The Son of His Mother

by Clara Viebig

He looked very embarrassed; 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 space 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-glass 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 glass 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 glass, 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' apron-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 nobody made a joke. And when the passage, 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.