Towards Morning | Page 8

was the sad knowledge of inexplicable human cruelty. He shrank from men even from the Herr Amtschreiber and women he tolerated wearily. He went with no one, followed no one, save his chosen god. Helmut he loved. Helmut he followed. When the boy played his strange games with his strange toys, the dog would sit by and watch gravely. When Helmut ran, Fritz Schnautzchen girded up his old loins and ran too panting but indomitable. In the hours which Helmut spent in the Kindergarten Schnautzchen watched with Heini for his return. Or sometimes Frau Felde would take them with her when she went to fetch her son, but this was not often, because she was just a little ashamed of both of them.
Between Heini and Fritz Schnautzchen there must have been some alliance. It subtly excluded Helmut. They made it, as it were, over his head and without his knowledge. But it was for his protection. They were older and wiser with inarticulate wisdom, and they loved him. They had their life from him and were ready to give it up for his sake, and knowing this of each other they became comrades. There could have been no other explanation for a dog's devotion to a rag doll.
As to Heini his attitude and his expression were less scrutable. He embraced his ally as he embraced every one, with open arms and a wide engaging smile.
With these two on either side of him, Helmut came through the fairy-land of babyhood.
II
To Helmut his mother and father were grey people. They were the same colour as the flight of stone steps which led up to their flat and the dim hall and the faded sitting-room. For a long time he did not even realise that they had features but recognised them by instinct from the midst of other grey people. And they had a disconcerting knack of dwindling and growing. For instance on Sunday in the big Lutheran Church in the West-end Strasse they grew bigger, as though the slow rolling hymns and packed mass of other dull clad people, singing with all their might, reinforced them and gave them confidence and dignity. But after the service when they walked out together in the forest which girdled the town like a deep green sea, they faded again. They walked stiffly and anxiously in their best clothes. They looked to right and left and bowed to every one they knew, and talked about them in low tones, and the vividness and straight tall strength of the trees made them colourless and subdued.
But even when they were most faded, most grey, they were still omnipresent. Heini and Schnautzchen were bright and definite realities, but they came and went. His mother and father were about him always. Like a low cloud they encompassed his going and his coming. He loved them, but a queer pain mingled itself with his love. A nerve united them to one another, but it was a nerve that ached under secret, constant pressure. He knew, though, without reasoning that they were always thinking about him, watching him, waiting. He felt that when they were alone they talked about him, even when they talked of other things of the Herr Geheimrat, or the Bureau Chef, or the hope of promotion, or the cost of living, they looked at him as though he were the real significance of these things.
Once when he had been playing with Schnautzchen and Heini his mother had called him, and he had not instantly obeyed. At last when he came, panting and rosy-cheeked, half laughing, half defiant, his mother had put her hands on his shoulders and he had felt them tremble. Her plain round face was close to his, and for the first time she came out of her mist and he saw her clearly. He remembered her as she was then ever afterwards, and for the first time too, he saw himself.
"Helmut you must obey obey always," she said. "Unless you obey you will never command, you will never be strong, you will never be a great man. You will never be of any use. We have all got to obey."
"Why?" he asked truculently.
"It is our duty."
"What is duty?"
"The greatest thing in the world." It was strange what hardness, what sternness came into her face. And yet behind it all he felt the pain. "Duty is what we owe our country. A sense of duty is the greatest German virtue. Promise me, Helmut promise me--"
He did not know what she asked but he took a deep breath.
"I'll try," he said solemnly. "I'll try hard."
She caressed him with hard, eager hands.
"We love you, Helmut you must always remember that we love you."
And hereafter his games were never quite the same, and their love weighed upon him like