The Son of His Mother Part 10

His parents were already at table. His father frowned as he looked at him, his mother asked in a voice of gentle reproach in which there was also a little anxiety: "Where have you been so long? Lisbeth has been looking for you everywhere."

"Well?" His father's voice sounded severe.

The boy did not give any answer, it seemed to him all at once as though his tongue were paralysed. What should he tell those people sitting indoors about what he had been doing outside?

"He's sure to have been kept at school, ma'am," whispered the housemaid when she handed the meat. "I'll find it out from the other boys to-morrow, and tell you about it, ma'am."

"Oh, you!" The boy jumped up; although she had whispered it in a low voice, he had heard it all the same. His chair fell down behind him with a crash, and rushing up to the girl with clenched fist he seized hold of her so roughly that she gave a shrill scream and let the dish fall out of her hand.

"You goose, you goose!" he howled in a loud voice, and wanted to strike her. His father only pulled him away with difficulty.

"Wolfchen!" Kate's fork had fallen out of her hand with a clatter, and she was staring at her boy with dilated eyes.

The maid complained bitterly. He was always like that, he was unbearable, he had said before to her: "Hold your tongue!" No, she could not put up with it, she would rather leave. And she ran out of the room crying.

Paul Schlieben was extremely angry. "You are to be civil to inferiors. You are to be polite to them, just because they have to serve. Do you hear?" And he seized hold of the boy with a strong hand, laid him across his knees and gave him the whipping he so well deserved.

Wolfgang ground his teeth together and bore the punishment without uttering a sound and without a tear.

But every stroke fell on his mother's heart. She felt as if she herself had been beaten and severely bruised. When her husband took his usual rest after the stormy dinner, smoked, read the paper and took a little nap between whiles, she crept up to the nursery in which the boy had been locked. Was he crying?

She turned the key softly--he was kneeling on the chair near the window, his nose pressed flat against the pane, looking attentively out at the snow. He did not notice her at all. Then she went away again cautiously. She went downstairs again, but her mind was not sufficiently at rest to read in her room; she crept about the house softly as though she had no peace. Then she heard Lisbeth say to the cook in the kitchen between the rattling of plates: "I shall certainly not put up with it. Not from such a rude boy. What has he got to do here?"

Kate stood rigid, overcome by a terror that paralysed her: what did she know? She became glowing hot and then icy cold. "Not from such a rude boy--what has he got to do here?" oh, G.o.d, was that the way she spoke about him?

She ran up to the nursery; Wolfchen was still kneeling at the window.

No other villa obstructed the view there as yet; from the window one looked out on a large piece of waste ground, where dandelions and nettles grew in the sand between hedge mustard in the summer time, but where the snow lay now, deep and clean, untouched by any footstep. The short winter evening was already drawing to a close, that white field was the only thing that still glittered, and it seemed to the mother that the child's face was very wan in the pale light of the luminous snow.

"Wolfchen," she called softly. And then "Wolfchen, how could you say 'goose' and 'hold your tongue' to Lisbeth? Oh, for shame! Where did you get those words from?" Her voice was gentle and sad as she questioned him.

Then he turned round to her, and she saw how his eyes burned.

Something flickered in them, that looked like a terrified, restless longing.

She noticed that as well, and quite against all rules of pedagogy she opened her arms and whispered--after it had escaped from her lips she did not know herself why she had said it, for he had everything, everything his heart desired--"You poor child!"

And he ran into her arms.

They held each other tightly, heart beating against heart. They were both sad, but neither of them knew the reason why, nor why the other one was sad.

"It's not the whipping," he murmured.

She stroked his straight hair away from his forehead with her soft hand; she did not ask him any more questions. For--did not something rise out of that field covered with snow, hover outside the window and lay its finger on its lips: "Be quiet, do not ask, do not touch it"?

But she remained with the boy and played with him; she felt as though she ought not to leave him alone to-day. Yes, she must pay still more attention to him in the future. All at once the thought fell on her heart like a heavy weight: she had already left him much too much to himself. But then she consoled herself again: he was still so young, his mind was still a piece of quite soft wax, which she could mould as she liked. He must never again be allowed to stand at the window staring out at that desolate field with such burning eyes. What was he longing for? Was not a wealth of love showered on him? And everything else that delights a child's heart?

She looked round his pretty room. Such a quant.i.ty of toys were piled up in it, trains and steamers, tin soldiers and picture books and all the newest games.

"Come, we'll play," she said.

He was quite ready to do so; she was surprised how quickly he had forgotten his sorrow. Thank G.o.d, he was still quite an innocent, unsuspecting child. But how restlessly he threw the toys about. "That's stupid," and "that's tiresome"--nothing really absorbed his attention.

She soon felt quite exhausted with all her proposals and her endeavours to induce him to play this or that game. She did not think she had been so difficult to satisfy as a child. She had wanted to get up and go away half a dozen times already--no, she really could not stand it any longer, she had a frantic headache, it had got on her nerves, it was certainly much easier to stand at the fire and cook or do housework than play with a child--but her sense of duty and her love kept her back every time.

She must not leave him alone, for--she felt it with a gloomy dread--for then somebody else would come and take him away from her.

She remained sitting with him, pale and exhausted; he had tormented her a great deal. At last he found a woolly sheep that had been quite forgotten in the corner of the toy cupboard, a dilapidated old toy from his childhood with only three legs left. And he amused himself with that; that pleased him more than the other costly toys. He sat on the carpet as though he were quite a little child, held the sheep between his knees and stroked it.

When he lay in bed at last, she still sat beside him holding his hand. She sang the song with which she had so often sung him to sleep:

"Sleep sound, sweetest child, Yonder wind howls wild.

Hearken, how the rain makes sprays And how neighbour's doggie bays.

Doggie has gripped the man forlorn, Has the beggar's tatter torn--"

She sang it more and more softly. At last she thought he had fallen asleep, but then he tore his hand away impatiently: "Stop that song!

I'm not a baby any longer!"

It was fortunate that there were no street boys in the Grunewald colony, as Wolfchen would a.s.suredly have played with them; as it was, his playfellows were only a hall-porter's children. There was certainly no want of nicer children to play with; school-fellows whose parents lived in similar villas to theirs used to invite him; and the families in Berlin, with whom the Schliebens were on friendly terms and who were pleased when their children could get out to the Grunewald on their holidays, often asked him to come and see them too.

All children liked to come to the shady garden, where Auntie Kate was always so kind to them. There was always plenty of cakes and fruit and hoops and b.a.l.l.s and croquet and tennis, ninepins and gymnastic appliances. On sunny afternoons gay laughter and shrieks used to ascend high up into the green tops of the pines, but--Kate noticed it with surprise--her boy, who was generally so wild, was the quietest of them all on those occasions. He did not care for those visits. He did not care for those well-behaved boys in white and blue sailor-suits, with their fresh faces showing above their dazzling collars; he never felt really at home with them. He would have preferred to have run away to a place far away from there, where n.o.body else went except now and then a beggar with a large bag, who would turn over every bit of paper with his wire hook to see whether something of value had not been left there the Sunday before. He would have liked to help that man. Or fill the large bag with pine-cones.

But still Wolfgang had some friends. There was Hans Flebbe--his father was coachman at the banker's, who owned the splendid villa on the other side of the road and lived in Bellevuestra.s.se in Berlin in the winter--and there were also Artur and Frida. But their father was only porter in a villa that was let out to different families.

As soon as these three came home from school, they would stand outside the Schliebens' villa. They could not be driven away, they would wait there patiently until Wolfgang joined them.

"He's like a brother to my Hans," the coachman used to say, and he would greet him with a specially condescending flick of his whip from his high seat. And the porter and his wife used to state with much satisfaction: "Yes, old Schlieben always touches his hat, and she, his lady, also says 'how do you do?' to us in a very friendly style, but the little one, oh, he's quite different."

Those were wild games the four comrades played together, and in which Frida was reckoned to be quite a boy: catch, hide and seek, but best of all, robbers and policemen. How Wolf's eyes sparkled when he, as the robber captain, gave the policeman, Hans Flebbe, a kick in the stomach, so that he fell backwards on the ground and lay for a time without moving from pain.

"I've shot him," he said to his mother proudly.

Kate, who had been called to the window by the noisy shrieks of the children who were rushing about wildly in the waste field behind the villa, had beckoned to her boy to come in. He had come unwillingly; but he had come. Now he stood breathless before her, and she stroked the damp hair away from the face that was wet with perspiration: "What a sight you look! And here--look."

She pointed reproachfully to his white blouse that was covered with dirt. Where in all the world had he made himself so filthy? there were no real pools there. And his trousers. The right leg was slit open the whole way down, the left one had a three-cornered hole in the knee.

Pooh, that was nothing. He wanted to rush away again, he was trembling with impatience; his playfellows were crouching behind the bush, they dared not come out before he, their captain, came back to them. He strove against the hand that was holding him; but his struggles were of no avail that time, his father came out of the next room.

"You are to stop here. You ought to feel ashamed of yourself to resist your mother like that. Off with you, go to your room and prepare your lessons for tomorrow."

Paul Schlieben spoke sharply. It had made him angry to see how the boy had striven with hands and feet against his delicate wife.

"You rude boy, I'll teach you how to behave to your mother.

Here"--he seized hold of him by the scruff of his neck and dragged him up to her--"here, beg her pardon. Kiss your good mother's hand. And promise not to be so wild again, not to behave like a street-boy. Be quick--well, are you soon going to do it?"

The veins on the man's forehead began to swell with anger. What a stubborn fellow he was. There he stood, his blouse torn open at front so that you could see the rapid rise and fall of his chest that was wet with perspiration--he was not breathing quietly even now, he was still panting from the rough game--and looking so wild, so turbulent, not at all like the child of nice parents. This could not go on any longer.

"You must not tear about like that any more, do you hear?" said his father severely. "I forbid it. Play other games. You have your garden, your gymnastic appliances and a hundred things others would envy you.