The Son of His Mother Part 25

He wanted to say "unhappy"; but the word seemed to mean too little and in another way too much. And he felt ashamed of saying it aloud. So he stood silent, colouring up to the eyes. And only his tears, which he could not restrain any longer, rolled down his cheeks and fell into the dust of the street.

They were tears of sorrow and of rage. It was already more than six months ago--oh, even longer--but it still enraged him as though it had happened the day before. He had never forgotten for a moment that they had caught him so easily. They had found him so soon, at daybreak, ere the sun had risen on a new day. And they had carried him home in triumph. What he had looked upon as a great deed, an heroic deed, was a stupid boy's trick to them. His mother had certainly cried a good deal, but his father had only pulled his ear: "Once, but not more, my son. Remember that."

Wolfgang was crying quietly but bitterly. Frida stood in front of him, watching him cry, and suddenly her eyes filled with tears as well--she had always been his good friend. Now she cried with him.

"Don't cry, Wolfchen," she sobbed. "It isn't so bad. People don't remember anything more about it--such things are forgotten. You certainly need not feel ashamed of it--why should you? There's no harm in your having frightened your people a little for once in a way.

Simply say to them: 'Then I'll run away again,' if they won't let you come to us. Come next Sunday afternoon. Then I won't go with Artur and Flebbe--no, I'll wait for you."

She wiped her own tears away with the one hand and his with the other.

They stood thus in the bright sunshine amidst the flowering bushes.

The lilac spread its fragrance around; a red may and a laburnum strewed their beautifully coloured petals over them, shaken by the soft wind of May. The dark and the light head were close to each other.

"Frida," he said, seizing hold of her hand firmly, as though clinging to it, "Frida, are _you_ still fond of me, at any rate?"

"Of course." She nodded, and her clear merry laugh was heard once more, although there were still traces of tears on her face. "That would be a nice sort of friendship, if it disappeared so quickly.

There!" She pursed up her mouth and gave him a kiss.

He looked very embarra.s.sed; she had never given him a kiss before.

"There!" She gave him another one. "And now be happy again, my boy.

It's such beautiful weather."

"You're late to-day," said his mother, when Wolfgang came home from school at two instead of at one o'clock. "You've not been kept, I hope?"

A feeling of indignation rose in him: how she supervised him. The good temper in which his friend Frida had put him had disappeared; the chains galled him again. But he still thought a good deal of Frida.

When he was doing his lessons in the afternoon, her head with its thick knot of hair would constantly appear behind his desk, and bend over his book and interrupt him; but it was a pleasant interruption. What a pity that Frida had so little time now. How nice it had been when they were children. He had always been most fond of her; he had been able to play better with her than with the two boys, she had always understood him and stuck to him--alas!

He felt as though he must envy, from the bottom of his heart, the boy who had been the captain when they played at robbers in those days and roasted potatoes in the ashes, nay, even the boy who had once been so ill that they had to wheel him in a bath-chair the first time he went out into the open air. The boy who sat at the desk now, staring absently into s.p.a.ce over the top of his exercise-book, was no longer the same. He was no longer a child. All at once it seemed to Wolfgang as though a golden time had gone for ever and lay far behind him, as though there were no pleasures in store for him. Had not the clergyman who was preparing him for confirmation also said: "You are no longer children"? And had he not gone on to say: "You will soon have your share of life's gravity"? Alas, he already had it.

Wolfgang sat with knit brows, the chewed end of his penholder between his teeth, disinclined to work. He was brooding. All manner of thoughts occurred to him that he had never had before; all at once words came into his mind that he had never thought of seriously before. Why did the boys in his form constantly ask him such strange questions? They asked about his parents--well, was there anything peculiar about them?--and then they exchanged glances among themselves and looked at him so curiously. What was so funny about him? Lehmann was the most curious--and so cheeky. Quite lately he had blinked at him sideways so slyly, and puffed up his cheeks as though they must burst with laughter when he made the specially witty remark: "I'll be hanged if I can see any likeness between you and your governor!" Was he really not like his father or his mother? Not like either of them?

When Wolfgang undressed that evening, he stood a long time in front of the looking-gla.s.s that hung over his washstand, with a light in his hand, holding it first to the right, then to the left, then higher, then lower. A bright light fell on his face. The gla.s.s was good, and reflected every feature faithfully on its clear surface--but there was no resemblance whatever between his big nose and his mother's fine one.

His father's nose was also quite different. And neither of his parents had such a broad forehead with hair growing far down on it, and such brows that almost met. His father had certainly dark eyes, but they did not resemble those he saw in the gla.s.s, that were so black that even the light from the candle, which he held quite close, could not make them any lighter.

At last the boy turned away with a look full of doubt. And still there was something that resembled a slight feeling of relief in the sigh he now uttered. If he were so little like them externally, need he wonder then that his thoughts and feelings were often so quite, quite different from theirs?

It was strange how the boys at school were an exact copy of their parents; and how the big boys were still tied to their mothers'

ap.r.o.n-strings. There was Kullrich, for example; he had been away for a fortnight because his mother had died, and when he came to school again for the first time--with a black band round his coat-sleeve--the whole form went almost crazy. They treated him as though he were a raw egg, and spoke quite low, and n.o.body made a joke. And when the pa.s.sage, _When my father and my mother forsake me, then the Lord will take me up_, happened to occur in the Bible-lessons, in which Kullrich also took part, they all looked at him as though at the word of command, and Kullrich laid his head down on his Bible, and did not raise it again during the whole lesson. Afterwards the master went up to him and spoke a long time to him, and laid his hand on his head.

That was already a long time ago, but Kullrich was still not happy.

When they all walked in the playground during the interval, eating their bread and b.u.t.ter, he stood at some distance and did not eat. Was it really so hard to lose one's mother?

There was a wonderful moon shining over the silent pines that night; the boy lay half out of the window for a long, long time. His eyes were burning: his thoughts buzzed in his head like a swarm of gnats that whirl round and round and up and down in the air like a cloud. Where did they come from all at once?

He exposed his hot forehead, his chest, from which his nightshirt had slipped, to the cool night air in May--ah, that did him good. That was the best, the only thing that soothed, that gave peace. Oh, how delightful the air was, so pure, so fresh.

Where could Cilia be now? he wondered. He had never heard anything more about her, She was where he would like to have been--oh, how he would have liked it. Something that resembled the sound of bells came floating along, and he stretched out his arms and bent further and further out of the window.

Wolfgang had such a vivid dream about Cilia that night that when he awoke he thought she was standing at his bedside, that she had not left him yet. But after he had rubbed his eyes, he saw that the spot on which she had just been standing smiling so pleasantly was empty.

After school was over he had to go to the Bible-lesson; he was to be confirmed the following Easter. True, he was still young, but Paul Schlieben had said to his wife: "He is so developed physically. We can't have him confirmed when he is outwardly, at any rate, a grown-up man. Besides, his age is just right. It is much better for him if he does not begin to reflect first."

Did he not reflect already? It often seemed to Kate as if the boy evaded her questions, when she asked him about the Bible-lesson. Did his teacher not understand how to make an impression on him? Dr.

Baumann was looked upon as an excellent theologian, everybody rushed to hear his sermons; to be allowed to join his confirmation cla.s.ses, that were always so crowded, was a special favour; all his pupils raved about him, people who had been confirmed by him ten, fifteen years before, still spoke of it as an event in their lives.

Kate made a point of going to hear this popular clergyman's sermons very often. Formerly she had only gone to church at Christmas and on Good Friday, now she went almost every Sunday to please her boy, for he had to go now. They left the house together every Sunday, drove to church together, sat next to each other; but whilst she thought: "How clever, how thought-out, what fervour, surely he must carry a youthful mind away with him"? Wolfgang thought: "If only it were over!"

He felt bored. And his soul had never soared there as when the little bell rang when the monstrance had been raised, when he had smelt the odour of incense before dim altars.

There was something in him that drove him to the church he had once visited with Cilia. When he went to the Bible-cla.s.s he had to pa.s.s close by it; but even if the road had been longer, he would still have made it possible to go there. Only to stand a few minutes, a few seconds in a corner, only to draw his breath once or twice in that sweet, mysterious, soothing air laden with incense. He always found the church door open; and then when he stepped out again into the noise of Berlin, he went through the streets with their hurry and their rush like one come from another world. After that he did not take any notice of what he was told about the doctrines and the history of the Church--what were Martin Luther, Calvin and other reformers to him? His soul had been caught, his thoughts submerged in a feeling of gloomy faith.

Thus the summer and winter pa.s.sed. When the days grew longer, and the mild warmth of the sun promised to dry up all the moisture winter had left behind ere long, Paul Schlieben had his villa cleaned and painted. It was to put on a festive garment for their son's great day, too.

The white house looked extremely pretty with its red roofs and green shutters, as it peeped out from behind the pines; there would almost have been something rustic about it, had it not been for the large plate-gla.s.s windows and the conservatory, with its palms and flowering azaleas, that had lately been built on. Friedrich was sowing fresh gra.s.s in the garden, and an a.s.sistant was tidying up the flower-beds; they were digging and hoeing everywhere. The sparrows were chirping noisily, bold and happy; but strips of paper tied to long pieces of string and stretched across the lawns that had just been sown fluttered in the purifying wind and frightened the impudent birds away from the welcome food. All the gardens were waking up. The stems of the roses had not yet been released from their coverings, in which they looked like a chrysalis made of straw, but the young shoots had appeared on the fruit-trees, and the spurge-laurel made a fine show with its peach-coloured blossoms. Perambulators painted white and sky-blue were being driven up and down the street, the baby inside was already peeping out from behind the curtains, and little feet tripped along by the side. Nurses and children came out of all the doors, the boys with hoops, the girls with their b.a.l.l.s in a knitted net. Giggling young girls went off to tennis, and big boys from the third form made love to them.

Brightness and gaiety everywhere. There was a glad excited rustling in the tops of the pines, and the sap rose and fell in the willows along the sh.o.r.es of the lake. A flight of starlings pa.s.sed over the Grunewald colony, and each bird looked down and chose in which box on the tall pine stems it would prefer to nest.

The new suit of clothes--black trousers and coat--Wolfgang was to wear at his confirmation lay spread out on his bed upstairs. Now he was to try it on.

Kate was filled with a strange emotion, and her pulse quickened as she helped him to put on his new suit. So far he had always been dressed like a boy, in knickers and a sailor blouse, now he was to be dressed like a man all at once. The festive black suit of fine cloth did not suit him; for the first time one noticed that he was thick-set.

He stood there stiffly, he felt cramped in the trousers, the coat was uncomfortable, too: he looked miserable.

"Look at yourself, just look at yourself," said Kate, pushing him in front of the gla.s.s.

He looked into it. But he did not see the clothes, he only saw his mother's face as she looked into the gla.s.s at the same time as he, and he saw they had not a single feature in common.

"We're not a bit alike," he murmured.

"Hm? What did you say?" She had not understood him.

He did not answer.

"Don't you like the suit?"

"It's awful!" And then he stared at himself absently. What had they been saying again that morning? They had been jeering at him, Lehmann and von Kesselborn, who were to be confirmed with him. Was it because their fathers were not so rich as his? Kesselborn's father was a retired officer, who now filled the post of registrar, but Kesselborn was terribly proud of his "von"; and Lehmann was his bosom friend.

However, he had told them that he had already had a silver watch since he was eight years old, and that he was to have a real gold one for his confirmation, which he would then wear every day--that had vexed them awfully.

It was before the lesson had commenced--they were all three waiting--and Kesselborn had suddenly said: "Schlieben gives himself airs," and had then turned to him and said: "You needn't be so stuck-up." And then Lehmann had added, also quite loudly so that everybody must have heard it: "Don't put on so much side, we know all about it."

"What do you know?" He had wanted to jump on Lehmann like a tiger, but the clergyman had just then come in and they began prayers. And when the lesson, of which he had hardly heard anything--he heard the other words all the time--was over, he had wanted to tackle Kesselborn and Lehmann, but they had been sitting near the door, and had already gone before he could get out of his bench. He did not see them again. But he noticed glances in which there was a certain curiosity and spitefulness--or did he only imagine it? He was not quite sure about it, and he had not thought any more about it either. But now when he saw his mother's face so close to his in the gla.s.s, he suddenly remembered it all again. And it all came back to him, plumped like a stone into his thoughts.

"I'm not at all like you," he said once more. And then he watched her face: "Not like father either."

"Oh yes," she said hastily, "you are very much like your father."

"Not the slightest bit."