The Pastor's Wife Part 23

"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 mult.i.tude 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, s.p.a.cious 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 grat.i.tude 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.