"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 Kate 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 Lamke? Oh, they were all one.

Tears of anguish rolled down Kate'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 bas.e.m.e.nt on hearing somebody give a gentle knock. Frau Lamke 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 Lamke clasped her hands. "Is the boy so bad, really so bad?"

Cilia only nodded and hid her streaming eyes in her ap.r.o.n, 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 Lamke 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 s.p.a.ce. 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. Kate had clung to him: "Help! Help my child!" Now he was sitting with Paul Schlieben downstairs in his study; Kate 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 gla.s.s 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.

Kate 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d in her heart.

"O G.o.d, O G.o.d, don't take him from me. Thou must not take him from me. I have nothing else in the world beside him. G.o.d, G.o.d!"

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.

"Wolfchen, my Wolfchen!"

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 pa.s.sed 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?

n.o.body 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 bas.e.m.e.nt 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.

n.o.body'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.