, this boy who could hardly write correctly as yet, into whose head the master was just drilling the first rules in Latin--this child who after all had nothing to do either with her or him--this outsider to separate him and his wife now after they had been married so long? Rather than that it would be better to let many things pass which it would perhaps have been better for Käte to have done differently. Let her see how she could manage the boy in her way--she was so very fond of him. And when he, no longer the plaything, had outgrown her delicate hands, then he, the man, was still there to make him feel a more vigorous hand. Fortunately there was no deceit in the boy.

Paul Schlieben was not dissatisfied with Wolfgang. He certainly did not show any brilliancy at school, he did not belong to the top boys of his form by any means, but still he kept quite respectably in the middle of it. Well, there was no need for him to be a scholar.

Paul Schlieben had not the same opinion as formerly of the things he used to find in his younger years the only ones worth considering: science, art, and their study. Now he was content with his calling as merchant. And as this child had come into his life, had come into that position without having done anything to bring it about himself, it was the duty of him who allowed himself to be called "father" by him to prepare a future for him. So the man mapped out a certain plan. When the boy had got so far as to pass the examination that entitled him to one year's service in the army, he would take him away from school, send him a year to France, England and possibly also to America, to firms of high standing in each country, and then, when he had started from the bottom and learnt something, he would make him a partner. He thought how nice it would be then to be able to lay many things on younger shoulders. And the boy would no doubt be reliable; one could see that already.

If only Käte did not expect such a ridiculous amount of him. She was always after the boy--if not in person, then in her thoughts, at any rate. She worried him--it could not be helped, he was not an affectionate child--and did it make her happy?

He had many a time given the boy an imperceptible, pacifying nod, when his eyes had sought his across the table as though asking for help. Yes, it was really getting more and more difficult to get on with Käte.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

The Schliebens went away. The husband had consulted the doctor with regard to his wife, and he had ordered Franzensbad. But it was absolutely impossible for him to accompany her there. He would employ the time making some excursions on foot in the Tyrol, as it was a long time since he had had a holiday. A couple of pounds less in weight would do him no harm.

But where was Wolfgang to be meanwhile?

"At home," said his father. "He's old enough; eleven years. He is at school in the morning and in the garden in the afternoons, and Hofmann can come and see him every other day--to reassure you."

It was an unbearable thought for the mother to leave the child alone. She would have preferred to take him with her. But Paul had got vexed: "What next?" And the doctor had said. "On no account."

Then Käte had wanted to induce her husband to take the boy with him: "How healthy it would be for him to run about to his heart's content for once in a way."

"It seems to me he does enough of that here. Really, Käte, the boy is as strong as can be, don't always make such a fuss about him. Besides, I'm not going to take him away from school when it's quite unnecessary."

To be sure, he must not lose his place in the form, and possibly become one of the last. Käte was so ambitious on her son's account. But as the July holidays were almost over and she had not gone away with him during that time, which would have been more suitable, she would remain at home for the present. She declared she could not go away.

However, the doctor and her husband arranged everything without her; the more nervously and anxiously she refused to go, the more urgent a thorough cure seemed to be to them. The day of departure had already been proposed.

But Lisbeth gave notice beforehand: no, if the mistress was going away for so long and the master too, she would go as well. Remain alone with Wolfgang, with that boy? No, that she wouldn't.

She must have saved a tidy little sum during the well-nigh ten years she had been in the house, for even the promise of a rise could not keep her. She persisted in her wish to leave, and threw an angry look at the boy, whose laughing face appeared outside above the windowsill at that moment.

Käte was beside herself. Not only because she did not want the servant she had had so long to leave her, but she had reckoned so firmly on Lisbeth keeping a watchful eye on the boy during her absence. And it pained her that she spoke of Wolfgang in such a tone full of hate. What had the child done to her?

But Lisbeth only shrugged her shoulders without speaking, and looked sulky and offended.

Paul Schlieben took the boy in hand. "Just tell me, my boy, what's been the trouble between you and Lisbeth? She has given notice, and it seems to me she's leaving on your account. Listen"--he cast a keen glance at him--"I suppose you've been cheeky to her?"

The boy's face brightened: "Oh, that's nice, that's nice that she's going." He did not answer the question that had been put to him at all.

His father caught him by the ear. "Answer me, have you been cheeky to her?"

"Hm." Wolfgang nodded and laughed. And then he said, still triumphing in the remembrance: "It was only yesterday. I gave her a smack in the face. Why does she always say I've no right here?"

The man did not tell anything of this to his wife; she would only have brooded over it. He had not punished the boy either, only shaken his finger at him a little.

Lisbeth went away. She left the house, in which she had served so long and faithfully and in which she had had to put up with so much--as she weepingly assured her mistress, who was also overcome with emotion--like an offended queen.

Another maid had been engaged, one in whom Käte had certainly not much confidence from the commencement--Lisbeth had straightway given her the impression of being much more intelligent--but there was no choice, as it was not the time of year when servants generally leave; and she had to go to the baths as quickly as possible.

So Cilia Pioschek from the Warthe district came to the Schliebens.

She was a big, strong girl with a face that was round and healthy, white and red. She was only eighteen, but she had already been in service a long time, three years as nurse at the farm bailiff's whilst she still went to school. Paul Schlieben was amused at her--she did not understand a joke, took everything literally and said everything straight out just as it came into her head--but Käte called her behaviour "forward." On the other hand the new maid was on better terms with the old cook and the man-servant than Lisbeth, as she put up with a good deal.

"You can go away with your mind at rest," said Paul. "Do me this favour, Käte, don't oppose our plan any longer. In six weeks you will be back again quite well, God willing, and I shall not see these"--he gave a slight tap with his finger--"these small wrinkles at the corners of your eyes any more." He kissed her.

And she returned his kiss, now when she was to be separated from him for the first time since their marriage for so long; for they had always, always travelled together before, and since Wölfchen had come to the house he had only once asked permission to leave her for a fortnight at the most. She had never left the child alone. And now she was to leave her dear ones for six long weeks. She clung to him. She had it on the tip of her tongue to ask him: "Why don't you go with me as you used to? Franzensbad and Spa--there's surely no great difference between those two?" But why say it if he had never thought of doing so for a moment? Years had gone by, and some of the tenderness that had united them so closely before, that they could only enjoy things together, and that made them feel they never could be separated, had disappeared under the winged flight of time.

She sighed and withdrew quietly from the arm that he had thrown round her. "If anybody should come in and see us like this. Such an old couple," she said, trying to joke. And he gave a somewhat embarrassed laugh, as she thought, and did not try to hold her.

But when the carriage which was to take her to the station in Berlin stood before the door early one morning, when the two large trunks as well as the small luggage had been put on the top of it, when he held out his hand to help her in and then took a seat beside her, she could not refrain from saying: "Oh, if only you were going with me. I don't like travelling alone."

"If only you had said so a little earlier." He felt quite perturbed; he was exceedingly sorry. "How easily I could have taken you there the one day, seen you settled there and come back the next."

Oh, he did not understand what she meant by "if only you were going with me." Stay with her there as well--that was what she had meant.

Her sorrowful eyes sought the upstairs window behind which Wölfchen was sleeping. She had had to say goodbye to him the evening before, as she was leaving so early. She had only stood at his bedside with a mute good-bye that morning, and her gloved hand had passed cautiously over his head, that rested so heavily on the pillow, so as not to waken him. Oh, how she would have liked to have said some loving words to him now.

"Give my love to the boy, give my love to the boy," she said quickly, hastily, several times after each other, to the cook and Friedrich, who were standing near the carriage. "And take good care of him. Do you hear? Give my love to the boy, give my love to the boy." She could not say anything more or think of anything more. "Give my love to----"

Then the upstairs window rattled. Stretching both her arms out she rose half out of her seat.

The boy put his head out. His cheeks, that were hot with sleep, showed ruddy above his white night-shirt.

"Good-bye, good-bye. Come back well. And be sure to write to me."

He called it out in a very contented voice and nodded down to her; and she saw Cilia's round, healthy, white and red face behind his and heard her friendly laugh.

CHAPTER X

Käte did not know herself how she got over those weeks in which she was separated from her home. It was not so bad as she had imagined. She felt that a greater tranquillity had come over her, a tranquillity she never could feel at home; and this feeling of tranquillity did her good. She wrote quite contented letters, and her husband's bright accounts of "magnificent mountains" and "magnificent weather" delighted her. She also heard good news from Dr. Hofmann, who used to send her his reports most faithfully, as he had promised.

"The boy is in the best of health," he wrote, "you need not worry about him, my dear lady. He certainly has to do without his playfellows at present, for a boy and girl are ill, and he feels bored when alone with the fat boy who is still left. He is generally by himself in the garden; Friedrich has given him some lettuce plants, and he has also sown some radishes. I have found him at his lessons as well."

Thank God! It seemed to the woman as if she could breathe freely now, as though free from a load. She carried the letter from her old friend about in her pocket for a long time, read it whilst out for a walk, when sitting on a bench and in the evening when lying in bed. "A boy and girl are ill"--oh, the poor children. What could be the matter with them? But thank God, he was mostly by himself in the garden now. That was the best.

She wrote a letter to her boy, a very bright one, and he answered her in the same strain. The letter in itself was certainly rather funny. "Beloved mother"--how comical. And the whole wording as though copied from a polite letter-writer. She made up her mind to enclose it in her next letter to her husband what would he say to it? "Beloved mother"--but it pleased her all the same, and also "Your obedient son" at the end of it. Otherwise the letter really contained nothing, nothing of what he was doing, not even anything about the Lämkes, also no longing "come back soon"; but it was written carefully, tidily and clearly, not such a scrawl as he usually wrote. And that showed her that he loved her.

He had also enclosed a little picture, a small square with a border of lace paper, on which there was a snow-white lamb holding a pink flag. Under it stood in golden letters, "Agnus Dei, miserere nobis."

Where could he have got that from? Never mind from where, he had wanted to give her something. And the small tasteless picture touched her deeply. The good boy.

She put the picture with the lamb of God carefully among her treasures; it should always remain there. A tender longing came over her for the boy, and she could not imagine how she had been able to stand it so long without him.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

August was over and September already almost half gone when Käte returned home. Her husband, who had returned before her, came to meet her; they met in Dresden, and their meeting was a very cordial one. He could never get tired of looking at her bright colour, her bright eyes; and she on her side found him very sunburnt, more youthful-looking and almost as slender as formerly.

They sat hand in hand in the compartment he had had reserved for them; quite alone like two young lovers. They had an enormous amount to say to each other--there was nothing, nothing whatever that disturbed them. They gazed at each other very tenderly.

"How delighted I am to have you again," she said, after he had told her a lot about his journey in a lively manner.

"And I you." He nodded to her and pressed her hand. Yes, it really seemed to both of them as if they had been separated from each other for an eternity. He drew her still closer, held her as tightly as though she were a precious possession that had been half snatched away from him, and she clung to him, leant her head on his shoulder and smiled dreamily.

Innumerable golden atoms danced on a slender slanting sunbeam before her half-closed eyes. The even rattling of the carriages and the calm feeling of a great joy in her heart lulled her to sleep.

Suddenly she started up--was it a jolt, a shock? She had all at once got a fright, as it were: she had not asked anything about the child as yet!

"Wölfchen--what's Wölfchen doing?"

"Oh, he's all right. But now tell me, darling, how did you spend the whole day there? How was it divided? In the morning to the spring--first one glass, after that a second--and then? Well?"

She did not tell him. "Wölfchen is surely well?" she asked hastily. "There must be something wrong--you say so little about him. I've had such a misgiving the whole time. Oh dear, do tell me." Her voice sounded almost irritable--how could Paul be so indifferent. "What's the matter with Wölfchen?"

"The matter?" He looked at her in great surprise. "But why must there be something the matter with him? He's as strong as a horse."

"Really? But tell me, tell me something about him."

He smiled at her impatience. "What is there to tell about such a boy? He sleeps, eats, drinks, goes to school, comes home, runs out into the garden, sleeps, eats, drinks again and so on, vegetates like the plants in the sunshine. It's much better for you to tell me how you are."

"Oh, I--I--" that seemed so superfluous to her all at once--"I--quite well, you can see that." How indifferent he was with regard to the child. And she--his mother--had been able to forget him so long too? She felt so ashamed of herself that she hastily raised her head from her husband's shoulder and sat up straight. Now they were not lovers any longer, only parents who had to think about their child.

And she only spoke of the boy.

Paul felt the sudden change in his wife. It depressed him: had they gone back to where they were before? Did she already feel no interest again in anything but the boy? He no longer felt any inclination to speak of his journey.

The conversation became more and more monosyllabic; he bought a paper at the next station, and she leant back in her corner and tried to sleep. But she did not succeed in doing so, in spite of feeling very tired; her thoughts continued to revolve round the one point: so there was nothing the matter with him. Thank God! How indifferent Paul was, to be sure. Would Wölfchen be very delighted when she came home? The dear boy--the darling boy.

She must have slept a little at last nevertheless, for she suddenly heard her husband's voice, as though far away, saying: "Get ready, darling; Berlin," and she started up.

They were already among the innumerable lines that cross each other there. Then the train rushed into the glass-roofed station.

"So we've got so far." He helped her out, and she began to tremble with impatience. Would this running up and down stairs, this crossing to the other side of the station, and then the waiting and watching for the train to the suburbs never come to an end? Would not Wölfchen be asleep? It would be dark before they got home.

"Is the train soon coming? What time is it? Oh dear, what a long time we have to wait."

"Calm yourself, the boy is waiting for you, never fear. He sits a long time with Cilia every evening; she hasn't much time for him during the day. A nice girl. You've been very fortunate there."

She did not catch what he said, she was thinking the whole time how she would find him. Would he have grown very much? Have changed? Children at his age are said to change constantly--had he grown ugly, or was he still so handsome? But never mind! she used to attach more importance to his outward appearance--as long as he was good, very good, that was all that mattered now. In her thoughts she could already hear his shout of joy, already feel his arms round her neck, his kiss on her mouth.

The wind, which had become pleasant towards evening after a day that had been hot in spite of it already being autumn, fanned her face without being able to cool her cheeks that glowed with emotion. As they stopped in front of the house, which, with its balconies full of bright red geraniums, lay prettily concealed behind the evergreen pines under the starry September sky, her heart beat as though she had run much too far and too quickly. At last! She drew a deep breath--now she was with him again.

But he did not come running to meet her. How strange that he had not watched for her.

"They'll be sitting in the veranda at the back," said her husband. "They always sit there in the evening." He remained behind a little. Let Käte see the boy alone first.

And she hurried through the hall past the beaming cook and without seeing Friedrich, who had donned his livery after decorating all the rooms with the flowers he had raised himself; she neither admired his successes in the garden nor the cake the cook had placed on the festive-looking table. She ran from the hall into her small sitting-room and from thence through the dining-room, the door of which led to the verandah. The door was open--now she stood on the threshold--those outside did not see her.

There was only one of the shaded lamps on the veranda table that was burning, but it was bright enough to light up the space around it. But Cilia was doing nothing. The stocking she was to darn lay in her lap; her right hand in which she held the long darning-needle rested idly on the edge of the table. She was leaning back a little; her face, which looked more refined and prettier in the twilight, was raised; she seemed to be lost in thought with her mouth half open.

Nothing was to be seen of Wolfgang. But now his mother heard him speak in a tone full of regret: "Don't you know any more? Oh!" And then urgently: "Go on, Cilia, go on, it was so beautiful."

Ah, now she saw him too. He was sitting at the girl's feet, on quite a low footstool, leaning against her knee. And he was looking up at her imploringly, longingly at that moment, looking at her with eyes that gleamed like dark polished agate, and speaking to her in a tone his mother thought she had never heard from him before: "Sing, Cillchen. Dear Cillchen, sing."

The girl began:

"Quoth she with voice subdued, 'Cease from quaking--

"Oh no.

"Not in wrath am I before thee standing--

"No, not that, either.

"Only why did I, weak one, believe thy vows--

"No, I don't know any more. Well, I never! And I've sung it so often when I was at home. At home in the village when me and my sweetheart went for a walk together. Dear, dear"--she stamped her foot angrily--"that I could forget like that."

"Don't be vexed, Cillchen. You mustn't be vexed. Begin again from the beginning, that doesn't matter. I would love to hear it again, again and again. It's splendid."

"Cillchen--Cillchen"--how playful that sounded, positively affectionate. And how he hung on her lips.

Käte craned her neck forward; she was in the veranda now, but the two had not noticed her yet.

The girl sang in a drawling, sing-song voice as she had sung in the village street at home, but the boy's eyes glistened and grew big as he listened to her. His lips moved as though he were singing as well:

"Satin and silk new-wed Henry cover;
Wealthy his bride, brought from land o' Rhine
But serpent stings tease the perjured lover,
Bid slumbers sweet his rich bed decline.

"The clock strikes twelve: sudden are appearing
Through curtain fringe, fingers, slender, white.
Whom sees he now? His once dear----"

The singer came to a standstill--suddenly the sound of a deep-drawn breath passed through the veranda. The boy gave a terrified shriek--there she stood, there she stood!

"Why, Wolfgang! Wölfchen!" His mother stretched out her arms to him, but he buried his head in the girl's lap.

Käte frowned at the girl: what nonsense to sing such songs to him.

"Oh, the mistress!" Cilia jumped up, her face crimson, and let everything she had on her lap stocking, darning ball, wool and scissors--fall on the floor; the boy as well.

Why were they both so terrified? Wolfgang stared at her as if she were a ghost.

He had risen now, had kissed his mother's hand, and mechanically raised his face to receive her kiss; but his face did not show that he was glad to see her. Or was it embarrassment, a boyish shame because she had taken him by surprise? His eyes did not gaze straight at her, but always sideways. Did he look upon her as a stranger--quite a stranger?

An inexpressible disappointment filled the heart of the woman who had just returned home, and her voice sounded harsh without intending it as she told the girl to go away. She sat down on the seat near the table, which she had just vacated, and drew her boy toward her.

"How have you got on, Wölfchen? Tell me--well?"

He nodded.

"Have you missed your mother a little?"

He nodded again.

"I've brought such a lot of pretty things for you."

Then he grew animated. "Have you also brought something for Cilia? She could find use for a workbasket with all kinds of things in it very well: she has only an old one she used at school, you know. Oh, she can tell such splendid stories--ugh, that make you shiver. And how she can sing. Let her sing this one for you:

"A smart pretty maiden, quite a young sprig,
A farmer did choose for his bride;
Her favours, however, to a soldier man jig,
And sly to her old man she cried--

"It's perfectly ripping, I can tell you."

And he began to hum the continuation with a laugh:

"He had much better toss the hay, hooray,
The hay, hooray----"

"Hush!" She put her hand to his mouth. "That's not at all a nice song--it's a horrid one. You mustn't sing that any more."

"But why not?" He gazed at her with eyes round with amazement.

"Because I don't wish it," she said curtly. She was indignant: she would give the girl a bit of her mind to-morrow, yes, to-morrow.

Her cheeks were no longer hot. A cold wind blew through the veranda, which pierced her to the very heart. When her husband called out: "Why, Käte, what have you been doing with yourself? Do take off your things first," she quickly answered his call.

The boy remained alone behind, and looked out into the mild night that was now quite dark, with blinking, dreamy eyes. Oh, how beautifully Cilia had sung. She would have to sing and tell him stories to-morrow as well. But if she were to come there again! Never mind, they would be sure to be able to find a place where they would be undisturbed.

Käte did not sleep at all that first night, although she was dead-tired. Perhaps too tired. She had had a long talk about it with Paul after they were in bed. He had said she was right, that neither the one nor the other song was very suitable, but: "Good gracious, what a lot of things one hears as a child that never leave any trace whatever," he had said.

"Not on him." And then she had said plaintively: "I've so often tried to read something really beautiful to him, the best our poets have written but he takes no interest in it, he has no understanding for it as yet. And for such--such"--she sought for an expression and did not find it--"for such things he goes into raptures. But I won't allow it, I won't stand it. Such things may not come near him."

"Then let her go," he had said testily. He was on the point of falling asleep, and did not want to be disturbed any more. "Good night, darling, have a good night's rest. Now that you've come home again you'll do what you think right."

Yes, that she would!

From that day forth she never let the boy out of her sight. And her ears were everywhere. There was no reason to send the girl away--she was honest and clean and did her duty--only she must not be alone with Wölfchen again. Wolfgang was now in his twelfth year, it was not a maid's place to look after him any more.

But it was difficult for Käte to live up to her resolutions. Her husband, of course, had claims on her too, and also her house and her social life; it was not possible to shake off, give up, neglect everything else for the one, for the child's sake. Besides, it might make her husband seriously angry with the child, if she constantly went against his wishes; she trembled at the thought of it. She had to go into society with him now and then, he was pleased when she--always well dressed--was in request as an agreeable woman. He was fond of going out--and went, alas, much, much too often. So she instructed the cook and the man-servant--even begged them earnestly to keep a watch on what was going on. They were quite amazed; if the mistress was so little satisfied with Cilia, she should give her notice; there would be girls enough on the 1st of January.

Käte turned away angrily: how horrid of the servants to want to drive the other away. And if another one came into the house, might it not be exactly the same with her? Servants are always a danger to children.

Wolfgang was developing quickly, especially physically. It was not that he was growing so tall, but he was getting broader, becoming robust, with a strong neck. When he threw snowballs with the Lämkes outside the door he looked older than Artur, who was of the same age, even older than Frida. He was differently fed from these children. His mother was delighted to notice his clear, fresh-looking skin, and saw that he had plenty of warm baths and a cold sponge down every morning. And he had to go to the hairdresser every fortnight, where his thick, smooth mop of dark hair, which remained somewhat coarse in spite of all the care expended on it, was washed and a strengthening lotion rubbed into it. The Lämkes looked almost starved when compared with him; they had not recovered from the effects of scarlet fever very long. If only Wölfchen did not get it too. His mother had a great dread of it. She had kept him away from the Lämkes until quite recently; but there was always the danger of infection at school. Oh dear, one never had peace, owing to the child.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

They had had a splendid time out of doors. The lake that lies below the villas like a calm eye between the dark edges of the woods was frozen; Wolfgang and half of his form had been skating there. Käte had also walked up and down the shore for some time after their midday meal, watching her boy. How nicely he skated already. He was more secure on his legs and skated better than many of the lads who were describing the figure eight and circles, skating in the Dutch style and dancing with ladies. He was always trying to do all kinds of tricks already, he was certainly courageous. If only he did not fall down or tumble into the water! And he was always skating into the middle of the lake, where the wisps of straw had been placed to show that it was dangerous. It seemed to the mother that nothing could happen to him as long as she stood on the shore watching him incessantly. But at last her feet were quite frozen, and she had to go home.

When the boy came home, as it was commencing to grow dark, he was very bright. He spoke of the skating with great glee. "Oh, that was ripping. I should like to run like that for ever--to-morrow, the day after to-morrow--every day--and further and further every time. The lake is much too small."

"Aren't you tired at all?" inquired his mother, smiling at him. She never grew weary of gazing at him, he looked so beaming.

"Tired?" The corners of his mouth drooped with a smile that was almost contemptuous. "I'm never tired. Not of such things. Cilia said she would like to skate with me some time."

"Well, why not?" His father, who was sitting at the table drinking his coffee, smiled good-humouredly; it amused him to tease the lively boy a little. "Then your mother will have to engage a second housemaid, as long as there's ice on the ground."

Wolfgang did not understand that he was bantering. He cried out, quite happy: "Yes, she must do that." But then his face grew long: "But she has no skates, she says. Father, you'll have to buy her some."

"I'l be hanged if I will--well, what next?" His father gave a loud laugh. "No, my boy, with all due respect to Cilia, it would be carrying it a little too far to let her skate. Don't you agree with me?"

He looked at his wife, who was rattling the cups loudly, quite contrary to her custom. She said nothing, she only gave a silent nod, but her face had quite changed and grown cold.

The boy could not understand it. Why should Cilia not skate? Did not his mother like her? Funny. It was always like that, whenever there was anything he liked very, very much, she did not like it.

He rested his head on both hands as he sat working at his desk: it felt so heavy. His eyes burnt and watered when he fixed them on his exercise-book--he must be tired, he supposed. His Latin would not be good. In his mind's eye he already saw the master shrug his shoulders and hurl his book on to the bench over so many heads: "Schlieben, ten faults. Boy, ten faults! If you don't pull yourself together, you'll not get your remove to Form IV. with the others at Easter."

Pooh, he did not mind much--no, really not at all. On the whole nothing was of any importance to him whatever. All at once he felt so dead-tired. Why did she begrudge Cilia everything? She told such ripping stories. What was it she had told last night when his parents were out and she had crept to his bedside? About--about--? He could not collect his thoughts any more, everything was confused.

His head sank on his desk; he fell asleep, with his arms stretched out over his books.

When he awoke an hour might have passed by, but he did not feel rested all the same. He stared round the room and shivered. All his limbs ached.

And they hurt him the whole night through, he could not sleep; his feet were heavy as he dragged himself to the lake to skate next afternoon.

He returned home from skating much earlier than usual. He did not want to eat or drink anything, he constantly felt sick. "How green the boy looks to-day," said his father. His mother brushed his hair away from his forehead anxiously: "Is anything the matter with you, Wölfchen?" He said no.

But when evening came round again and the wind whispered in the pine-trees outside and a ghostly hand tapped at the window--ugh, a small white hand as in Cilia's song--he lay in bed, shivered with cold in spite of the soft warm blankets, and felt his throat ache and his ears tingle and burn.

"He's ill," his mother said very anxiously next morning. "We'll get the doctor to come at once."

"Oh, it can't be anything much," said the man reassuringly. "Leave him in bed, give him some lemon to drink so that he can perspire, and then an aperient. He has eaten something that has disagreed with him, or he's caught cold."

But the doctor had to be telephoned for at noon. The boy was slightly delirious and had a great deal of fever.

"Scarlet fever!" The doctor examined his chest and then pulled up the cover again very carefully. "But the rash isn't quite out yet."

"Scarlet fever?" Käte thought she would have sunk down on her knees--oh, she had always been so terribly afraid of that.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

The clear frosty weather with the bright sunshine and a sky that was almost as blue as in summer was over. Grey days with a heavy atmosphere hung over the roof of the villa; Käte, who was standing at the window in the sick-room, staring out at the tops of the pines that were mourning in the dull mist with tired eyes, thought she had never seen anything greyer.

The disease had seized hold of the boy with powerful grip, as though his vigorous, well-nourished body were just the sort of hot-bed for the flames of the fever to rage in. The doctor shook his head: the scarlet fever had taken such a mild form everywhere else except in this case. And he warned them against the boy catching cold, prescribed this and that, did his best--not only as his duty, no, but because he felt such deep and hearty sympathy for them--he had always been so fond of the robust lad. They all did their best. Every precaution was taken, every care--everything, everything was to be done for him.

Käte was untiring. She had refused the assistance of a nurse; she violently opposed the wishes both of her husband and her old friend; no, she wanted to nurse her child alone. A mother does not grow tired, oh no.

Paul had never believed that his wife could do so much and be so patient at the same time--she, that nervous woman, to be so untiring, so undaunted. She had always had a light step, now she could not even be heard when she glided through the sick-room; now she was on the left side of the bed, now on the right. She, whose strength gave way so easily even if her intentions were good, was always, always on the spot. There were many nights in which she did not get an hour's sleep. Next morning she would sit like a shadow in the large arm-chair near the bed, but still she was full of joy: Wolfgang had slept almost two hours!

"Don't do too much, don't do too much," implored her husband.

She put him off with: "I don't feel it. I'm so fond of doing it."

How long was it to go on? Would, could her strength hold out? "Let the girl sit up with him for one night at least. She would be so glad to take your place."

"Cilia? No."

Cilia had offered her services again and again: oh, she would take such good care of him, she knew how, for a little brother of hers had died of scarlet fever. "Let me do it," she implored, "I shall not fall asleep, I'll take such good care of him."

But Käte refused. It cut her to the heart every time she heard her boy say in his feverish dreams during the nights that were so long and so black: "Cillchen--we'll toss the hay--hooray--Cillchen."

Oh, how she hated that round-cheeked girl with her bright eyes. But she feared her more than she hated her. In the hours of darkness, in those hours in which she heard nothing but the sick boy's moans and the restless beating of her own heart, this girl seemed to wander about in another form. She appeared to her out of the night, large and broad, she stationed herself boldly near the child's bed, and something of the triumph of power flashed in her eyes, that were otherwise so dull and unintelligent.

Then the tired-out woman would press her hands to her throbbing temples, and stretch out her arms as though to ward her off: no, no, you there, go away! But the phantom remained standing at the child's bed. Who was it: the mother--the Venn--the maid--Frau Lämke? Oh, they were all one.

Tears of anguish rolled down Käte's cheeks. How the boy laughed now. She stooped over him so closely that their breaths intermingled, as she had done once before, and whispered to him: "Your mammy is here, your mammy is with you."

But he made no sign of recognition.

Cilia's face was swollen with weeping as she opened the kitchen door in the basement on hearing somebody give a gentle knock. Frau Lämke greeted her in a whisper; she had always sent the children so far, but they had come home the day before with such a confusing report, that her anxiety impelled her to come herself. She wanted to ask how he was getting on. Two doctors' carriages stood outside the gate, and that had terrified her anew.

"How is he? How is he to-day?"

The girl burst into tears. She drew the woman into the kitchen in silence, where she found the cook leaning against the fireplace without stirring any pan, and Friedrich just rushing upstairs to answer the electric bell as if somebody were in pursuit of him.

"Dear, dear!" Frau Lämke clasped her hands. "Is the boy so bad, really so bad?"

Cilia only nodded and hid her streaming eyes in her apron, but the cook said dully: "It's about over."

"About over? Will he really die Wolfgang, the boy?" The woman stared incredulously: that was impossible. But she had turned terribly pale.

"Well, it's bad enough," said the cook. "Our doctor has called in another professor, a very well-known one--he was here yesterday--but they don't believe that they can do anything more. The illness has attacked the kidneys and heart. He no longer knows anybody, you know. I was in the room this morning, I wanted to see him once more--there he lay quite stiff and silent, as though made of wax. I don't believe he'll pull through." The good-natured woman wept.

They all three wept, sitting round the kitchen table. Frau Lämke entirely forgot that she had made up her mind never to enter that kitchen again, and that her cabbage, that she had put on for their dinner, was probably burning. "Oh, dear, oh dear," she repeated again and again, "how will she get over it? Such a child--and an only child, whom she adored so."

Upstairs the doctors were standing at the sick-bed, the old family doctor and the great authority, who was still a young man. They were standing on the right and the left of it.

The rash had quite disappeared; there was not a trace of red on the boy's face now, and his eyes with their extremely black lashes remained persistently closed. His lips were blue. His broad chest, which was quite sunken now, trembled and laboured.

At every gasping breath he took his mother gasped too. She was sitting in a chair at the foot of the bed, stiffly erect; she had sat like that the whole night. Her piercing eyes with their terrified expression flew to the doctors' grave faces, and then stared past them into space. There they stood, to the right and to the left--but there, there!--did they not see it?--there at the head of the bed stood Death!

She started up with an inarticulate sound, then sank down again as though broken in spirit.

The doctors had given the child, who was so dangerously ill, an injection; his heart was very weak, which made them fear the worst. Then the authority took leave: "I'll come again to-morrow"--but a shrug of the shoulders and a "Who knows?" lay in that "I'll come again to-morrow."

The family doctor was still there; he could not leave them, as he was their friend. Käte had clung to him: "Help! Help my child!" Now he was sitting with Paul Schlieben downstairs in his study; Käte had wished to remain alone with the sick boy, she only wanted to know that he was near.

The two men sat in silence with a glass of strong wine before them. "Drink, do drink, my dear friend," Paul Schlieben had said to the doctor; but he did not drink himself. How will she stand it, how will she stand it? That buzzed in his head the whole time. He was wrapped in thought, and there were deep lines on his forehead. And the doctor did not disturb him.

Käte was on her knees upstairs. She had sunk down in front of the chair in which she had watched through all those anxious nights, and was holding her hands pressed against her upturned face. She was seeking the God on high who had once upon a time laid the child so benignantly in her path, and was now going to cruelly tear it away from her again. She cried to God in her heart.

"O God, O God, don't take him from me. Thou must not take him from me. I have nothing else in the world beside him. God, God!"

Her surroundings, all her other possessions--also her husband--were forgotten. She had only the child now. That one child that was so dear, so good, so clever, so excellent, so obedient, so beautiful, so charming, so extremely lovable, that had made her life so happy, so rich that she would be poor, poor as a beggar were he to leave her.

"Wölfchen, my Wölfchen!"

How dear he had always, always been; so entirely her child. She did not remember anything more about the tears she had shed on his account; if she had ever shed any, they had been tears of joy, yes, only tears of joy. No, she could not do without him.

Starting up from the position in which she had been praying she dragged herself to his bedside. She took his body, which was growing cold, into her arms and laid it on her breast in her despair, and her glowing breath passed all over him. She wanted to let all her warmth stream into him, to hold him fast to this earth with the force of her will-power. When his breast fought for air, her breast fought too, when his heart-beat flagged, hers flagged too. She felt that his coldness was making her cold, that her arms were stiffening. But she did not let him go. She fought with Death standing at the head of the bed--who was stronger, Death or her love, the mother's love?

Nobody could get her away from the boy's bed, not even the nurse whom Dr. Hofmann had sent out when he had at last been compelled to go to town that afternoon. The nurse and her husband attempted to raise her by gentle force: "Only an hour's rest, only half an hour's. In the next room or here on the sofa."

But she shook her head and remained on her knees: "I'm holding him, I'm holding him."

Evening came on. Then midnight. It had blown a good deal earlier in the day, but it was very quiet outside now. As quiet as death. There was no longer any wind to shake the pines around the house; they stood bolt upright against the clear, frosty sky, their tops as though cut out of stiff cardboard. The stars blinked mercilessly; the full moon was reflected on the glittering silvery surface of the frozen lake, from which the strong wind had swept all the damp snow the day before and made it clean. A terrible cold had set hi all at once, which seemed to lay hold of everything with its icy breath.

The watchers shivered with cold. When Paul Schlieben looked at the thermometer, he was horrified to see how little it registered even in the room. Was the heating apparatus not in order? You could see your own breath. Had the servants forgotten to put coals on?

He went down into the basement himself; he could have rung, but he felt he must do something. Oh, how terribly little you could do. His wife cowered in the arm-chair in silence now, with large, staring eyes; the nurse was half asleep, nothing stirred in the room. The boy, too, was lying as quietly as if he were already dead.

A great dread took possession of the man, as he groped his way through the dark house. There was something so paralysing in the silence; all at once everything, the rooms, the staircase, the hall seemed so strange to him. Strange and empty. How the breath of youth had filled them with life before, filled them with the whole untamed thoughtlessness of a wild boy!

He leant heavily on the banisters as he groped his way downstairs. Would the servants still be up?

He found them all there. They sat shivering round the table in the kitchen, which was as cold as though there had not been a bright, blazing fire there all day. The cook had made some strong coffee, but even that did not make them any warmer. An icy cold crept through the whole house; it was as though the ice and snow from outside had come in, as though the chill breath of frozen nature were sweeping through the house too, from attic to cellar.

It was no use throwing more coals into the jaws of the huge stove, or that the water that streamed through all the pipes was hotter. Nobody's feet or hands were any warmer.

"We will try what a very hot bath will do for the patient," said the nurse. She had often seen this last remedy rewarded with success in similar cases.

All hands were busy. The cook made a fire, the other two dragged the boiling water upstairs; but Cilia carried more and was quicker about it than Friedrich. She felt all the inexhaustible strength of youth in her that is glad to be able to do something. How willingly she did it for that good boy. And she murmured a short prayer in a low voice every time she poured a bucketful into the tub that had been placed near the bed. She could not make the sign of the cross, as neither of her hands was at liberty, but she was sure the saints would hear her all the same.

"Holy Mary! Holy Joseph! Holy Barbara! Holy guardian angel! Holy Michael, fight for him!"

The cook, who remained downstairs in the kitchen, looked for her hymn-book; she was a Protestant and did not use it every day. When she found it she opened it at random: the words would be sure to suit. Oh dear! She showed it to Friedrich, trembling. There was written:

"When my end is drawing nigh,
Ah, leave me not----"

Oh dear, the boy was to die. They were both as though paralysed with terror.

Meanwhile nimble Cilia was flying up and down stairs. She did not feel so dismayed any longer. He would not die, she was sure of that now.

Whilst those who were in the room lifted him into the bath, Paul Schlieben and the nurse, and his mother placed her feeble hands underneath him to support him, Cilia stood outside the door and called upon all her saints. She would have liked to have had her manual of devotion, her "Angels' Bread," but there was no time to fetch it. So she only stammered her "Help" and "Have mercy," her "Hail" and "Fight for him," with all the fervour of her faith.

And the boy's pallid cheeks began to redden. A sigh passed his lips, which had not opened to utter a sound for so long. He was warm when they put him back into the bed. Very soon he was hot; the fever commenced again.

The nurse looked anxious: "Now ice. We shall have to try what ice-bags will do."

Ice! Ice!

"Is there any ice in the house?" Paul Schlieben hurried from the sick-room. He almost hit the girl's forehead with the door as she stood praying outside.

Ice! Ice! They both ran down together. But the cook was at her wits' end too; no, there was no ice, they had not thought any would be required.

"Go and get some, quick."

The man-servant rushed off, but oh! before he could reach the shop, awake somebody and return, the flame upstairs might have burnt so fiercely that there was nothing left of the poor little candle. The man looked round, almost out of his mind with anxiety, and he saw Cilia with a chopper and pail running to the back-door.

"I'm going to fetch some ice."

"But where?"

"Down there." She laughed and raised her arm so that the chopper glittered. "There's plenty of ice in the lake. I'm going to chop some."

She was already out of the kitchen; he ran after her without a hat, without a cap, with only the thin coat on he wore in the house.

The terrors of the night gave way before the faint hope, and he did not feel the cold at first. But when the villas were lost sight of behind the pines, when he stood quit alone on the banks of the frozen lake that shone like a hard shield of metal, surrounded by silent black giants, he felt so cold that he thought he should freeze to death. And he was filled with a terror he had never felt the like to before a--deadly fear.

Was not that a voice he heard? Hallo! Did it not come from the wood that had the appearance of a thicket in the blue, confusing glitter of the moonlight? And it mocked and bantered, half laughed, half moaned. Terrible. Who was shrieking so?

"The owl's screeching," said Cilia, and she raised the chopper over her shoulder with both hands and let it whiz down with all her might. The ice at the edge splintered, It cracked and broke; the sound was heard far out on the lake, a growling, a grumbling, a voice out of the deep.

Would the boy die--would he live?

The man gazed around him with a distraught look. O God! Yes, that was also in vain--would also be in vain. Despite all his courage he felt weak as he stood there. Here was night and loneliness and the wood and the water--he had seen it all before, it was familiar to him--but it had never been like this, so quiet and still, so alive with terrors. The trees had never been so high before, the lake never so large, the world in which they lived never so far away.

Something seemed to be lurking behind that large pine--was a gamekeeper not standing there aiming at him, ready to shoot an arrow through his heart? The silence terrified him. This deep silence was awful. True, the blows of the chopper resounded, he could hear the echo across the lake, and nothing deterred Cilia from doing her work--he admired the girl's calmness--but the menace that lay in the silence did not grow any less.

The distracted man shuddered again and again: no, he knew it now--oh, how distinctly he felt it--nobody could do anything against that invisible power. Everything was in vain.

He was filled with a great grief. He seized hold of the pieces of ice the girl had chopped off with both hands, and put them into the pail; he tore his clothes, he cut himself on the jagged edges that were as sharp as glass, but he did not feel any physical pain. The blood dripped down from his fingers.

And now something began to flow from his eyes, to drip down his cheeks, heavy and clammy--slow, almost reluctant tears. But still the hot tears of a father who is weeping for his child.

CHAPTER XI

"Dear me, how big you've grown!" said Frau Lämke. "I suppose we shall soon have to treat you as a grown-up gentleman and say 'sir' to you?"

"Never!" Wolfgang threw his arms round her neck.

The woman was quite taken aback: was that Wolfgang? He was hardly to be recognised after his illness so approachable. And although he had always been a good boy, he had never been so affectionate as he was now. And how merry he was, he laughed, his eyes positively sparkled as if they had been polished.

Wolfgang was full of animal spirits and a never-ending, indomitable joyousness. He did not know what to do with himself. He could not sit still for a moment, his arms twitched, his feet scraped the ground.

His master stood in terror of him. He alone, the one boy, made the whole of the fourth form that had always been so exemplary run wild. And still one could not really be downright angry with him. When the tired man, who had had to give the same lessons year after year, sit at the same desk, give the same dictations, set the same tasks, hear the same pieces read, repeat the same things, had to reprove the boy, something like a gentle sadness was mingled with the reproof, which softened it: yes, that was delight in existence, health, liveliness, unconsumed force--that was youth.

Wolfgang did not mind the scoldings he got, he had no ambition to become head of his form. He laughed at the master, and could not even get himself to lower his head and look sad when his mother waved a bad report in his face in her nervous excitement: "So that's all one gets in return for all one's worry?"

How ambitious women are! Paul Schlieben smiled; he took it more calmly. Well, he had not had the hard work that Käte had had. As the boy had missed so many lessons owing to his illness, she had sat with him every day, and written and read and done sums and learnt words and rules and repeated them with him indefatigably, and set him exercises herself besides the schoolwork, and in this manner he had succeeded in getting his remove into the fourth form with the others at Easter, in spite of the weeks and weeks he had been away from school. She had drawn a deep breath of relief: ah, a mountain had been climbed. But still the road was not straight by any means. When the first blackbirds began to sing in the garden he became No. 15 in his form--that is to say, an average pupil--when the first nightingale trilled he was not even among the average, and when summer came he was among the last in his form.

It was too tempting to sow, plant, and water the garden, to lie on the grass in the warm sunshine and have a sun bath. And still better to rove about out of doors along the edges of the wood or bathe in the lake and swim far out, so far that the other boys would call out to him: "Come back, Schlieben, you'll be drowned."

"Be thankful that there is so much life in him," said Paul to his wife. "Who would have thought only six months ago that he would ever be like this? It is fortunate that he isn't fond of sitting indoors. 'Plenty of fresh air,' Hofmann said, 'plenty of movement. Such a severe illness always does some harm to the constitution.' So let us choose the lesser of two evils. But still the rascal must remember that he has duties to perform as well."

It was difficult to combine the two. Käte felt she was becoming powerless. When the boy's eyes, which were as bright as sloes, implored her to let him go out, she dared not keep him back. She knew he had not finished his school-work, had perhaps not even commenced it; but had not Paul said: "One must choose the lesser of two evils," and the doctor: "Such a severe illness always leaves some weakness behind, therefore a good deal of liberty"?

She suddenly trembled for his life; the horror of his illness was still fresh in her mind. Oh, those nights! Those last terrible hours in which the fever had risen higher and higher after the hot bath, the pulse and the poor heart had rushed along at a mad pace, until the ice from the lake had at last, at last brought coolness, and he had fallen into a sound sleep, which, when the sky commenced to glow in the east and a new day had looked in through the window, had turned into a beneficial, miraculous perspiration.

So she had to let the boy run about.

But that he hung on Cilia's arm when she had to go an errand in the evening, that he hurried after her when she only took a letter to the box, or that he brought her a chair when she wanted to sit with her mending-basket under the elderberry bush near the kitchen door was not to be tolerated. When Käte heard that Cilia had not gone further than the nearest pines on the edge of the wood when it was her Sunday out, and had sat there for hours with the boy on the grass, there was a scene.

Cilia wept bitter tears. What had she done? She had only told Wölfchen about her home.

"What's your home to him? He is to mind his own business and you yours." Käte was about to say still more, to cry out: "Leave off telling him your private concerns, I won't have it," but she controlled herself, although with difficulty. She could have boxed this round-cheeked girl's ears, as she looked at her so boldly with her bright eyes. Even Frida Lämke was preferable to her.

But Frida did not show herself very often now. She already wore a dress that reached to her ankles, attended a sewing class out of school-hours, and after her confirmation, which was to be a year next Easter she was to go "to business," as she said very importantly.

"I shall give her notice," said Käte one evening, when Cilia had cleared the table and she was sitting quite alone with her husband.

"Oh!" He had not really been listening. "Why?"

"Because of her behaviour." The woman's voice vibrated with suppressed indignation more than that, with passionate excitement. Her eyes, which were generally golden brown and gentle, became dark and sombre.

"Why, you're actually trembling! What is the matter now?" He laid the paper he was about to read aside, quite depressed. There was some trouble with the boy again; nothing else excited her in that manner.

"I can't have it any longer." Her voice was hard, had lost its charm. "And I won't stand it. Just think, when I came home to-day I was away an hour towards evening, hardly an hour good gracious, you cannot always be spying, you demean yourself in your own eyes." Her hands closed over each other, gripped each other so tightly that the knuckles showed quite white. "I had left him at his desk, he had so much to do, and when I returned not a stroke had been done. But I heard--heard them downstairs, at the back of the house near the kitchen door."

"Heard whom?"

"Wolfgang and her, of course--Cilia. I had only been away quite a short time."

"Well--and then?"

She had stopped and sighed, full of a deep distress which drove away the anger from her eyes.

"He put his arms round her neck from behind. And he kissed her. 'Dear Cillchen,' he said. And she drew him towards her, took him almost on her lap--he is much too big for that, much too big--and spoke softly to him the whole time."

"Did you understand what she said?"

"No. But they laughed. And then she gave him a slap behind--you should only have seen it--and then he gave her one. They took turns to slap each other. Do you consider that proper?"

"That goes too far, you are right. But it's nothing bad. She is a good girl, quite unspoilt as yet, and he a stupid boy. Surely you don't intend to send the girl away for that? For goodness' sake, Käte, think it well over. Did they see you?"

"No."

"Well, then, don't do it. It's much wiser. I'll speak to the boy some time when I find an opportunity."

"And you think I couldn't--I can't--I mustn't send her away?" Käte had grown quite dejected in the presence of his calmness.

"There's no reason whatever for it." He was fully convinced of what he said, and wanted to take up his paper again. Then he caught her eyes, and stretched out his hand to her across the table. "Dear child, don't take everything so much to heart. You're making your life miserable--your own, the boy's--and--yes, mine too. Take things easier. There! And now I'll read my paper at last."

Käte got up quietly--he was all right, he was reading. She had not given him her hand. His calmness hurt her. It was more than calmness, it was indifference, slackness. But she would not be slack, no, she would not get tired of doing her duty.

And she went after her boy.

Wolfgang was already upstairs in his room. But he had first crept softly up to Cilia, who was drying the plates and dishes in the kitchen, from behind, had given her a pinch and then thrown both arms round her and begged for a story: "Tell me something"--but she would not.

"I don't know anything."

"Oh, do tell me something. About the procession. Or even if it's only about your sow. How many little ones did she have last time?"

"Thirteen." Cilia could not resist that question, but still she remained taciturn.

"Is your cow going to calve this year too? How many cows has the biggest farmer near you? You know, the one down near the Warthe, Hauländer. Do tell me." He knew all about everything, knew all the people at her home and all the cattle. He could never get tired of hearing about them and about the country where the bells tinkle for matins and vespers or call with a deep, solemn sound for high mass on Sundays. He was so very fond of hearing about the country, about the large fields in which the blue flax and golden rye grow, about the bluish line of forest on the horizon, about the wide, wide stretches of heath, where the bees buzz busily over the blooming heather and the fen-fowls screech near the quiet waters in the evening, when the sky and the sun are reflected red in them.

"Tell me about it," he begged and urged her.

But she was reluctant and shook her head. "No, go away; no, I won't. The mistress has been looking at me like that again this evening--oh, like--no, I can't explain. I believe she's going to give me notice."

He had crept up to his room in a sulk and undressed himself. He had grown so accustomed to it that he could not sleep now when Cilia did not tell him something first. Then he fell into such a quiet sleep, and dreamt so beautifully of wide stretches of heather covered with red blossoms, and of quiet waters near which the fen-fowls screeched, which he went out to shoot.

Oh, that Cilia, what was the matter with her to-day? How stupid! "The mistress is going to give me notice." Nonsense, as if he would stand that. And he clenched his hand.

Then the door creaked.

He craned his neck forward: was it she? Was she coming, after all? It was his mother. He slipped hastily into bed and drew the covering up to his forehead. Let her think he was already asleep.

But she did not think so and said: "So you're still awake?" and she sat down on the chair near his bed on which his things were. Cilia always sat there too. He compared the two faces in silence. Oh, Cilia was much prettier, so white and red, and she had dimples in her fat cheeks when she laughed, and she was so jolly. But his mother was not ugly either.

He looked at her attentively; and then suddenly a hitherto quite unknown feeling came over him: oh, what narrow cheeks she had. And the soft hair near her temples--was--was----

"You're getting quite grey," he said all at once, quite dismayed, and stretched out his finger. "There, quite grey."

She nodded. A look of displeasure lengthened her delicate face, and made it appear still narrower.

"You should laugh more," he advised. "Then people would never see you had wrinkles."

Wrinkles--oh yes, wrinkles. She passed her hand over her forehead nervously. What uncharitable eyes children had. Youth and beauty had no doubt disappeared for ever--but it was this boy who had deprived her of the last remnant of them. And it sounded like a reproach as she said: "Sorrow has done that. Your serious illness and--and----" she hesitated: should she begin now about what troubled her so?"--and many other things," she concluded with a sigh.

"I can understand that," he said naïvely. "You're so old, too."

Well, he was honest, she had to confess that; but he said it without a trace of tender feeling. She could not suppress a slight irritation; it was not pleasant to be reminded of your age by your child. "I'm not so old as all that," she said.

"Oh, I don't mean either that you're very old. But still much older than Cilia, for example."

She winced--he always brought in that person.

"Cilia is a pretty girl, don't you think so, mother?"

She got so angry that she lost control of herself. "Do you think so?" she said curtly, rising. "She's leaving on the first of October."

"She's leaving? Oh no!" He stared at her incredulously.

"Yes, yes." She felt she was cruel, but could she be otherwise? His disbelieving tone expressed such terror. "She's leaving. I'm going to give her notice."

"Oh no, you won't." He laughed. "You won't do that."

"Yes, I will." She emphasised each word; it sounded irrevocable.

He still shook his head incredulously: it could not be. But then he suddenly remembered Cilia's depression and her words that evening: "I suppose she's going to give me notice." "No, you shan't do so." He started up in bed.

"I shall not ask you."

"No, you shan't, you shan't," he cried. All at once Cilia moved across his mental vision, her ingenuous eyes looked at him so sadly--he liked her so much--and she was to go? He was seized with fury.