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: "Kate, 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, Kate; 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. "Wolfchen, my Wolfchen, surely you'll never leave your mother?"

Her tears began to stream now, and whilst she wept she kissed the child so pa.s.sionately, 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 s.p.a.ce 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 gla.s.s.

"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 Kate 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 s.p.a.ce.

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?

Kate 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, Wolfchen 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 Wolfchen really made of such different material? No, Paul must not say "peasant." Wolfchen 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--Kate flew into a pa.s.sion. 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, n.o.body. 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 ma.s.s 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 pa.s.sed 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 b.a.l.l.s that looked like round beads on a string for the boy. She got hot and red, almost hoa.r.s.e, and would have liked to cry with impatience and discouragement, when Wolfchen 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 s...o...b..a.l.l.s 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 b.a.l.l.s 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.