"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 Lamke 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 Lamke?"

"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 G.o.d!

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 hoa.r.s.e.

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 Lamke 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.

Kate 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 compa.s.sion 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.

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

"You will not," he said. "And still Frau Lamke 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 Lamke loves her Frida."

She did not love him?--she did not love him?--Kate 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?

"Wolfchen," she said in a soft tremulous voice, "my dear Wolfchen," 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-n.o.body. 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 G.o.d, 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 Lamke 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 Lamkes was restricted. Her boy should never go there again. In a manner Kate had grown jealous of the woman who spoke of such improper things and did not mind what she said when children were present.

Frau Lamke 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. Lamke's only a porter and our children only a porter's children."