Towards Morning | Page 6

you perhaps take this for a hospital, Herr Heim?" he asked.
Their eyes met and held for a moment. Then the old man turned away. He went back to his desk and climbed on to his stool painfully, like a tired child.
The Herr Amtschreiber bent over his work. The rims of his eyes stung as though they had been burnt with fire.
IV
The cheap lamp nailed to the wall had been shaded and in the half obscurity where one form merged itself in another the voice sounded faint and far off as the memory of a dream.
"Our own," it said, "our very own."
The Herr Amtschreiber pressed his cheek against the hand that lay so heavily upon the quilt. Gently it was withdrawn and fumbling like the hand of some one newly blind rested at last on his bowed head, soothing him with a pitying, drowsy movement. "Mustn't cry, Mdnnchen it's all right now it was very bad but it's over and it's worth while to have something of our very own."
"I am so proud," he whispered, " it is so wonderful."
"A life we've made together to take care of to make happier than we have been."
"Our son our son," he repeated simply.
The doctor and the nurse standing deep in shadow smiled palely as though this high-song of thanksgiving, so familiar, so eternal, could never lose its pathetic humour. The doctor bent down and touched the kneeling man upon the shoulder.
"Come!" he said. "You must let her sleep."
The Herr Amtschreiber stumbled to his feet. He did not look at the face that seemed to float like a white flower on a dark tide, nor at the unknown who slept in the low cradle. He went out, reeling drunkenly, through the door which the doctor held open for him. His teeth chattered in fever and he put his hands against the stove, letting its warm comfort steal up through his veins.
The plump little doctor watched him, still smiling and stroking his neat beard.
"You will take it more calmly next time," he said prosaically. "The first is always a shock. One takes children so much for granted and other people's children are never wonderful. But you mustn't excite her, you know. It won't do either for her or for the child."
The Herr Amtschreiber lifted his head.
"I couldn't come," he muttered. "You see, there was work at the office--"
"Of course. Very admirable of you. It's our old German sense of duty. As it happened it was all right. But I had an anxious quarter of an hour. You see, your wife is not so young any more and in that case there is always danger. I thought I might have to choose between the two of them suddenly. There was no time to ask you. But she chose. A brave woman. I congratulate you, my friend."
"And the "child?"
"A fine boy a regular little grenadier." Dr. Roth picked up his hat, chuckling. "I'll be round to-morrow. No don't bother to see me out you're not fit. Take a good glass of something to steady you. Goodnight good-night my dear fellow."
The door closed. But a minute later Anna came in bearing the lamp. She looked at him, her big shadowed eyes heavy with weariness. Yet there was a smile in them that same slow smile of deep, unconscious wisdom.
"The Herr Amtschreiber is glad that it is a boy?" she asked softly.
"Yes yes."
"One is always glad when it is a son," she said. "When I was born my mother cried. There are too many of us."
"But you have brothers?" he muttered absently.
"Oh, yes there were four two are in America. And two are serving their time. It is not easy to work the fields without them. In the harvest time my mother goes out and gathers in the corn. She is old now so old--"
He did not hear her. She went out so ft- footed as she had come and he stretched his arms above his head so that he seemed to himself to grow young and strong and tall. The shuddering fear had gone. He was a god. His joy lifted him out of the grey crowd where he belonged. For a moment romance touched him with her golden finger and illuminated him. Once before it had come to him on his wedding night when the love that had been so cramped with little sordid cares had burst its bonds and shown herself royal and reckless even in them. It would come again perhaps surely once again at least with the last romance of all.
He went slowly to the table and sat down. A lifeold instinct held steadfast in him. There were things to be done a note to the Geheimrat an order to the printer a notice to be inserted in the daily paper. He drew that