they did not get away till nine o'clock.
there was supper at seven, an elaborate meal, and they sat over it an hour and a half. then came more coffee, served on the terrace by servants in white cotton gloves, and half an hour later, just before they left, tea and sandwiches and cakes and fruit and beer.
ingeborg was now quite clear about the reason for her mother-in-law's tears. she saw very vividly how dreadful her behaviour must have seemed. that groaning supper-table, that piling up as the end of the visit drew near of more food and more and more, and the refreshment of bed in the middle....
"i shall invite her all over again," she said suddenly, determined to make amends.
when she said this the carriage had finally detached them from sight and sound of the now quite cordial glambecks, and was heaving through the sand of the dark wooded road beyond their gate.
"whom will the little one invite?" asked herr dremmel, bending down. he had got his arm round her, and at the bigger joltings tightened his hold and lifted her a little. his voice was tender, and when he bent down there was an enveloping smell of cigars and wine, mixed with the india-rubber of his mackintosh.
ingeborg knew that for some reason she could not discover she had made herself popular. there was the distinct consciousness of having suddenly, half way through the visit, become a success. and she was still going on being a success, she felt. but why? robert was extraordinarily attentive. too attentive, really, for oh, what a wonderful night of stars and warm scents it was, once they were in the open—what a night, what a marvel of a night! and when he bent over her it was blotted out. dear robert. she did love him. but away there on that low meadow, far away over there where a white mist lay on the swampy places and the leaves of the flags that grew along the ditch stood up like silver spears in the moonlight, one could imagine the damp cool fragrance rising up as one's feet stirred the grass, the perfect solitariness and the perfect silence. except for the bittern. there was a bittern, she had discovered, in those swamps. if she were over there now, lying quite quiet on the higher ground by the ditch, quite quiet and alone, she would hear him presently, solemnly booming.
"whom will the little one invite?" asked herr dremmel, bending down across the whole of the milky way and every single one of all the multitude of scents the night was softly throwing against her face.
he kissed her very kindly and at unusual length. it lasted so long that she missed the smell of an entire clover field.
"your mother," said ingeborg, when she again emerged.
"heavens and earth!" said herr dremmel.
"i know now what i did—or rather didn't do. i know now why she kept on saying bratkartoffel. oh, robert, she must have been hurt. she must have thought i didn't care a bit. and i did so want her to be happy. why didn't you tell me?"
"tell you what, little sheep?"
"about there having to be supper, and about her having to go to bed."
"to bed?"
"did the baron put you?"
"put me?"
"to bed?"
herr dremmel bent down again and looked a little anxiously at as much of her face as he could see in the moonlight. it seemed normal; not in the least flushed or feverish. he touched her cheek with his finger. it was cool.
"little one," he said, "what is this talk of beds?"
"only that it would save rather a lot of awful things happening if you would just give me an idea beforehand of what is expected. it wouldn't take a minute. i wouldn't disturb you at your work for anything, but at some odd time—breakfast, for instance, or while you're shaving—if you'd say about beds and things like that. one couldn't guess it, you know. in redchester one didn't do it, you see. and it's such a really beautiful arrangement. oh"—she suddenly flung her arms round him and held him tight—"i am glad i married one of you!"
"one of me?"
herr dremmel again peered anxiously at her face.
"one of you wonderful people—you magnificent, spacious people. in redchester we got rid of difficulties by running away. you face them and overcome them. there isn't much doubt, is there, which is the finer?"
he transferred his cigar to the hand that was round her shoulder and spread his right one largely over her forehead. it was quite cool.
"who," went on ingeborg enthusiastically, jerking her head away from his hand, "would have a custom that makes calls last five hours without rebelling? you are too splendidly disciplined to rebel. you don't. you just set about finding some way of making the calls endurable, and you hit on the nicest way. i loved that hour in bed. if only i'd known that the other day when your mother came! the relief of it...."
"but my mother—" began herr dremmel in a puzzled voice. then he added with a touch of severity, "your remarks, my treasure, are not in your usual taste. you forget my mother is a widow."
"oh? don't widows?"
"do not widows what?"
"go to bed?"
"now kindly tell me," he said, with an impatience he concealed beneath calm, for he had heard that a husband who wishes to become successfully a father has to accommodate himself to many moods, "what it is you are really talking about."
"why, about your not explaining things to me in time."
"what things?"
"about your mother having to go to bed."
"why should my mother have to go to bed?"
"oh, robert—because it's the custom."
"it is not. why do you suppose it is the custom?"
"what? when i've just been put there? and you saw me go?"
"ingeborg—"
"oh, don't call me ingeborg—"
"ingeborg, this is levity. i am prepared for much accommodating of myself to whims in regard to food and kindred matters, but am i to endure levity for nine months?"
she stared at him.
"you went to bed because you were ill," he said.
"i wasn't," she said indignantly. did he, too, think she did not know how to control herself in the presence of cake?
"what? you were not?"
there was a note of such sharp disappointment in his voice that in her turn she peered at his face.
"now kindly tell me, robert," she said, giving his sleeve a slight pull, "what it is you are really talking about."
"you did not feel faint? you feel quite well? you do not feel ill after all?"
again the note of astonished disappointment.
"but why should i feel ill?"
"then why did you ask to be taken home almost before we had arrived?"
for the first time she heard anger in his voice, anger and a great aggrievedness.
"almost before we'd arrived? we'd been there hours. you hadn't told me a call meant supper."
"almighty heaven," he cried, "am i to dwell on every detail of life? am i personally to conduct you over each of the inches of your steps? do you regard me as an elementary school? can you not imagine? can you not calculate probabilities? can you not construct some searchlight of inference of your own, and illuminate with it the outline of at least the next few hours?"
she gazed at him a moment in astonishment.
"well," she said.
if her father had asked her only one of these questions in that sort of voice she would have been without an answer, beaten down and crushed. but robert had not had the steady continuous frightening of her from babyhood. he could not hold over her, like an awful rod, that she owed her very existence to him. he could not claim perpetual gratitude for this remote tremendous gift, bestowed on her in the days of her unconsciousness. he was a kindly stranger appointed by the church to walk hand in hand with her along the path of grown-up life. he had admired her, and kissed her, and quite often during their engagement had abased himself at her feet. also she had seen him at moments such as shaving.
"i believe," she said after another astonished pause, "that you're scolding me. and you're scolding me because you're angry with me, and you're angry with me—robert, is it possible you're angry with me because i'm not ill?"
he threw away his cigar and seized her in his arms and began to whisper voluminously into her ear.
"what?" she kept on saying. "what? you're tickling me—what? i can't hear-"
but she did in the end hear, and drew herself a little back from him to look at him with a new interest. it seemed the oddest thing that he, so busy, so nearly always somewhere else in thought, so deeply and frequently absent from the surface of life, so entirely occupied by his work that often he could hardly remember he had a wife, should want to have yet another object of the kind added unto him, a child; and that she who lived altogether on the surface, who knew, as it were, the very taste of each of the day's minutes and possessed them all, who never lost consciousness of the present and never for an instant let go of her awareness of the visible and the now, should be without any such desire.
"but," she said, "we're so happy. we're so happy as we are."
"it is nothing compared to what we would be."
"but i haven't even begun to get used to this happiness yet—to the one i've got."
"you will infinitely prefer the one that is yet to come."
"but robert—don't rush me along. don't let us rush past what we've got. let us love all this thoroughly first-"
he looked at her very gravely. "we have now been married two months," he said. "i become anxious. to-night—i cannot tell you how glad i was. and then—it was nothing after all."
she gazed at him with a feeling of a new incumbency. he had said the last words in a voice she did not know, with a catch in it.
"robert—" she said quickly, putting out her hand and touching his with a little soft stroking movement.
she wished above all things to make him perfectly happy. always she had loved making people happy. and she was so grateful to him, so grateful for the freedom she had got through him, that just her gratitude even if she had not loved him would have made her try to do and be everything he wished. but she did love him. she certainly loved him. and here was something he seemed to want beyond everything, and that she alone could provide him with.
he turned his head away; and as he did this did she see something actually glistening in his eyes, glistening like something wet?
in an instant she had put her arms round him. "of course i do—of course i want one," she said, rubbing her cheek up and down his mackintosh, "some—heaps—of course we'll have them—everybody has them—of course i'll soon begin—don't mind my not having been ill to-night—i'm so sorry—i will be ill—dear robert—i didn't know i had to be ill—but i will be soon—i'm sure i will be—i—i feel quite like soon being ill now—"
he patted her face, his face still turned away. "good little wife," he said; "good little wife."
she felt nearer to him than she had ever felt, so close in understanding and sympathy. she had seen tears, a man's tears. of what tremendous depths of feeling were they not the signal? the sentence, a strong man's tears, floated up from somewhere and hung about her mind. she pressed him to her in a passion of desire to make him altogether happy, to protect him from feeling too much. she held him like that, her cheek against his arm, rubbing it up and down every now and then to show how well she understood, till they got home. when he lifted her down from the carriage at their door she slipped her hand round the back of his neck and kept it there a moment with the tenderest lingering touch.
"dear robert," she whispered, her lips on his ear while he lifted her down; and implicit in the words was the mother-assurance, the yearning mother-promise, "oh, little thing, little man thing, i'll take care of you."
she hung about the parlour and the passage while he went, as he said, for a moment into his laboratory for a final look round, waiting for him in a strangely warmed exalted state, entirely at one with him, suddenly very intimate, sure that after letting her see things so sacred as tears he would only want to spend the rest of the evening with her, being comforted and reassured, held close to her heart, talking sweetly with her in the quiet dark garden.
but there were six saucerfuls of differently treated last year's rye ready on the laboratory table for counting and weighing. herr dremmel beheld them, and forgot the world. he began to count and weigh. he continued to count and weigh. he ended by counting and weighing them all; and it was dawn before, satisfied and consoled for his lost afternoon, it occurred to him that perhaps it might be bedtime.
