The Son of His Mother Part 32

And they shook hands.

Now something really did stir in Kate. She would have liked to have jumped up, to have cried: "Don't believe him, Paul, don't believe him.

He's sure to get drunk again. I don't trust him. I cannot trust him. If you had seen him as I saw him--oh, he was so vulgar!" And as in a vision a village tavern suddenly appeared before her eyes, a tavern she had never seen. Rough men sat round the wooden table, leaning on their elbows, smoking evil-smelling tobacco, drinking heavily, bawling wildly ... ah, had not his father sat among them? His grandfather too? All those from whom he was descended? She was seized with a terrible fear. It could never, never end well.

"You are so pale, Kate," her husband said at the evening meal. "You sat still too long; it is still too cold outside."

"Aren't you well, mater?" inquired Wolfgang, politely anxious.

Kate did not answer her son, she only looked at her husband and shook her head: "I am quite well."

That satisfied them.

Wolfgang ate with a good appet.i.te, with a specially big one even; he was quite ravenous. There were also lots of good things of which he was fond: hot frica.s.see of chicken with sweetbread, force-meat b.a.l.l.s and crawfish tails, and then some very good cold meat, b.u.t.ter and cheese and young radishes.

"Boy, don't drink so much," said Paul Schlieben, as Wolfgang seized the decanter again.

"I'm thirsty," said his son with a certain defiance, filling his gla.s.s to the brim and drinking it in one gulp.

"That comes of revelling." His father shook his finger at him, but smiled at the same time.

"It comes of swilling," thought Kate, and she shuddered with disgust again. She had never used such an expression before even in her thoughts, but now none seemed strong, blunt, contemptuous enough.

There was no pleasant conversation in spite of the room being so cosy, the appointments of the table so beautiful, the flowers so prettily arranged in a cut-gla.s.s bowl on the white table-cloth, and above it all a soft subdued light under a green silk shade. Kate was so monosyllabic that Paul soon seized the newspaper, and the boy, after trying to stifle his yawns, at last got up. It was really too awfully slow to have to sit there. Should he drive into Berlin again or go to bed? He did not quite know himself what to do.

"You are going to bed now?" said his mother. It was intended for a question, but Kate heard herself that it did not sound like one.

"Of course he's going to bed now," said his father, looking up from his paper for a moment. "He's tired. Good night, my lad."

"I'm not tired." Wolfgang grew red and hot. What did they mean by wanting to persuade him that he was tired? He was no longer a child to be sent to bed. His mother's tone irritated him especially--"you are going to bed now"--that was an order.

The sparkle in his dark eyes became a blaze; the expression of defiance and refractoriness on his face was not pleasant to see. They could no doubt see in what a pa.s.sion he was, but his father said "Good night," and held out his hand to him without looking up from the newspaper.

His mother also said "Good night."

And the son grasped first one hand and then the other--he imprinted the usual kiss on his mother's hand--and said "Good night."

CHAPTER XIV

Paul Schlieben was sitting in his private office, in the red armchair he had had placed there for his comfort. But he was not leaning back in it, he was sitting very uncomfortably, straight up, and he looked like a man who has made a disagreeable discovery. How could the boy have contracted debts--with such ample pocket-money? And then that he had not the courage to come and say: "Father, I've spent too much, help me," was simply incomprehensible. Was he such a severe father that his son had reason to fear him? Did the fear drive out love? He reviewed his own conduct; he really could not reproach himself for having been too strict. If he had not always been so yielding as Kate--she was too yielding--he had always thought he had repeatedly shown the boy that he was fond of him. And had he not also--just lately--thought the boy was fond of him too? More fond of him than before? Wolfgang had just grown sensible, had seen that they had his welfare at heart, that he was his parents' dear son, their ever-increasing delight, their hope--nay, now that they had grown old, their whole future. How was it that he preferred to go to others, to people with whom he had nothing to do, and borrow from them instead of asking his father?

The man took up a letter from his writing-desk with a grieved look, read it through once more, although he had already read it three or four times, and then laid it back again with a gesture of vexation. In it Braumuller, who had lately retired from the firm and was at present in Switzerland for his health and recreation, wrote that the boy had already borrowed money from him several times. Not that he would not gladly give him it, that did not matter to him in the slightest, but still he considered it his duty--&c., &c.

"The fact is, dear Schlieben, the boy has got into a fast set. I'm awfully sorry to have to tell tales about him, but I cannot put it off any longer, as he goes to others just as well as he comes to me. And it would be extremely painful, of course, if the son of Messrs. Schlieben & Co., to whom I still count myself as belonging with the old devotion, should become common talk. Don't take it amiss, old friend. I make the boy a present of all he owes me; I am fond of him and have also been young. But I am quite pleased to have no children, it is a deucedly difficult job to train one. Good-bye, remember me very kindly to your wife, it is splendid here ..."

The man stared over the top of the paper with a frown; this letter, which had been written with such good intentions and was so kind, hurt him. It hurt him that Wolfgang had so little confidence in him with respect to this matter. Was he not straightforward? He remembered very distinctly that he had always been truthful as a child, had been so outspoken as to offend--he had been rude, but never given to lying.

Could he have changed so now? How was that, and why?

The man resolved not to mention anything about the letter, but to ask Wolfgang when he found an opportunity--but it must be as soon as possible--in what condition his money matters were. Then he would hear.

He quite longed to ask the question, and still he did not say a word when Wolfgang entered the private room soon afterwards without knocking, as all the others did, and with all the careless a.s.surance of a son. He sat down astride on his father's writing-desk, quite unmindful of the fact that his light trousers came into unpleasant contact with the ink-stand. The air out of doors was clear and the sun shone brightly; he brought a large quant.i.ty of both with him into the room that was always kept dark, cool and secluded.

"Had something to vex you, pater?" What fancies could the old gentleman have got hold of now? Certainly nothing of importance. On the whole, who could feel vexed in such delightful, pleasant summer weather?

Wolfgang loved the sun. As he had gazed admiringly at the small copy of it when a child, the round yellow sunflower in his garden, so he still delighted in it. If the perspiration stood in drops on his brown skin, he would push his white panama hat a little further back from his forehead, but he never drew his breath more freely, easily, and felt less oppressed.

"It was splendid, pater," he said, and his eyes gleamed. "First of all I swam the whole width of the lake three times, there and back and there and back and there and back again without stopping. What do you say to that?"

"Much too tiring, very thoughtless," remarked Paul Schlieben, not without some anxiety. Indeed Hofmann was not at all anxious that the boy should swim.

"Thoughtless? Fatiguing? Ha ha!" Wolfgang thought it great fun.

"That's a mere trifle to me. I've really missed my vocation, you know.

You ought not to have put me into an office. I ought to have been a swimmer, a rider or--well, a cowboy in the Wild West."

He had said it in joke without meaning anything, but it seemed to the man, who suddenly looked at him with eyes that had grown suspicious, that something serious, an accusation, was concealed behind the joke. What did he want then? Did he want to gallop through life like an unrestrained boy?

"Well, your sporting capacities will be of use to you when you are a soldier," he said coolly. "At present what you have to do here is of more importance. Have you drawn up the contract for delivery for White Brothers? Show it to me."

"Directly."

Wolfgang disappeared; but it was some time before he returned. Had he only done the work now, which he had been told was urgent and was to be done carefully? The ink was still quite fresh, the writing was very careless, even if legible; it was no business hand. Schlieben frowned; he was strangely irritable to-day. At any other time he would have been struck by the celerity with which the boy had finished the work he had neglected; but to-day the careless writing, the inkspots in the margin, the slipshod manner in which it had all been done, which seemed to him to point to a want of interest, vexed him.

"Hm!" He examined it once more critically. "When did you do this?"

"When you gave me it to do." The tone in which Wolfgang said this was so unabashed that it was impossible to doubt it.

The man felt quite ashamed of himself. How a seed of suspicion grows! He had really wronged his son this time. But that question of the money still remained, the boy had not been open and honest in that.

It seemed to the father that he could not quite rely on his son any more now.

It was hardly noon when Wolfgang left the office again. He had arranged to meet a couple of acquaintances in the Imperial Cafe not far from the Linden; he would have to have something to eat, and whether he had his lunch there or somewhere else was of no consequence; a sandwich, which was all his father took with him from home, was not sufficient for him after swimming and riding.

Then he showed himself again at the office for an hour in the afternoon, but in his tennis clothes this time, in white shoes, a racket in his hand.

When Wolfgang left the West End tennis-ground that afternoon, hot and red--the games had been long and obstinate--and went across to the Zoological Gardens' Station, he hesitated as he stood at the entrance to it. He did not feel as if he wanted to go home at all. Should he not drive into town again instead? As a matter of fact he did not feel tempted to go into the streets either, which the drifting crowds made still closer; it was better in the suburbs, where there was at least a breath of fresh air blowing over the villa--but then he would have to sit with his parents. And if his father were in just as bad a humour as he had been at the office that morning, it would be awful. Then it would be better to find some friend or other in Berlin. If only he had not had his tennis suit on. That hindered him. He was still standing undecided when he suddenly saw in the crowd that now, when work was over and free-time come, was winding its way through the entrance to the station like a long worm and dividing itself into arms to go up the steps to the right and left, a ma.s.s of fair hair gleaming under a white sailor-hat trimmed with a blue velvet band and pressed down on a forehead, which seemed well-known to him. It was beautiful fair silky hair, smooth and s.h.i.+ning; carelessly arranged in an enormous knot to all appearances, but in reality with much care. And now he recognised the blue eyes and the pert little nose under the straw hat. Frida Lamke! Oh, what a long time since he had seen her. He suddenly remembered the hundreds of times he had neglected them. How little he had troubled himself about those good people. That was very wrong of him. And all at once it seemed to him that he had missed them always, the whole time. He reached her side with one bound like an impetuous boy, not noticing that he trod on a dress here and that he gave somebody a shove in the side there.

"Frida!"

She gave a little start. Who had accosted her so boldly?

"How do, Frida. How are you?"

She did not recognise him at first, but then she blushed and pouted.

What a gentleman Wolfgang had grown. And she answered a little pertly, a little affectedly: "Very well, thanks, Mr. Wolfgang. Are you quite well too?" and she threw her fair head back and laughed.

He would not hear of her calling him "Mr. Wolfgang." "Nonsense, what are you thinking of?" And he was so cordial, so quite the Wolfgang of former years, that she was soon on the old terms with him again. She dropped her affectation entirely. They walked beside each other as intimately as if almost a year had not pa.s.sed since last they had talked together.