The Son of His Mother Part 28

Wolfgang stared at the gossip. "The boys say--Lisbeth said--and now you say--you too"--he jumped up--"I'll go and ask--them." He pointed with his finger as though pointing at something at a great distance of which he knew nothing. "Now I must know it."

"But Wolfgang--no, for G.o.d's sake!" Frau Lamke pressed him down into the chair again, quite terrified. "Lamke will beat me if he gets to know what I've done. He may possibly lose his situation as porter because of it--now, straightway, and the children don't earn anything as yet. I've not said anything, have I? How can I help that other people make you suspicious and uneasy? I don't know your mother at all and your father will, of course, have lost sight of her long ago. Let the whole thing lie, my boy." She wanted to soothe him, but he was not listening.

"My--my father?" he stammered. "So he is my real father?"

Frau Lamke nodded.

"But my--my real m--" He could not say the word "mother." He held his hands before his face and his whole body quivered. He was suddenly seized with a longing, that great pa.s.sionate longing, for a mother who had borne him. He did not say a word, but he uttered sighs that sounded like groans.

Frau Lamke was frightened to death; she wanted to clear herself but made it much worse. "Tut, tut, my dear boy, such a thing often happens in life--very decent of him that he doesn't disown you; there are heaps who do. And you would have far to go to find anybody like the lady who has adopted you as her own child. Splendid--simply splendid!" Frau Lamke had often been vexed with the fine lady, but now she felt she wanted to do her justice. "Such a mother ought to be set in gold--there isn't such another to be found." She exhausted herself in praise. "And who knows if it's true after all?" And with that she concluded.

Oh, it was all true. Wolfgang had grown quiet--at least his face no longer showed any special emotion when he let his hands fall. "I shall have to be going now," he said.

Frida stood there looking very distressed. She had known it all a long time--who did not know it?--but she was very sorry indeed that _he_ knew it now. Her clear eyes grew dim, and she looked at her friend full of compa.s.sion. Oh, how much more beautiful her own confirmation last Easter had been. She had not had any gold watch, only quite a small brooch of imitation gold--it had cost one s.h.i.+lling and sixpence, for she had chosen it herself with her mother--but she had been so happy, so happy.

"What text did you get?" she asked quickly, so as to take his thoughts away from it.

"I don't know it by heart," he said evasively, and his cheeks that had grown pale flamed. "But it suited." And with that he went out of the door.

He went straight home--why should he waste any more time? the matter was urgent. He did not notice the starlings flying in and out of their boxes on the tall pines, did not notice that there was already a bright crescent in the evening sky that was growing darker and darker, and a golden star near it, he only noticed with satisfaction as he entered the hall at the villa that the coats and hats had disappeared from the pegs. That was good, the visitors had left. He rushed to the drawing-room, he almost fell into the room. His father and mother were still sitting there--no, his father and she, the--the----

"Come, tell us where you've been such along time," inquired his father, not without a touch of vexation in his voice.

"To-day, just on this day," said his mother. "They all sent you their love, they waited for you. But it's almost eight o'clock now."

Wolfgang cast an involuntary glance at the clock on the mantel-piece--right, nearly eight o'clock. But all that was immaterial now. And, staring straight in front of him as though his eyes were fixed on some object, he placed himself in front of the two.

"I have something to ask you," he said. And then--it came out quite suddenly, quite abruptly. "Whose child am I?"

Now it was said. The young voice sounded hard. Or did it only sound so cutting to Kate's ears? She heard something terribly shrill, like the dissonant blast of a trumpet. O G.o.d, there it was, that awful question. A sudden wave of blood laid a thick veil covered with glittering spots before her eyes; she could not see her boy any more, she only heard his question. She stretched out her hand gropingly, helplessly--thank G.o.d, there was her husband! He was still there. And now she heard him speak.

"What makes you ask that question?" said Paul Schlieben. "Our son of course. Whose child could you be otherwise?"

"I don't know. That's just what I want to know from you," the boy went on in his hard voice.

It was strange how calm the voice sounded, but it seemed doubly terrible to Kate in its monotony.

Now it became a little louder: "Give me an answer--I will--I must know it."

Kate shuddered. What inexorableness, what obstinacy lay in that "I will"--"I must!" He would never stop asking again. She sank down as though crushed, and shuddered.

Even the man's quiet voice betrayed a secret tremor. "Dear boy, somebody--I will not ask who, there are always enough gossips and abettors--has again put something into your head. Why do you treat us as if we were your enemies? Haven't we always been like a father and mother to you?"

Oh, that was wrong--_like_ a father and mother? Quite wrong. Kate started up. She stretched out her arms: "My boy!"

But he remained standing as though he did not see those outstretched arms; his brows were contracted, he only looked at the man. "I know very well that you are my father, but she"--he cast a quick sidelong glance at her--"she's not my mother."

"Who says that?" Kate shrieked it.

"Everybody."

"No, n.o.body. That's not true. It's a lie, a lie! You are my child, my son, our son I And the one who denies that lies, deceives, slanders!----"

"Kate!" Her husband looked at her very gravely, and there was a reproach in his voice and a warning. "Kate!"

And then he turned to the boy, who stood there so sullenly, almost defiantly--drawn up to his full height, with one foot outstretched, his head thrown back--and said: "Your mother is naturally very much agitated, you must take care of her--to-day especially. Go now, and to-morrow we will----"

"No, no!" Kate did not let him finish speaking, she cried in the greatest excitement: "No, don't postpone it. Let him speak--now--let him. And answer him--now--at once that he is our son, our son alone.

Wolfgang--Wolfchen!" She used the old pet name from his childhood again for the first time for months. "Wolfchen, don't you love us any more?

Wolfchen, come to me."

She stretched out her arms to him once more, but he did not see those longing, loving, outstretched arms again. He was very pale and his eyes were fixed on the ground.

"Wolfchen, come."

"I cannot."

His face never moved, and his voice had still the same monotonous tone which sounded so terrible to her. She sobbed aloud, and her eyes clung to her husband--he must help her now. But he looked at her with a frown; she could plainly read the reproach in his face: "Why did you not follow my advice? Had we told him in time--" No, she would not find any help in him either. And now--what was it Paul was saying now? Her eyes dilated with a sudden fear, she grasped the arms of her chair with both hands, she wanted to sink back and still she started up to ward off what must come now Was Paul out of his mind? He was saying: "You are not our son."

"Not your son?" The boy stammered. He had made up his mind that nothing should disconcert him, but this answer disconcerted him all the same. It bewildered him; he turned red, then white, and his eyes wandered uncertainly from the man to the woman, from the woman to the man.

So he, too--that man--was not his father either? But Frau Lamke had said so? Oh, so he wanted to disown him now? He looked suspiciously at the man, and then something that resembled mortification arose within him. If he were not his father, then he had really no--no right whatever to be there?

And, drawing a step nearer, he said hastily: "You must be my father.

You only don't want to say it now. But she"--he gave a curt nod in the direction of the chair--"she's not my mother." His eyes gleamed; then he added, drawing a long breath as though it were a relief: "I've always known that."

"You've been wrongly informed. If I had had my way, I would have told you the truth long ago. But as the right moment--unfortunately--has been neglected, I will tell you it to-day.

I tell you it--on my word of honour, as one man speaking to another--I am not your father, just as little as she is your mother. You have nothing to do with us by birth, nothing whatever. But we have adopted you as our child because we wanted to have a child and had not one. We took you from----"

"Paul!" Kate fell on her husband's breast with a loud cry, as she had done at the time when he wanted to disclose something to the boy, because he was indignant at his ingrat.i.tude. She clasped her arms round his neck, she whispered hastily, pa.s.sionately in his ear with trembling breath: "Don't tell him from where. For G.o.d's sake not from where. Then he'll go away, then I shall lose him entirely. I can't bear it--have mercy, have pity on me--only don't tell him from where."

He wanted to push her away, but she would not let go of him. She repeated her weeping, stammering entreaty, her trembling, terrified, desperate prayer: only not from where, only not from where.

He felt a great compa.s.sion for her. His poor, poor wife--was this to happen to her? And then he was filled with anger against the boy, who stood there so bold--arrogant--yes, arrogant--who demanded where he had to ask, and looked at them unmoved with large, cold eyes.

His voice, which had hitherto been grave but gentle whilst speaking to Wolfgang, now became severe: "Besides, I won't allow you to question me in this manner."

"I have a right to question you."

"Yes, you have." The man was quite taken aback. Yes, the lad had the right. It was quite clear who was wrong. And so he said, thinking better of it and in a more friendly voice again: "But even if you are not our son by birth, I think the training and the care you have received from our hands during all these years have made you our child in spirit. Come, my son--and even if they all say you are not our son, I tell you you are our son in truth."

"No," he said. And then he walked slowly backwards to the door, his dry eyes fixed on those he had called parents for so long.

"Boy, where are you going? Stop!" the man called after him in a kind voice. The boy was certainly in a terrible position, they must have patience with him. And he called out once more "Stop, Wolfgang!"

But Wolfgang shook his head: "I cannot. You have deceived me. Let me go." He shook off the man's hand that he had laid on his sleeve with a violent gesture.

And then he screamed out like a wounded animal: "Why do you still worry me? Let me go, I want to think of my mother--where is she?"