I don't understand you. Let him come, Walburga. The essential thing is that one knows what one wants and that one has a clean conscience. I am ready. I long for the explanation to come about.
_A loud knocking is heard at the door._
SPITTA
[_Firmly._] Come in!
_MRS. HASSENREUTER enters, more out of breath than usual. An expression of relief comes over her face as she catches sight of her daughter._
MRS. HASSENREUTER
Thank God! There you are, children! [_Trembling, WALBURGA throws herself into her mother's arms._] Girlie, but what a fright you've given your old mother.
[_A pause in which only the breathing of MRS. HASSENREUTER is heard._
WALBURGA
Forgive me, mama: I couldn't act differently.
MRS. HASSENREUTER
Oh, no! One doesn't write letters containing such thoughts to one's own mother. And especially not to a mother like me. If your soul is in pain you know very well that you can always count on me for help and counsel.
I'm not a monster, and I was young myself once. But to threaten to drown yourself ... and things like that ... no, that's all wrong. You shouldn't have done that. Surely you agree with me, Mr. Spitta. And now this very minute ... heavens, how you both look!... this very minute you must both come home with me!--What's the matter with Mrs. John?
WALBURGA
Oh yes, help us! Don't forsake us! Take us with you, mama! Oh, I'm _so_ glad that you're here! I was just paralysed with fright!
MRS. HASSENREUTER
Very well, then. Come along. That would be the last straw if one had to be prepared for such desperate follies from you, Mr. Spitta, or from this child! At your age one should have courage. If everything doesn't go quite smoothly you have no right to think of expedients by which one has nothing to gain and everything to lose. We live but once, after all.
SPITTA
Oh, I have courage! And I'm not thinking of putting an end to myself as one who is weary and defeated ... unless Walburga is refused to me. In that case, to be sure, my determination is firm. It doesn't in the least undermine my belief in myself or in my future that I am poor for the present and have to take my dinner occasionally in the people's kitchen.
And I am sure Walburga is equally convinced that a day must come that will indemnify us for all the dark and difficult hours of the present.
MRS. HASSENREUTER
Life is long; and you're almost children to-day. It's not so very bad for a student to have to take an occasional meal in the people's kitchen. It would be much worse, however, for Walburga as a married woman. And I hope for the sake of you both that you'll wait till something in the nature of a hearthstone of your own with the necessary wood and coal can be founded. In the meantime I've succeeded in persuading papa to a kind of truce. It wasn't easy and it might have been impossible had not this morning's mail brought the news of his definitive appointment as manager of the theatre at Strassburg.
WALBURGA
[_Joyously._] Oh, mama, mama! That is a ray of sunshine, isn't it?
MRS. JOHN
[_Sits up with a start._] Bruno!
MRS. HASSENREUTER
[_Apologising._] Oh, we've wakened you, Mrs. John.
MRS. JOHN
Is Bruno gone?
MRS. HASSENREUTER
Who? Who's Bruno?
MRS. JOHN
Why, Bruno! Don' you know Bruno?
MRS. HASSENREUTER
Ah, yes, yes! That's the name of your brother.
MRS. JOHN
Was I asleep?
SPITTA
Fast asleep. But you cried out aloud in your sleep just now.
MRS. JOHN
Did you see, Mr. Spitta, how them boys out in the yard threw stones at my little Adelbert's wee grave? But I got after 'em, eh? An' they wasn't no bad slaps neither what I dealt out.
MRS. HASSENREUTER
It seems that you've been dreaming of your first little boy who died, Mrs. John.
MRS. JOHN
No, no; all that's fac'! I ain't been dreamin'. An' then I took little Adelbert an' I went with him to the registrar's office.
MRS. HASSENREUTER
But if your little boy's no longer alive ... how could you ...
MRS. JOHN
Aw, when a little child is onct born, it don't matter if it's dead ...
it's still right inside o' its mother. Did you hear that dawg howlin'
behind the board fence? An' the moon had a big ring aroun' it! Bruno, you ain' doin' right!