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THE SOUL OF A CHILD

BY

EDWIN BJÖRKMAN

1922




CONTENTS

PART I.
PART II.
PART III.
PART IV.



PART I


I

The oldest part of Stockholm is a little rocky island. Once it was the
whole city. Popularly it is still spoken of as "The City." At one end of
it stands the huge square-cut pile of the Royal Palace, looking with
solemn indifference toward the more modern quarters across the ever
hurried waters of the North River. Nearer the centre, and at the very
top of the island, lies an open place called Great Square, which used to
play a most important part in Swedish history, but which now serves no
better purpose than to house the open-air toy market that operates the
last week before Christmas.

Long narrow streets loop concentrically about Great Square. They are
lined with massive structures of stone and brick, four and five stories
high, that used to be the homes of court and government officials, of
army and navy officers, of burghers made prosperous by an extensive
domestic and foreign trade, while on the ground floors were located the
choicest shops of the country's capital. The shops are still there, but
they have grown dingy and cheap, and they administer only to the casual
needs of the humble middle-class people crowded into the old-fashioned,
gloomy apartments above.

From the square to the water-fronts radiate a number of still more
narrow and squalid lanes, harbouring a population which is held inferior
to that of the streets in social rank without yet being willing to have
itself classed with the manual toilers of the suburbs. Halfway down the
slope of such a lane, and almost within the shadow of the palace, stood
the house where Keith first arrived at some sort of consciousness of
himself and the surrounding world.

On the fourth floor his parents occupied a three-room flat. The parlour
and the living-room had two windows each, looking into the lane. The
kitchen in the rear opened a single window on the narrowest, barest,
darkest courtyard you ever saw, its one redeeming feature being a
glimpse of sky above the red-tiled roof of the building opposite.

In such surroundings Keith spent the better part of his first sixteen
years.

He was an only son, much loved, and one of his first conscious
realizations was a sharp sense of restraint, as if he had been tied to a
string by which he was pulled back as soon as anything promised to
become interesting.

At first he thought the world made up entirely of those three rooms,
where he, his parents, Granny--his maternal grandmother--and a more or
less transient servant girl had lived for ever. Visitors drifted in, of
course, but he seemed to think that they had come from nowhere and would
return to the same place. What instilled the first idea of a wider
outside world in his mind was leaning out through one of the windows,
with his mother's arm clutched tightly about his waist.

There was something symbolic in that clutch, for his mother was always
full of fear that dire things befall him. She was afraid of many other
things besides, and the need of being constantly worried was probably
his second clear realization.

But the clasp of his mother's arm was soft and tender for all that. Her
inclination to humour him in sundry respects not implying too much
freedom of movement contrasted favourably with the sterner restraint
exercised by his father. And so it was only natural that, to begin with,
he should cling no less closely to her than she to him.

Leaning out of the front windows was one of the favorite pursuits of his
earliest childhood, and during the summer it could be indulged to a
reasonable extent.

Across the lane, not more than twenty-five feet distant, was another
building, the upper parts of which he could see even when the windows
were closed. It was much darker of aspect than their own house, and he
knew that no people lived in it. He called it the distillery, just as he
heard his parents do, without knowing what the word meant. Staring as he
might into its dark windows, he could as a rule see nothing but the
grimy panes, because in the back of it there was no courtyard at
all--nothing but a solid wall without a single opening in it.

Now and then however, he would spy the flickering light of an open-wick
lamp move about on the floor level with their own. In the fitful,
smoke-enshrouded glow of that lamp he would catch fleeting glimpses of
clumsy figures and spooklike faces bending over huge round objects,
while at the same time, if the windows were open, he would hear much
mysterious tapping and knocking. It was all very puzzling and not quite
pleasant, so that on midwinter afternoons, when he was still awake after
dark, he would not care to look very long at the house opposite, and
the drawing of the shades came as an actual relief.

Letting his glance drop straight down from one of their windows, he saw,
at a dizzying depth, the cobbles of the lane, lined on either side by a
gutter made out of huge smooth stones. There was often water in the
gutter even on dry days, when the intense blueness of the sky-strip
overhead showed that the sun must be shining brightly. Sometimes the
water was thick and beautifully coloured, and then he yearned to get
down and put his hands into it. But to do so, he gathered from his
mother, would not only be dangerous and contrary to her will and wish,
but quite out of the question for some other reason that he could not
grasp. His mother's standing expression for it was:

"No _nice_ little boy would ever do that."

Keith's third realization in the way of self-consciousness was an uneasy
doubt of his own inherent nicety, for he soon discovered that whatever
was thus particularly forbidden seemed to himself particularly
desirable.

At times he saw children playing down there--perhaps in the very gutter
for which he was longing. To him they appeared entirely like himself,
but to his mother's eye they were evidently objectionable in the same
way as the gutter. There were not many of them, however, and it was a
long time before two or three of them began to return with sufficient
regularity to assume a distinct identity in his mind.

Older people came and went, but never many of them, and hardly ever more
than one or two at a time. Nor did he care very much. More attractive
was the sight of long, horse-drawn carts with narrow bodies resting on
two small wheels set about the centre. Generally they stopped in front
of the distillery to load or unload heavy casks or barrels of varying
size. The loading was more exciting by far, especially when the barrels
were large, for then the men had to use all their strength to roll them
up the gangway of two loose beams laid from the pavement to the cart,
and to time their efforts they shouted or chanted noisily--much to
Keith's joy and the disgust of his mother. On such occasions the air of
the lane was apt to take on a special pungency, and as he sniffed it, he
would have a sensation of mixed pleasure and revulsion. At other times
when the carts stopped in front of the warehouse below the distillery,
odours of an exclusively enjoyable character would tickle his
nostrils--odours that later he might encounter in their own kitchen and
identify with matters pleasing to the palate as well as to the nose.

There were in all only eight houses on both sides of the lane. Four of
these were the rear parts of the corner houses facing respectively on
the Quay, at the foot of the lane and on East Long Street, at its head.
Beyond the latter there was nothing but another wall full of windows,
just like the walls flanking the lane itself. The traffic on the street
was more lively and varied, but there was not much about it to catch and
hold his interest.

Almost invariably Keith turned his head in the other direction the
moment he had poked it out of the window and been pulled back by his
mother to a position of greater safety. There, at the foot of the lane,
only a stone's throw distant, opened the stony expanse of the quay
across which surged a veritable multitude of men and animals and
vehicles at all hours of the day. At the end of the Quay, silhouetted
against blue or grey or green water, appeared commonly the blunt nose or
the flag-draped stern of a big steamer, but hardly ever the middle part
of a hull with bridge or masts. And Keith could never recall whether the
complete shape of a full-sized vessel was finally revealed to him by
reality or by that reflection of it which, at an uncannily premature
age, he began to find in books.

The main feature of the view, however--a sort of narrow Japanese panel
where childish eyes perceived everything as on a flat surface--was that
it continued upwards: first, a lot of water, ripped and curled by busily
scurrying steam launches and tugs, streaked by plodding rowboats, and,
at rare times, adorned by a white-sailed yacht; then, still higher up, a
shore with many trees that drew the soul magnetically by their summer
verdure; and, finally, a brightly red, toylike fort, crowned by a small
embattled tower flying the blue and yellow Swedish flag at the top. Here
was another world, indeed, larger and brighter by far, and more richly
varied, than that of his home and the lane below and the dingy courtyard
in the back.

So he began to ask questions, and one of the first things he learned, to
his great astonishment, was that he had not always lived in the same
place--that he had been born, whatever that meant, in another and
unmistakably more desirable part of the city.

"But why did we come here," he asked, trying instinctively to keep his
voice from sounding regretful or petulant.

"Because the bank owns this house," his mother replied. "And because
papa acts as landlord for it, and we don't have to pay any rent here."

Out of this confusing answer he retained a single idea: the bank. It was
in the home air, so to speak. Evidently his father was closely connected
with it, and this was good for the whole family. For a little while the
boy imagined that his father was the bank. Later he began to think of it
as some sort of superlatively powerful being that, alone in the whole
world, ranked above his father even. Still later--much later--he began
to suspect a relationship between the bank and his father resembling
that between his father and himself. And he read out of his father's
words and miens a sense of dissatisfaction not unlike the one he felt
when he was forced to do what he did not want, or prevented from doing
what he wanted.

This was his fourth fundamental realization: of powers beyond those
directly represented within the home; powers of compelling importance
that might, or might not, be kindly; powers before which all and
everything within his own narrow world had to bow down in helpless
submission. In the end this one undoubtedly became the most significant
of all his early realizations. It tended gradually to lessen his awe of
parental authority so that, at a very early age, he developed the
courage to shape his own life and opinions regardless of his immediate
surroundings. At the same time, strange as it may seem, it inspired him
with a general respect for established authority from which he could
never quite free himself.



II

"Why don't I remember when we came here," Keith asked his mother one day
after she had let out the startling fact of his being born elsewhere.

"Because it happened before you began to remember things," she said a
little warily.

As frequently was the case, her reply puzzled him more than the fact it
was meant to explain, and so he asked no more questions that time.

On the whole, he lived completely in the present, and rather on the edge
nearest the future, so that a teacher later said of him that he was in
constant danger of "falling off forward." Highstrung and restless,
sitting still did not come naturally until he had learned to read books
all by himself, and he could hardly be called introspective. While prone
to futile regrets, largely under the influence of his mother's morbid
attitude, he gave little attention as a rule to what was past and gone.

Here was an exception, however--something concerning the past that
stirred his curiosity powerfully--and it became his first subject
for brooding.

He could remember all sorts of things, of course. And it seemed that he
had always remembered them. Yet his mother was able to tell him things
of which he knew nothing at all, although they had happened to himself.
There might be any number of such things. What were they? Could he
recall any of them by thinking hard enough?

When this problem laid hold of his mind he would retire to the corner
between the big bureau and the right-hand window in the living-room,
which, by formal conferment, was reserved for him as his own
"play-room." The space in that nook was large enough to hold a small
chair, a table to match, and a few toy boxes. There he would sit staring
blindly at his toys until his mother anxiously inquired what was the
matter with him.

The great question taking precedence of all the rest was: what was the
very first thing he could remember?

With puckered brows and peering pupils he would send his gaze back into
the misty past, and out of it emerged invariably the same image.

He saw himself seated on a small wooden horse fastened to a little
platform with wheels under it. The horse was black with white spots, and
possessed a nobly curved neck, a head with ears on top of it, and a pair
of fiercely red nostrils.

The next thing recurring to his mind was a sense of swift, exhilarating
movement. His father stood at one end of the living-room, his mother at
the other, and the horse with himself on it was being pushed rapidly
back and forth between them.

He could even hear his own joyous shouts as his father sent the horse
careering across the floor by an extra strong push. The general
impression left behind by the whole scene was one of happiness so acute
that nothing else in his life compared with it.

Was it a real memory? If so, when did it happen? And what had become of
the horse?

Finally the pressure from within became too strong and he blurted out
the whole story to his mother in order to make sure of what it meant.

"You never had a horse large enough to sit on," she declared
emphatically.

"You have been dreaming, child," Granny put in.

"What would the neighbours below have said," his mother continued. "And
the rag carpets on the floor would have caught the wheels, anyhow."

Removing the rag carpets except for purposes of cleaning was one of the
unforgivable sins, by the bye.

"And it isn't like your father either," Granny added after a while, not
without a suggestion of bitterness in her voice.

"Carl is always tired when he comes home," Keith's mother rejoined in a
tone that put an end to further discussion.

Granny's point made an impression on Keith's mind nevertheless. As far
as he could actually remember, his father had on no occasion showed such
a jolly spirit or done anything that could be used as basis for a belief
in that one questionable recollection.

At all times of the day Keith was enjoined to keep quiet--because his
mother was not well, or because of the neighbours, or just because "nice
children should not make a noise"--but it was only after his father's
return home that these injunctions must be taken quite seriously. The
father's appearance brought an instantaneous change in the atmosphere of
the place, the boy strove instinctly to be as little noticeable as
possible. If his mercurial temperament lured him into temporary
forgetfulness, a single stern word from the father sent him back into
silence and the refuge of his own corner--or into bed.

But the more he considered and conceded the unlikeliness of the scene
projected by some part of his mind with such persistency, the more
passionately he craved it to be a real memory of something that had
really happened to himself.

Perhaps it was merely a dream, as Granny had suggested. Perhaps it was
something he had wished....

Anyhow, he did wish that his father would let him come a little closer
to himself at times--not in the same way his mother did, but as he did
in the dream--or whatever it was....

Once more he fell into a deep study of when he had begun to remember so
hard that he could still remember it. Out of this he was awakened by his
mother's voice:

"What _is_ the matter, Keith?"

"I don't know what to play," he replied out of policy, as it might bring
him something either in the way of a diversion or a treat. There were
still some of mother's delectable ginger snaps left over from the
Christmas baking.

"Your soldiers are right in front of you," his mother said in a voice
holding out no hope.

So Keith returned to the tin soldiers that were his most cherished
toys--perhaps because they drew fewer protests from above than anything
else, as being least conductive to outbursts of youthful vivacity.
Judging by the earnest attention with which he manoeuvred them on his
own little table or, in moments of special dispensation, on the
collapsible dining table placed against the wall between the two
windows in the living-room, he ought to have ended as a general.



III

All through his life Keith retained a queer inclination to arrange
furniture very precisely at right angles to the wall as close to it as
possible. It was a direct outcome of his first and most deeply rooted
impressions, received in that parental living-room, where every inch of
space had been carefully calculated, and where the smallest nook was
filled by a chair, or a footstool, or some other minor object. In later
years he often wondered how a single room of modest proportions could
hold so much of furniture and of life.

It was bedroom and study, dining-room and nursery, workroom and parlour.
There the morning toilet was made, and there his first lessons were
learned. There the father did his reading, of which he was very fond,
and there the mother sewed, darned, embroidered, wrote letters, gave
household orders, told fairy tales, and received visitors. There the
simple daily meals were served for all but Granny, who clung obstinately
to the kitchen, and there friends were feasted and cards played at
nameday and birthday parties. And there three people slept every night.

Of course, excursions could be made, particularly to the kitchen where
Granny was always restlessly waiting for "one more kiss," and once in a
great while to the "best room" which mostly was occupied by some
stranger whose small weekly rent paid the servant's wages. But to the
living-room one always returned in the end, and during his first years
this narrow confinement did not strike Keith as a hardship.

The room seemed quite large to him at that time, with distances and
vistas and diversions sufficient for his childish fancy. It was a
pleasant room, with brightly striped rag carpets on the floor and two
pretty large windows framed by snow-white lace curtains. Crammed as it
was with objects needed for its many different uses, it was always kept
in a state of the most scrupulous order and instant disaster followed
any attempt as a disarrangement.

It was a whole world by itself, full of interesting things for a small
boy to puzzle over. It was also a world in evolution. Every so often a
piece of furniture would disappear and a better one take its place, to
be studied and admired and tried out again and again. Back of every
improvement lay a unifying ambition. Its key-word was mahogany. The
superior social respectability of this wood could not be disputed, and
it had a sort of natural dignity that harmonized with the father's solid
taste--though the mother might have preferred something lighter and
brighter. And a microcosm of mahogany might, after all, be worth living
for when loftier illusions had gone on the scrap heap.

Practically everything in the room had a history as well as a special
place. There was the main chest of drawers, for instance, known as
"mamma's bureau" and placed near one of the windows, where a good light
fell on the swinging mirror forming a separate piece on top of it. A
journeyman carpenter had made that chest to prove himself a master of
his trade under the old gild rules. Then he put it up at lottery to
raise money with which to open a shop of his own. Keith's father bought
a lot while still engaged, and won the prize which became the chief
wedding present of his bride--to be cherished above all other objects to
her dying day.

It was really a fine piece of work, of mahogany, with daintily carved
and twisted columns along the front corners, and so highly polished that
Keith could see his own face in the rich brown glimmer of its surfaces.
It had four drawers. The three lower ones were divided between the
parents and held all sorts of things, from shirts and socks to mother's
mahogany yard stick, which had a turned handle and a tapering blade that
made it pass excellent muster as a sword. The top drawer could only be
pulled out halfway, but then the front of it came down and it changed
into a writing desk, with an intriguing array of small drawers and
pigeonholes at the back of it, and a suspicion of alluring and
unattainable treasures in every separate receptacle. To ransack all of
these was Keith's most audacious dream, but when the dream came true at
last, it was fraught with no ecstasy of realization, for he was a
middle-aged man, and in the room behind him his mother lay dead....

The mirror was flanked by two small square mahogany boxes, one holding
medicines and the other tobacco. Little mats, some crocheted and some
wonderfully composed of differently coloured glass beads, were used to
protect the boxes as well as the top of the bureau from being
scratched, and on them stood several small groups and figures of
porcelain. One of these was Keith's special favourite and his first
introduction to that world where beauty takes precedence of goodness and
truth. It showed a lady and a gentleman in dresses of a colour and cut
wholly unlike anything seen by Keith on the real persons coming within
his ken. They were seated on a richly ornamented sofa before a tea
table, and there was something about the manner in which they looked at
each other that spoke more loudly than their bright costumes of things
lying beyond ordinary existence.

There was also a nice little girl with a doll viewing herself
complacently in a real mirror, and a lady in bloomers, apparently of
Oriental pattern, who rowed a boat hardly larger than herself, that was
raised almost on end by terrific waves. All three groups had this in
common, that when you removed the ornamental upper part, a previously
unsuspected inkstand was revealed. There was a period when Keith
seriously believed that all specimens of the keramic art were inkstands
in disguise.

Art not represented on the bureau alone, however. The walls contained a
number of steel engravings in gilt frames, quaint old coloured prints,
family photographs, and pink-coloured reliefs of various Swedish kings
made out of wax and mounted under convex glass panes on highly polished
black boards. But all of those objects were flat and distant and
colourless in comparison with the things on the bureau that could be
touched as well as seen. As for the group with the lady and the
gentlemen, it had only one rival in the boy's mind, and that was the
big clock in a wooden case that hung on the wall between the windows
over the dining table. The hide-and-seek of the restless pendulum with
its shining brass disc was a constant source of fascination in itself,
and so were the strange operations performed by the father in front of
the clock every Sunday morning, when diversions were particularly
welcome on account of the extra restrictions on play. But its main charm
rested in the strangely pleasing sounds it produced every so often,
preceded by a funny rattle that warned small folk and big of what was
going to happen. It was Keith's first acquaintance with music.

The parents' bed occupied the centre of the right-hand wall, between
mamma's bureau and another chest of drawers known as "Granny's bureau."
It was all wood and made in two parts that slid into each other,
reducing the daytime width of the bed by one-half. It stood parallel to
the wall, instead of at right angles, and the extension took place
sideways. At night it looked like an ordinary double bed. In the day it
almost disappeared beneath a rectangular pile of bed-clothing, covered
by a snow-white spread that was pulled and smoothed and tucked until it
hung straight as a wall.

Granny's bureau, old-fashioned and clumsy, but made of some native wood
that glimmered like gold, was largely devoted to linen ware for bed and
table. At the top it had two small drawers instead of a long, and one of
these constituted the first storage place set aside for Keith's special
use. His impression was that it had always been his, and once he asked
his mother if it really had been his before he was born.

"Of course it was," she said with a sly smile, "but we took the liberty
to use it for other purposes until you arrived"

At first glance this seemed quite reasonable to Keith, though nothing to
smile at so far as he could see. Later he became conscious of a vague
sense of annoyance. It would have been more pleasant if no one else had
ever used that drawer.

Across the room from Granny's bureau, in the corner just inside the door
to the kitchen, towered the characteristic Swedish oven--a round column
of white glazed bricks, with highly polished brass shutters in front of
the small cubical fire-place, where nothing but birchwood was burned. In
the narrow crack between the oven and the wall rested always a birch
rod, which was often referred to at critical moments. A new rod, with
brightly coloured feathers attached to the tip of every twig, appeared
regularly on Shrove Tuesday and tended slightly to spoil that otherwise
glorious day, when large cross buns stuffed with a mixture of crushed
almond and sugar were served in hot milk for dinner. Though the rod was
little more than a symbol of family discipline, Keith always disliked
its presence as a threat to his dignity if not to his hide.

A double washstand, looking like a document chest in the daytime, the
chaiselongue on which Keith slept at night, and the door to the best
room occupied all the rest of that wall except a corner by the window,
where stood his mother's high-backed easy chair, with the little
work-table beside it and a hassock in front of it. To that chair she
would retire whenever her household duties permitted, and thither Keith
would be drawn even more powerfully than to his own "play-room" at the
opposite corner--especially when his mother seemed in a happy mood.
There he would kneel on the hassock, with his head in her lap, and if he
could think of nothing else, he would say:

"Tell me about the time you were in London."



IV

While still in her early twenties, Keith's mother had spent two years
with an English family living in Sweden. She always described her
position as that of "lady companion" to the mistress of the house. As a
little boy, Keith did not know enough to ask any embarrassing questions.
Having learned more of life, he began to suspect that his mother's place
might have been little better than that of a servant, and the thought of
it made his soul shrink and wither.

When the family moved back to England, Keith's mother went along and
spent a whole year in London. It was her great adventure, the phase of
her past of which she spoke most eagerly and lovingly. She had formed a
passionate liking for the English language, of which she had picked up a
good deal, as well as for English character and English manners. She
never tired of telling about the great city of London, and Keith never
tired of listening.

"I was so homesick when I first got there," she would say, "that I cried
day and night. Then, one night, I heard a cat mewing on the roof outside
my window. It was the first Swedish sound I had heard since I came to
England, and after that I felt much better."

"Why didn't you stay," asked Keith.

"Because then there would have been no little Keith," she explained, her
face lighting up with the kind of grown-up smile that always provoked
and perplexed the boy.

"Are there no boys in England," he persisted.

"Yes, plenty of them, and fine ones at that. But I wanted no one but
you, and you were here, and so I had to come back to get you."

"Here," he repeated. "Where here?"

"In Sweden, of course," his mother rejoined, and then she started
hurriedly to describe the wonders of London shopping.

"But why did you go at all," he interrupted after listening a while to
what seemed less interesting to him than certain other points. "I might
have been lost while you were away."

"You might," she assented, "but I had to take the risk because I had to
get a name for you and I could never have found the one you have
in Sweden."

"Why not?"

"Because it is English. And it should be pronounced _Keeth_ instead of
_Kite_ as they say here. I found it in a book over there, and I fell in
love with it the moment I saw it, and I made up my mind that if I ever
had a boy, that would be his name."

"_If_ you had a boy," Keith took her up. "But you knew I was here?"

"Of course, I knew," said his mother in the tone that always warned him
that a change of occupation would be in order. "Run along and play in
your own corner now. I must get some work done."

At other times, when the talk didn't drift off into dangerous by-paths,
his mother would tell little anecdotes in English learned from her
former mistress, and generally end up by singing a little song about a
ball--probably one that had something to do with cricket. And Keith
would exultantly repeat the last line, which was the only one he
could remember:

"And then she _popped_, and then she died."

It was the word _popped_ that caught his fancy, partly because it was so
funny in itself, and partly because it had to be uttered with a sort of
explosion on a very high note. As far as his rendering of the rest was
concerned--well, it was early discovered and reluctantly admitted that,
like his father, he could not even sing "Old Man Noah," which is the
simplest melody imaginable to a musical mind in Sweden.

His failure in this respect gave his mother a slight pang every time it
was brought home to her, although she made fun of it and pretended she
didn't care. Music had been her young heart's dream. It was the only art
for which she showed a genuine regard. And two of her pet grievances
were that she didn't have a piano, and that, if she had one, she could
not play on it.

But his father used to say that the only instrument he cared to hear was
a drum.



V

His mother's chief grievance was her health. She was rarely quite well,
and they had a family physician who would appear from time to time
without being sent for. Yet her illness seemed, as a rule, not to
prevent her from being about and attending to her household duties.

Once, however, while Keith was still too small to receive clear
impressions, she had to keep in bed for a long time and during much of
that time she seemed to have forgotten him entirely. The father was more
taciturn and reserved than usual, and even the boy could see that he was
worried. Friends and relatives came and went with a quite uncommon
frequency, and all of them spoke to Keith in a strange manner that,
although not unpleasant, had a tendency to make him choke. A hundred
times a day he was told that he must keep quiet for his mother's sake,
and that it was no time for boisterous playing--if he really must play
at all. Most of the time he was in the kitchen, and on a few occasions
he was even permitted to stay all by himself in the parlour, where there
were all sorts of big books with any number of pictures on the fine oval
table standing in front of an old sofa so huge that to crawl up on its
seat was almost like going off into another room.

Finally he was taken to the home of Aunt Brita, his father's married
sister, in another part of the town and kept there, a bewildered
prisoner in a strange land, until one day his aunt told him that his
mother was well and wanted him to come home, but that he would have to
be a more than usually good boy for a long time yet, unless he wanted to
lose his mother forever.

When, at last, he was home again, his mother pulled him up to herself in
the bed, embraced him passionately and sobbed as if it had been a
farewell instead of a greeting. He wept, too, and clung to his mother as
if in fright, while she told him that he must always do just what she
told him and, above all, not scare her by going off so that she did not
know where he was.

The father stood beside the bed watching them. And as Keith happened to
look up once, he saw that his father's eyes were moist with tears. The
boy could hardly believe it, and a little later he wondered whether he
had been mistaken, for his father spoke just then in his sternest tone,
and all he said was:

"Yes, I hope you will behave a little better after this than you have
done before."

Many more weeks went before his mother was herself again. Even then a
difference remained. She was more given to worry than before and clung
to husband and child with a concern that frequently became oppressive.

Then, one fine day, she was all gay and smiling again, and bustled about
the home with new eagerness, and told Keith a lot of things about
England, and once actually danced across the floor while he was vainly
trying to keep step with her. And the father tried hard to look his
grouchiest when he returned home that night, but failed. And Keith was
allowed to stay up quite late, and when he was in bed at last, and
almost asleep, he thought he saw his father in the big easy chair by the
window, with the mother seated on his lap kissing him. And just as he
was dropping off, he heard, as if in a dream, his father's voice saying:

"Look out! I think the Crown Prince is still awake!"



VI

Some persons said that Keith looked like his father, others that he was
the very image of his mother.

"He has my light hair and Carl's brown eyes," said his mother often when
that topic was under discussion, and saying it seemed to make her happy.

"As a baby he was so pretty that people would stop us on the street to
ask whose child he was," Granny might put in, if she happened to be
within hearing. Then she would add with a glance at Keith: "But that is
all gone now."

Keith himself never gave much thought to his looks, but any comparison
with his mother struck him as quite foolish.

He liked to look at her, especially at her hair, which was very
plentiful and in colour like beaten copper with glints of gold in it.
Her skin was very fair and soft as the softest velvet. Her eyes were
blue, and in bright moments they had the softness of the sky of a
Swedish summer night. But when the clouds of depression closed in upon
her, they grew pale and light less and disturbingly furtive, so that
Keith's glance found it hard to meet them.

Her gaiety sparkled when she was herself, and she had a passionate love
of everything that was bright and pleasant. Once she had always been
that way and at times she would tell Keith what a wonderful time she had
as a girl, and how she used to be the centre and inspiration of every
social gathering in which she took part. She had a quick mind, too, and
a heart full of impulsive generosity. But from one extreme she would go
to another, so that, when the dark moments came, she would even regret
kindnesses conferred while the sun was still shining. In such moments
she would sometimes speak to the boy of her ailment as if he were in
some mysterious way responsible for it.

Yet she loved the boy to distraction and became filled with unreasoning
anxiety the moment he was out of sight. Her attitude toward her husband
was the same. He could never leave the home or return to it without
being kissed. The moment he was outside the kitchen door, she hastened
to the window and leaned out of it so that she might watch him until he
vanished about the corner at the head of the lane. And there she
generally lay waiting for him when he came home. If he was late, which
happened almost every day, she would be the victim of a thousand fears
as she made more and more frequent trips between the kitchen and the
living-room window. When he finally came, she acted as if she had not
seen him for months while he pretended to be more or less bored by her
attentions.

But there were moments, too, when her tenderness flared into startling
outbursts of bleak, cutting anger, giving way in the end to floods of
hysterical tears. A couple of such tempests formed part of Keith's
earliest reliable memories.



VII

As a rule Keith slept far too soundly to be aroused by anything. One
night, however, there was so much loud talking in the room that he woke
up completely. For a while he lay quite still, but with wide-open
eyes and ears.

The big lamp had been placed on the washstand back of the chaiselongue
on which he was lying, evidently in order to prevent its light from
falling on his face.

His mother was seated, fully dressed, on the edge of the bed across the
room. Her face was white as snow. Her eyes blazed with a sort of cold
fire. Her whole body seemed to tremble with a feeling so tense that he
could not find words for it.

The father was leaning far backwards on an ordinary chair, with his
outstretched right arm resting on the dining table. His face was flushed
and the thick fringe of black hair about the bald top of his head was
slightly disordered. He tried to smile, but the smile turned into a
grin. When he spoke, his voice was a little thick.

"I can't keep entirely away from my comrades." he said. "They think
already that I am too stuck up to associate with them. I haven't been
out for two weeks. I haven't had a drop more tonight than I can stand.
And it isn't twelve o'clock yet."

All of a sudden Keith saw the cold, angry light go out of his mother's
eyes. Her face twisted convulsively. She sank into a heap on the bed,
sobbing as if her heart would break then and there.

"Carl," she screamed between two sobs. "You'll kill me if you talk like
that to me!"

"Like that," he repeated in a stunned toneless voice. Then his face
flushed almost purple. A hard look came into his eyes, and he rose so
abruptly that the chair upset behind him. At the same time he brought
down his fist with such violence that the table nearly toppled over.

"I'll be damned if I stand this kind of thing one moment longer," he
shouted hoarsely.

But even as he spoke, his eyes fell on the boy. As if by magic, his
self-control returned.

"The boy is awake," he said in his usual tone of stern reserve.

There was a moment's silence. A few more sobs came from the mother. Then
she sat up, wiped her eyes, and spoke in a tone that was almost calm:

"Go to sleep again, Keith. Your father and I were merely talking about
some things that you don't understand yet."

When she saw that the boy was crying, she came over to him, kneeled down
beside him and put her arms about him. Soon her kisses and her soothing
words had their wonted effect, and he dropped off once more into the
deep, deathlike slumber of childhood.

The air remained tense in the household for several days, but nothing
further happened until one night when the father arrived a little later
than usual from his work, looking just as he did the night of the
quarrel. Again his speech was a little thick, and the mother's face
assumed an ominous look. She said nothing about what was nearest her
heart, however, she started instead to complain of some petty
disobedience on the part of Keith.

"If you spanked him a little more and humoured him la little less, he
would obey more readily," said the father.

His words carried no particular menace, and there seemed no reason why
the boy should be scared. But perhaps there was something else in the
atmosphere that affected his sensitive nerves and sent him unexpectedly
into a paroxysm of weeping.

"Stop it," cried his father dark with sudden anger. "Stop it, I tell
you."

"You leave the boy alone," cried the mother, her face as white as the
father's was red.

"We'll see whether he'll obey or not!"

As he spoke, the father sat down on the nearest chair, picked up the boy
and put him face down across his knees.

Keith's heart seemed to stop. He even ceased weeping. Then he heard his
mother cry out:

"If you touch the boy, I'll throw myself out of the window!"

"Oh, hell!" came back from the father. With that he half dropped and
half flung the boy to the floor, so that the latter rolled across the
room and landed under the chaiselongue.

There Keith lay, still as a mouse, until he was pulled out by his
mother. He didn't begin to cry again, and he was no longer scared or
upset. A few moments later he was undressing and going to bed as if
nothing had happened.

Another week had hardly passed, when Keith was waked up again at night,
but this time by a noise as if the house was falling. As he sat up in
bed, staring wildly about him, his nostrils became filled with a smell
that was quite new to him. It was like smoke, but more pungent.

The living-room was dark, but the door to the parlour stood open, and
light came through it. Not a sound could be heard for a few moments.

Then his mother came running into the room and flung herself on her
knees beside the chaiselongue.

"Oh, my boy, my boy, my boy!" she cried over and over again as she
pressed Keith to her breast, rocking him back and forth.

A few seconds later the father also came in carrying the lamp in one
hand. Having put it on the dining table, he dropped down on a chair as
if too exhausted to stand up.

His face showed a pallor quite strange to it and for the first and only
time in his life Keith thought that his father looked scared.

"Don't, Anna," the father said after a while, sitting up straight on the
chair. "It's all right now--"

Then a thought or a memory seemed to recur to him, and he said in a
voice that nearly broke:

"God, but it was a close call for both of us! And if it had happened to
you, I would have followed you on the spot!"

"Carl, Carl!" cried the mother, letting Keith go and throwing her arms
about her husband instead. "What would have become of Keith?"

It was the first time the boy was taken into his parents' confidence to
some extent. He was still too young to grasp all the implications, but
the main facts were plain enough even to him.

The parlour was rented as usual, but the man occupying it was not at
home. The parents had gone in there together on some errand. Seeing a
small pistol hanging on the wall above the big sofa, the father took it
down and began to play with it, never for a moment suspecting it of
being loaded.

First he pointed it at himself, then at Keith's mother. Each time he was
about to pull the trigger, and each time something seemed to hold him
back. Finally he turned the weapon toward the wall and pressed down with
his finger. As he did so, the shot rang out that waked the boy.

The next day Keith was permitted to examine the mark made by the bullet
in the wall. It was all very exciting. But the final result of that
incident was as unforeseen as the shot itself.

The whole affair evidently made a deep impression on Keith's father. He
ceased almost completely to go out by himself at night. In fact he
became so averse to leaving his home that it was hard to get him out
when the mother wanted him to go. And never again did Keith hear his
parents quarrel openly.

But now and then when his father came home from work, Keith would
notice that same slight thickness of speech which had forced itself on
his attention on two extraordinary occasions.

He was a man himself before he realized what that thickness signified in
his father's life.



VIII

"Oh, mamma, you mustn't!" cried Keith's mother one day when she came out
into the kitchen and found the boy munching a slice of white bread with
butter on it.

"He likes it so much," replied Granny easily.

"But you know what Carl has said," the mother rejoined rather
impatiently. "He'll find out sooner or later if you disregard it, and
then he'll be furious."

"So he will anyhow," muttered Granny.

"Mamma!" protested the mother. "It's for the boy's own good. He should
only eat hard bread except on Sundays and when we have company. It is
much better for his teeth. And it makes him stronger too. You want to be
big and strong, don't you Keith?"

"It's a wonder his father lets him have anything at all to eat," Granny
put in before Keith had a chance to answer.

"You must not talk like that, mamma," said the mother sharply. "Least of
all when the boy hears it." Then she turned to Keith again: "Don't you
believe what Granny says. Your father is merely thinking of what is
good for you. He loves you just as much as I do--or your grandmother.
But he thinks we are spoiling you. And he wants you to grow up and be a
real man. That's why he hates to see you cry."

There was a pause while Keith pondered the matter--not seriously
concerned on the whole, as long as the tidbit was not taken away
from him.

"Don't you love your father," his mother asked suddenly.

"Ye-es," Keith answered mechanically.

Then he began to ponder again. His feelings toward his father were far
too complicated for utterance. They seemed to have nothing whatsoever to
do with love, if that was what he felt for his mother. There was
undoubtedly a great deal of fear in his attitude toward the father, and
also resentment that at times would flare into something bordering on
hatred. But this attitude was combined with a lot of respect, not to say
admiration. At times it would also be tinged with a longing that he
could not explain or express. And if ever the father gave him the
slightest evidence of friendliness, he would be thrown into a rapture of
happiness that nothing done by his mother could equal.

He adored his mother, and clung to her, and relied on her and wheedled
her, but it was an open question whether, at heart, he felt any
particular respect for her--although he was quite proud of certain
things about her. And as for Granny, whom, in a way, he loved more than
anybody else, because she petted him and indulged his slightest whims,
there could simply be no talk about respecting her. Even Keith realized
that she was not in the respected class.

His father was, on the other hand. There could be no doubt about that.
If he had only been willing to unbend a little now and then....



IX

The kitchen had other attractions than Granny, though she ranked
foremost.

As Keith came out from the living-room, he had on his right the huge,
old-fashioned fire-place--a regular fortress of brick, with a modern
cook stove of iron set into one corner of it. It was entirely covered by
a smoke-hood of painted metal sheeting, with a flange on its outside
edge along which were placed a number of lids.

On his left was a set of shelves filled from top to bottom with pots and
pans and kettles of every possible size and shape, including a cauldron
so huge and heavy that it took two people to get it out with ease from
its place on the bottom shelf. An overwhelming majority of these
utensils were of copper and so highly polished that they shone like suns
setting through a fog bank. Some of them made good toys, but "things for
use and not for play" was an old maxim often quoted by both parents and
grudgingly repeated by Granny herself.

A big sofa, in which the grandmother slept at night stood along the
centre of the wall on the left. The corner beyond held a wall-fast
cupboard so large that it looked like a closet built into the room. It
serves both as pantry and buffet, and was full of things tempting to a
young palate.

In the opposite corner, beyond the window and right by the outside door,
stood an open water barrel holding about twenty gallons. There was no
running water above the ground floor. Every drop had to be carried three
flights of stairs from the courtyard. What was needed for drinking and
cooking was kept in a copper can, two feet high, with a lid on top and a
spout in front that made it look like a badly overgrown tea kettle.
Water for all other uses had to come out of the barrel. To keep both
vessels filled was a heavy task, and waste of water was regarded as
little short of a crime. The sacredness of the barrel and its contents
was a mystery to Keith until he grew old enough to do some of the
carrying. Then he began to understand.

Most of the water went to the stove, where operations of one kind or
another were carried on from morning till night, tempting the boy with
their mysteries or their promises. In the uppermost corner of the hood
was a square opening covered by an iron lid. When the lid was down and
you crawled right up into the fire-place, you could see the sky through
the chimney.

One day, when Keith had sneaked into the kitchen uninvited, he noticed
something unusual going on in the fire-place. All the paraphernalia had
been cleared away. The lid was open, and from the chimney issued strange
noises. Then soot began to fall in masses, and finally appeared a pair
of human feet, quite bare and all black.

It was very funny and very disconcerting. Keith watched with bulging
eyes and trembling heart, until at last a whole big man came out of the
chimney. As he crouched for a moment on the fire-place before getting
down on the floor, he turned on Keith a pair of eyes that seemed to be
all white and big as moons.

At that moment fear got the better of curiosity, and Keith made haste to
bury his face in Granny's lap.

"Yes, Keith had better look out," grinned the servant girl, "for the
chimney sweep takes all bad little boys."

"I'll take you, if you talk like that," the black figure in the
fire-place shot back at her.

The tone of his voice made Keith steal another glance at him. The white
eyes shone right at him in a rather friendly fashion, and further down a
huge red slit in the black face framed two rows of teeth no less white
than the eyes. Keith guessed that the dark visitor from the chimney was
smiling at him in a fashion that seemed to bode no harm.

In another minute the man was gone, and Keith hurried back to the
living-room to ask a question of his mother:

"Could he really take me?"

"Not unless we gave him leave," she replied. "But sometimes, when little
boys are very, _very_ bad, their parents turn them over to the sweep as
apprentices, because they are not good for anything else."

Keith thought long and hard.

"I ain't bad," he declared at last.

"Not exactly," his mother remarked diplomatically "But you could be a
great deal better. What were you doing in the kitchen just now? I have
told you not to run out there all the time. Lena does not like you to
get in her way, you know."

"But Granny is there," Keith protested.

"Yes, of course, and you must be nice to her, but...."

As his mother did not go on, Keith asked: "Why does Granny always stay
in the kitchen?"

"Because she wants to," his mother answered.

"But why does she want to?"

"It is her way--a sort of pride she has. And I have long ago given up
trying to persuade her."

Her tone indicated clearly that further discussion of the subject was
not desirable.



X

Keith was playing in his own corner that very evening, trying to keep as
quiet as possible while his father had an unusually late dinner. His
mother had gone out into the kitchen a few moments earlier. Thence she
returned suddenly with a half empty bottle in her hand and a look of
extreme annoyance on her face.

"Carl," she said, "look what I just found in a corner of the cupboard."

"Humph," the father grunted with a sideglance at the bottle. "Ours is
locked up, is it not?"

"Yes, but that is neither here nor there. She would rather die, she
says, than touch a drop of ours."

"Where does she get it?"

"I can't make it out. Somebody must bring it in, of course. I fear it
is Mrs. Karlgren, and I am simply going to tell her to keep away
hereafter. The idea of her coming here practically begging, and then
doing such a thing, after all I have done for her!"

"But you are not sure," the father objected earnestly, and Keith paid
special notice to his objection because he had already learned, or
divined, that his father could not bear the sight of the poor woman
in question.

"No, it is impossible to be sure," the mother admitted. Then she added
after a pause: "What puzzles me more than anything else is where she
gets the money."

Though no name was mentioned, Keith knew perfectly well that they were
speaking of Granny. And he recalled having laughed at her in the kitchen
earlier in the evening before the father came home. Her eyes had a funny
look and seemed a little inflamed. Her still thick braids were loosened
and about to come entirely undone. She was talking more than usual and
in a tone that suggested defiance.

As he recalled all this, Keith forgot to listen to his parents, who went
on discussing so intently that he was able to leave his corner and reach
the door to the kitchen unnoticed. An irresistible desire to see Granny
at once had seized him. Back of it lay a vaguely sensed mixture of
curiosity and sympathy.

Granny was in her favourite place beside the kitchen sofa, seated on a
footstool almost as large as an ordinary chair, but somewhat lower. That
stool was the one bone of contention between her and Keith, because he
was carrying it off as often as he could get at it. Turned upside down,
with Keith seated snugly between its four legs, it became a sleigh
drawn across icy plains by a team of swift reindeer, or a ship rocking
mightily on the high seas.

The kitchen was full of a peculiar sweetish smell, by which Keith knew
without looking that Granny was dressing the old wound on her left leg
that had developed "the rose" and would not heal. She was leaning far
over, busy with a bandage which she wound tightly about her leg, from
the ankle to the knee. The boy sniffed the familiar smell with a vague
sense of discomfort, which, however, did not prevent him from going up
to the grandmother and putting one arm about her neck.

"Old hurt is hard to mend," she muttered quoting one of the old saws
always on her lips. Then without raising her head, she added in the
peevish, truculent tone of a thwarted child: "You had better go back in
there before they come and get you. I am nothing but a servant, and as
such I know my place and keep it. I am less than a servant, for they
wouldn't dare do to Lena what they do to me."

"Oh, yes, they would," Lena put in from across the room. "And they would
have a right, too."

As if she had not heard at all, Granny sat up straight and looked hard
at the boy.

"Whatever you do, Keith," she said, and he noticed that her voice
sounded a little strange, "see that you make a lot of money when you
grow up. To be poor is to have no rights, and the worst thing of all is
to be dependent on others, no matter how near they are to you."

"I think Mrs. Carlsson is very ungrateful," said Lena. "There are
thousands of old people who would give anything to have a nice home and
nothing to worry over."

"Anybody can talk, but it takes a head to keep silent," said Granny
impersonally, quoting another old saw. Then her manner changed abruptly
and she turned to Keith effusively.

"Give me a kiss! You love your old Granny, don't you? You don't despise
her, do you, because she has nothing and is nothing? And can be sure she
loves you more than anybody else."

The boy's feelings were so mixed that he really could not feel anything
at all. His arm was still about the grandmother's neck, mechanically he
gave her the kiss she asked for, but it was with real relief he saw his
mother open the door to the living-room and responded to her demand that
he go to bed at once.



XI

Hardly any memory left behind by Keith's childhood was more acute than
the image of Granny seated in the centre of the kitchen, her stolid, yet
pleasant old face bent over some household task, and her whole figure
instinct with a passive protest against her enforced dependency or,
maybe against life's arbitrariness in general. One moment she seemed to
be brooding deeply, and the next she looked as if there was not a
thought in her head. For one reason or another, her anomalous position
and peculiar attitude occupied Keith's mind a great deal, and many of
the questions with which he plied his mother were concerned with Granny.
They were fairly discreet as a rule, but on the morning after the scene
just described, some impulse of which he had no clear understanding made
him perplex his mother with the abrupt question:

"Why does Granny drink?"

They were alone in the living-room at the time, she seated in her big
easy chair by the window and he, as usual, kneeling on the hassock
at her feet.

She looked up at him with as much surprise as if he had hit her
viciously. A deeper red flowed into her cheeks that kept their soft
pinkness even when she was thought at death's door and lost it only
under the pressure of extreme anger.

At the same time a look came into her eyes that gave Keith a momentary
scare. It was only a flash, however, and changed quickly into something
like the helplessness that used to characterize her glance in moments of
heavy depression. Her voice trembled a little as she spoke:

"Because Granny's life has been very hard, and not very happy."

"Tell me about it," urged the boy.

There was a long pause during which he watched his mother's face
closely. Gradually its expression changed into one of resignation, and
then into determination, as if she had made up her mind to be done once
for all with a task that could not be avoided indefinitely. It was a
long story she told, at first hesitatingly, then with an eagerness that
betrayed an awakening purpose. Everything she said stuck deeply in the
boy's mind, and whenever he thought of Granny's life afterwards, he had
the impression of having learned all about it at that one time, although
the likelihood is that many details were picked up by degrees and
dovetailed into the memory of that first narrative as integral parts
of it.

"Your grandmother was not born to be a servant," his mother began. "She
was a rich man's daughter, and there was not a thing her father didn't
want to do for her. Yet he left her in the hands of strangers who
cheated her of her rights and treated her as if she had been a
beggar...."

"Why did they do it," the boy asked, quite unable to grasp the idea of
such a thing.

"Because they could make a little more money that way, and because they
cared for nothing but money. Promise me, Keith, that whatever happens to
you, and whatever the temptation be, you will never put money above
everything else."

Keith shook his head earnestly, meaning it to be sign of assent. He was
a highly impressible child, and when his mother spoke to him like that,
he used literally to choke with a feeling that he could never, never do
anything but what she asked, but when another rush of feeling swept over
him, the old promises were also likely to be swept out of his mind.

"Those people did the worst thing any one can do to anybody else. They
twisted Granny's life so that it could never be set right again. And so
she became what you see her now...."

"You mean she just couldn't help herself," Keith put in.

"Yes, that's what I mean," she agreed. Then she stopped as if struck by
another thought, and said very slowly:

"Although, if she had been really strong...."

Once more she stopped and returned abruptly to her story:

"Your great-grandfather made and sold hats, and he earned a lot of
money, and they made him a City Councillor...."

"Where," Keith broke in again.

"In Skara," his mother explained, "which is a city that lies a long way
from here, and when you begin to learn geography, you will know where it
is.... Everybody liked your great-grandfather...."

"What was his name," Keith couldn't help asking.

"Lack," she said, "and now you mustn't interrupt me any more if you want
me to go on."

"Please," Keith pleaded. "I won't!"

"The reason they liked him," she resumed, "was that he was so
good-hearted that he couldn't say no to anybody or anything. He didn't
seem to care for money at all, and he used to say: 'What's money between
friends?' Everybody wanted to be friends with him in those days, and
everybody borrowed from him, until he didn't have enough left for his
business, and then they laughed at him. He tried in his turn to borrow,
but no one could spare a penny, and when things went entirely wrong with
him, one of those who had got most from him made a funny saying about
him: 'Now Lack lacks everything because everybody has what Lack lacks.'
So, you see, you mustn't think too little of money either, but learn to
be careful and keep what you have."

Keith nodded dutifully, but where the right road lay, he could not see.

"The worst thing was," the mother went on, "that your great-grandmother
died when Granny was only nine. There were brothers and sisters, too,
and she was the youngest. And it was then that her father got the idea
to send her to some farmer people he knew, quite some distance from
where he lived. He did it partly for the sake of Granny's health, and
partly because he was too worried about other things to look after her
properly himself. And he paid a lot of money for her board, and sent her
fine clothes, and arranged that she was to be taught by the pastor of
the parish, and he sent friends to ask about her, but he never came
himself. The people who were to take care of Granny kept the money and
the clothes, and put her to work as if she had been a servant, and
didn't let her get the least bit of schooling. And when her father's
friends came and asked about her, they told all sorts of tales about how
well she was doing, but she was so shy, they said, that she always ran
away when any visitor came to the place."

"Did she," asked Keith.

"Yes, she really did," the mother admitted. "She was ashamed of the way
she looked and was dressed, and yet she was quite pretty, and she had
the most wonderful hair that reached to her feet when she let it down."

"But, why didn't she tell somebody?" Keith insisted, his blood running
hot with wrath at the injustice to which Granny had been submitted.

"Oh, because ..." said his mother wearily, "because your grandmother
has always been peculiar in that way when she knew she was being
wronged. 'What is the use?' she says. And then word came that her father
had gone bankrupt and had died soon after. No one seemed to pay the
least attention to her. She stayed where she was, and she couldn't work
any harder than she had done all the time. But when she was to be
confirmed, and had to go to church every week with all the other
children of her own age, she was the poorest of them all, both in fact
and in appearance, she didn't have one person in the world to whom she
could turn. She has told me that she used to lie awake nights crying and
thinking of running away, but she couldn't make up her mind to
that either."

She stopped, and Keith waited in vain for the rest of the story.

"And then," he urged.

"Oh, then she came to Stockholm and married your grandfather--my papa,
you know. And now Lena is waiting for me to tell her what we are to have
for dinner."

Keith went back to his own corner for a while. Then he made a dash for
the kitchen, where he found Granny seated in her usual place peeling
potatoes. Having placed a smaller foot-stool beside the large one in
which she was seated, he got up on it so that he could put both arms
about her neck. Pressing his own soft cheek against hers, he
asked brokenly:

"Are you very unhappy, Granny?"

"No," she answered placidly, "not when you are willing to give me a
kiss."

"All right," he said without enthusiasm as he complied with her
request. At the same time he recalled suddenly that he had not played a
single game with his tin soldiers that whole morning.



XII

The boy had a logical mind. He knew that Granny's story had not been
finished, and he wanted all of it. At the first opportune moment he
asked his mother:

"Was Granny a little girl when she came to Stockholm?"

"No," said his mother unsuspectingly, "she was already a young woman."

"What did she do before?"

"I told you," the mother replied, now on her guard.

"You told me what she did as a little girl, but not afterwards. I want
to know."

"Oh, she worked, I suppose."

There was evidently nothing more to be had in that direction.

"And what did she do in Stockholm," Keith pushed on.

"She married your grandfather, as I told you, and then I was born."

"What was he?"

The mother remained silent for a good long while, and Keith repeated his
question, not yet having learned that unanswered questions generally
are unwelcome questions.

"He was a _vaktmästare_," she said finally, and Keith knew that, for
some reason, she found the word unpleasant.

The boy reflected a while before he observed:

"That's what papa is."

"Your father's position is quite different," his mother rejoined
sharply. "It's a shame that he and his comrades in the bank have no
other title--although some of them deserve nothing better."

"What should they be called?"

"I don't know exactly--collectors, I think, because they go around and
collect the money that is due to the bank."

"And what are real _vaktmästare_ doing?"

"The real ones work in government departments--not as officials, but
just as attendants--it's something you can't understand yet."

Keith nodded. He didn't understand, but the words stuck and the
understanding came later.

"And those that are not real," he persisted.

His mother laughed and patted him on the head.

"There is a lot of them," she said. "They look after coats and hats in
theatres and restaurants, and wait at dinners, and do all sorts
of things."

"Was that what grandfather was doing?"

A queer look came into his mother's eyes and sent a glow of
self-satisfaction through his whole being. The look was familiar to him
and meant that his mother was annoyed by the question but pleased with
his cleverness in thinking of it.

"No," she answered, "not exactly...."

"What did he do," asked Keith, and as he spoke he sent a look of
anticipation toward his own corner.

"He was an attendant in the big club where all the rich business-men go
to spend their evenings, and he died when I was a little girl ... have
you nothing else to ask about?"

"What was papa's father," Keith ventured after a pause.

"He worked in the royal palace." Again the mother's tone served as a
warning, but also as a goad to the boy's curiosity.

"What did he do there," he demanded eagerly.

The lines about his mother's mouth grew tighter and harder, and she
spoke as if the words hurt her--but she did not refuse to answer, and
she did not send him away:

"He was a lackey."

From the moment he began to speak, Keith had showed an unusual sense for
the value and peculiarities of words. They interested him for their own
sake, one might say. He treasured them, and he gave more thought to them
than to people. The word lackey he had heard before, and he had formed a
distinct opinion about it as not desirable.

"Then he was a servant," he blurted out.

"In a way," his mother admitted. "And we are all servants, for that
matter. But working in the king's palace is not like--working as Lena
does here, for instance."

The last part of her remark went by unheeded by Keith. His thoughts
leapt instead to his paternal grandmother--a strict and unapproachable
little lady who visited them at rare intervals dressed in a quaint old
shawl and a lace-trimmed cap. A great wonder, not unmixed with pleasure,
rose in his mind at the thought that her husband had been a sort of
servant after all. For some reason utterly beyond him, there was solace
as well as humiliation in the consciousness of a stigma, if such it be,
that attached equally to both his grandfathers, and not only to his
mother's parent. Then a new idea prompted a new question.

"Was Granny a servant when she came to Stockholm?"

"She was obliged to take service in order to live," his mother replied
very gently. "There is nothing about that to be ashamed of.... I have
known fine ladies who started in the kitchen. But, of course, one
doesn't like to talk of it to everybody."

Keith recognized the hint in her final words, but thought it needless.
He was already on his way back to his own corner, tired for the time of
asking questions, when he suddenly turned and said:

"We are just as good as anybody else, are we not?"

It was a phrase he had overheard sometime. Now it seemed to fit the
occasion, and it sounded good to him.

"There is the royal family," his mother rejoined enigmatically. "But one
of Granny's cousins was a lieutenant-colonel in the army."

"Where is he now," Keith demanded, agog with interest.

"He is dead, and--and we have never had anything to do with his family."



XIII

The inquisitiveness of Keith with regard to his ancestors and the past
life of his parents continued for quite a while. Other family
connections seemed unreal and did not interest him. Having no sister or
brother of his own, relationships of that kind were meaningless to him.
Parents, on the other hand, constituted a tangible personal experience,
and the presence of Granny taught that this experience was common to
grown-up people as well as children.

The curiosity he evinced was queerly impersonal, however, and might well
be called intellectual. The information he received had no power over
his own life. He could have been told anything, and he would have
accepted it calmly as something not affecting himself. The only thing
that influenced him was the manner of the person answering his
questions. To that manner he was almost morbidly sensitive, and from it
he concluded whether the various details related should please or
disturb him.

Instinctively he pressed his inquiries at points eliciting marked
resistance. And it was not what he actually learned, but the evasions
encountered, that produced the sensitiveness about his own backgrounds
which later often influenced his attitude harmfully at moments when he
most needed complete self-assurance. It was the reluctance with which
certain parts of the family history were told, and the total
withholding of others, that taught him to be ashamed of things for which
he could not be held personally responsible. The effect of this lesson
on his character was the more fatal because it remained unconscious so
long. Having become doubtful as to the worth of the roots of the tree,
it was only natural that he should also feel doubts about the fruit.

Concerning the real character of his forbears he learned next to
nothing. All that he heard related to external circumstances that were,
or were not, judged respectable and presentable. One fact in particular
was subject to the most rigid exclusion from all family conversations,
and yet it leaked down to Keith at a time when he was utterly incapable
of appreciating its significance. It piqued him mightily without
disturbing him.

One day they were visited by his father's married sister, who was
lacking in sentimentality and had a disturbing way of calling a spade a
spade. The inevitable testing of the boy's cleverness by making him tell
his own name led to a discussion of family names in general, Keith's
mother expressing a great admiration for that of Wellander.

"Oh, yes, it's good enough," remarked her sister-in-law, "but it is not
the right one, you know, and the old one was much finer."

"I know," said the mother, "but I don't know what the name used to be."

"Cederskjöld, and I think it was recognized as noble. I never knew the
inside of it, but it looks peculiar. Carl's and my father and his
brother and two sisters took common action to get the family name
changed to Wellander. I am sure my grandfather must have been up to
some rather striking deviltry, and for all I know he might have
been hanged."

"Hush," cried Keith's mother with a quick glance at the boy who was
taking in everything with wide-open eyes and ears.

Keith did not wait for anything more, but sneaked off by himself to
think. The change of the name seemed nothing at the time, but the
suggestion that his great-grandfather had been hanged was startling
enough to give food for many meditations. Fortunately, or unfortunately,
his aunt's manner had been too nonchalant to give him any clues. And
from the manner of his mother he gathered merely that the asking of
questions would be useless. So it came about that Keith for the first
time in his life regretted the premature death of his paternal
grandfather, from whom, otherwise, he might have elicited some more
satisfactory information.

Both grandfathers were dead long before Keith was born. He never saw a
portrait of either of them, or had an idea of how they looked. He could
not even recall having heard their Christian names. The personality of
his paternal grandfather always remained a total blank to him. Of the
other one he knew a little more. The fashionable club where his mother's
father served was notorious for its conviviality and reckless gambling,
and the men were like the masters to some extent. This one of his
grandfathers used to love wine, women, cards and everything else that
helped to modify life's general drabness. He must have been something of
a wit, too, in his own circles, having any number of boon companions.
Keith never heard what kind of a man he was at home. He made good money
while he lived and spent it as carelessly as he earned it. At forty-two
he died, leaving a penniless widow to look after a daughter still in her
early teens. Keith's paternal grandfather died in the same way, but his
widow, who was a hard-headed little woman of old peasant stock--the best
in Sweden--did better with four children than the other grandmother
with one.

There were gaps in the stories of his mother and Granny concerning which
he never got a direct reply from them, but by degrees he picked up many
missing details from other sources. What he learned in this way
indicated merely that they had been very poor at times, and poverty had
forced them to earn a living by work that was quite honest and decent,
but not "socially respectable." At one time, before her daughter was old
enough to assume a share of the burden, Granny had actually had to fall
back on the coarsest and humblest menial work--scrubbing and washing by
the day in strange houses. Yet she and her daughter appeared throughout
that ordeal to have remained on terms of pleasant intimacy with friends
of the class to which they regarded themselves as properly belonging.

Another problem never solved for Keith was what kind of schooling his
mother had had. Her own failure to tell suggested that it must have been
of the slightest. Yet Keith never thought of her as ignorant. She had a
bright, eager mind that, when not clouded, acted as a goad on his own.
It was she who taught him to read and filled him with an awe for books
and book-learning that was, perhaps, not entirely wholesome. She herself
read eagerly, though fitfully, her interest in all such matters varying
greatly with her mood and condition. Her day-dreaming was to a large
extent directed toward matters literary and artistic. Sometimes, when
she had read some novel with a markedly sentimental appeal, she talked
vaguely of old ambitions to write, but as a rule it was her ignorance of
music that she deplored. In the meantime her lace-making and her
embroidery proved an artistic sense not wholly confined to dreams. She
was always busy with some work of that kind, but her longings went far
beyond it, and it happened more than once that she let her work drop in
her lap while she looked at Keith with an expression he could not
understand.

"If only I had had your chance in life," she exclaimed on one occasion
of that kind.

"What do you mean," asked the boy, snuggling close to her.

"I mean that you will study and be able to do things," she answered,
bending down to kiss him.

At that very moment the father entered and heard what she said.

"Nonsense," he broke in. "The boy is going to learn a trade, and I think
we'll ask Uncle Granstedt to make a carpenter of him."

To Keith it was all meaningless, and his mother said nothing at the
time, but a slight stiffening of her face warned him that his father's
remark pointed in a direction not held desirable by her. And from that
sign the boy took his cue.



XIV

The outside door stood open and no one was in the kitchen but Granny.
The temptation to explore was irresistible.

"When the cat's away, the rats dance on the tray," the old grandmother
muttered as if to herself.

"I'll just have a peep," Keith explained, turning to her for a moment.
Then he made for the open door again.

The landing with its bare stone floor was familiar to him and quite
barren of interest. What drew him magnetically was the tall archway
leading to the mysterious upper regions known as the garret, where
strange old women lived in hermit cells, and whence disturbing noises
issued day and night. Even as he looked up there, he could hear a
spookish grating that seemed to symbolize the spirit of the place. He
shuddered a little, but not unpleasantly, for he knew what caused it.

In the brick wall ending the upward vista, he could see a square open
hole with an iron shutter held open at right angles by an iron rod. As
the wind shook the shutter, the rod scraped against the socket that held
its hooked end. That was all--but on dark winter afternoons the effect
was most disturbing.

"I'm not afraid," Keith announced, sensing his own bravery rather
keenly.

"Why should you be," asked Granny.

Then he noticed the tall iron door fastened to one side of the arch in
front of it. Now it was doubled up length-wise and folded back so as to
leave the passage free.

"What's that for," he asked, pointing to the door.

"In case of fire," said Granny. "If it should begin to burn up there,
they would close that door to keep the flames from the rest of
the house."

"Would it burn much," Keith wondered.

"Your father has five cords of good birch wood stored in the top attic,
so I think the whole city would see the blaze."

"And the people up there?"

"They would have to come before we closed the doors, but God have mercy
on us if it ever gets that far. Remember, boy, there is nothing worse
than fire so you must always be careful never play with matches."

"I know," said Keith, nodding sagely.

But he really did not know what fire meant until a few nights later. The
whole family was sound asleep, Keith on the chaiselongue, his father and
mother in the big bed on the other side of the room. While still half
asleep he could hear his mother crying his father's name in a strangely
agitated voice.

Then he woke fully and looked up. Every object in the room was clearly
visible, but the light coming through the windows was not daylight. It
was reddish and glaring, and the very reflection of it within the room
filled the boy with vague uneasiness.

The father jumped out of bed and ran to the window.

"It is fire," he said. "Something terrible. My Lord, half the town must
be burning. The whole sky is a mass of flames. And it's in the direction
of the bank."

Suddenly he turned back and began to dress in wordless haste.

"Must we get out," asked the mother.

"No, it is not very close yet, but you had better get up and dress--and
get everybody dressed."

By that time he was putting on his overcoat.

"Where are you going, Carl," demanded the mother, evidently more scared
by his going out than by the fire.

"To the bank," answered the father, grimly.

"You mustn't, Carl! I won't let you go out! Think if anything should
happen to you!"

"Nonsense," he said. "I am in no danger--but I must see what's happening
to the bank, and help if things have to be taken out."

"Carl, Carl...." was all the mother could get over her lips.

"Don't worry, Ann," he pleaded, bending over her for a minute, and his
voice took on a tenderness Keith seemed never to have heard before. "I
shall be careful, but I must go. If the fire should come this way, I'll
be back in time to help you all out."

She tried to cling to him, but he freed himself with gentle firmness. In
a minute more he was gone, and in the next second Keith's mother was at
the window looking out, though she had only her night-linen on and it
was late autumn. Unobserved and unrebuked, Keith joined her, and when he
looked up at the sky, his heart almost stopped beating.

A ghastly stillness reigned outside--except when it was merely
accentuated by the occasional sound of hurried steps along the street at
the top of the lane. Finally some one was heard passing through the
lane itself.

"Please," Keith's mother cried at the top of her voice. "What is it?"

"It's the German Church," a voice responded from below. "The whole spire
is flaming like a torch."

"Are we in danger down here?"

"Hard to tell. It depends on which way the spire falls. If it falls
outward, I fear the whole city will go."

Then he walked off.

By that time the servant girl had come in weeping as if she had just
heard her death-doom announced, and from the Granny was calling to them:

"You'll freeze to death, all of you, if you don't put on some clothes."

So they dressed, though difficulty, and then there was nothing to do but
to wait. The mother was at the window all the time, every few minutes
she said to the boy:

"Oh, I hope nothing happens to your father!"

At first it scared him more than did the light. But after a while it
began to have an opposite effect. He seemed to grow stiff and hard. The
excitement of the fire was still there, but it was overlaid and almost
neutralized by a vast impatience that seemed to take possession of his
whole being. He felt that if his mother made the same remark once more,
he should yell with rage and agony, and to save himself, he joined
Granny in the kitchen, where the girl had started a fire in order to
make some coffee.

The sky in that quarter was just as bright as in front, and no light was
needed in the room.

Suddenly he heard his mother cry out:

"Oh."

At the same time the brightness seemed to increase to something more
than daylight.

A quick change took place in the boy's heart. He ran into the
living-room and put his arm about his mother who was still lying in
the window.

"Don't worry, mamma," he whispered to her. "I'll take care of you."

There was something in his voice that brought the mother to herself. She
closed the window and took him in her arms and kissed him as she had
never kissed him before, he thought.

"It was the spire that fell just now," she said, "and if there is any
danger, your father will be here in a minute."

Almost as she spoke, the glare outside began to die down, though the sky
remained red and threatening until daybreak.

Then they had coffee, Keith being allowed an extra dose in his milk. And
soon afterwards the father returned to tell the story of the fire and
inform them that all danger was over as far as they were concerned.

For days afterwards the experiences of that night occupied Keith's mind.
The joy of excitement was probably uppermost in spite of all other
considerations, Beneath it was a vivid conception of the horrors of fire
that remained a live thing in his mind until he was well on in years,
sometimes waking him out of his sleep at night and setting his heart
palpitating wildly at the mere idea of danger. Lastly, however, there
was left from that momentous night a new attitude toward the mother that
implied a direct criticism--the first one that had ever broken into
clear consciousness. It did not make him love her less, but it changed
the character of his love in some subtle way. The father, on the other
hand, had gained by that night. There was something heroic about the
quiet way in which he walked off to take care of the bank, pushing all
other considerations aside until that duty had been filled.



XV

Gradually Keith learned to know the old house from top to bottom. The
garret and the cellar remained of excitement for a long time. The rest
of it offered little to hold the attention or feed the imagination.

It covered three sides of a rectangle, with the courtyard in the centre.
The wall of the adjoining house; formed the fourth side--a sheer cliff
of plastered brick that towered two whole stories higher, its dreary
expanse unbroken by a single window. Along the foot of it ran a long low
structure with innumerable doors opening on the courtyard. Thither men,
women and children had to descend regardless of weather or hour or
season, and every visitor could be watched from the windows opening
on the yard.

The rear part of the house constituted practically a building by
itself, with a stairway of its own, and the people living there seemed
to form a world apart, with which Keith never became very well
acquainted. But on the ground-floor of that part was the laundry, used
in turn by every household in the entire house and regarded by the boy
as a far-off, adventurous place until he had been allowed to visit it a
couple of times.

The building facing the lane and that running along the courtyard had a
stairway in common at the corner where they joined. Its stairs and
landings were of stone, uncarpeted, and lighted in the day by a window
on each floor and at night by a single gas jet on each landing. At the
foot of the lowermost flight of stairs was a long and dark passage that
turned at a right angle and finally reached the lane after what seemed a
long walk. Branching to the right, at the foot of the stairs, was
another passage from which the cellar was reached after you had used all
your strength to push open a huge iron door that squeaked uncannily on
its stiff hinges.

The flats on the second and third floors ran straight through from the
lane to the rear building, but on the fourth floor, where Keith lived,
another family occupied the rooms looking upon the courtyard. And there
lived Jonas, the only other child in the house during Keith's
earliest years.

Jonas' father was a compositor--a tall, lank, hollow-eyed man with a bad
cough. His mother was a woman of the people, angular and taciturn. Jonas
himself was pale and gawky and shy.

Those two families, living within a few feet of each other and meeting
daily on the common landing, had little more intercourse than if they
had been parted by miles of desert. The reserved and slightly eccentric
character of the neighbours had something to do with this separation,
but social distinctions counted for more. A compositor was, after all, a
mere workman, and Keith felt instinctively that his mother looked with
kindly contempt at the more primitive ways of the adjoining household.
Now and then he was permitted to go and play for a little while with
Jonas, who was a year older, but the other boy hardly ever entered
Keith's home. Nor was their playing much of a success. Jonas was
slow-witted and reserved, while alertness and frankness were among
Keith's most characteristic traits. But differences of temperament
accounted only in part for their failure to come together. Keith felt as
if a wall of some kind stood between them, and as if the eyes watching
from the other side of that wall were distinctly hostile at times. It
exasperated him as if it had implied terrible injustice, but it was only
in moments of extreme boredom he really cared. At such moments he would
also develop a passionate desire for a brother or sister. He might have
wished for a dog or a cat even, but the idea of such a disturbing
element in his parental home seemed too preposterous for serious
contemplation. In fact, so foreign was that idea to the home atmosphere,
that Keith went through the rest of his life envying other people's pets
without ever giving earnest thought to the acquisition of one
for himself.

Just as the parental attitude toward the nearest neighbours suggested a
kindly but unsentimental tolerance of inferiors, so it became
unmistakably tinged with a slightly jealous but unprotesting submission
to superiors whenever the lower floors were reached. A bachelor
official of some kind lived on the floor immediately below, with no one
but his housekeeper to share his spacious apartment. As deputy landlord,
Keith's father had to see this tenant like all the rest, but of social
intercourse there was none, while on the other hand, Keith's mother kept
up a gossiping acquaintance with the housekeeper. As far as Keith
himself was concerned, there was nothing more awe-inspiring than a
chance meeting on the stairs with the monocle, side-whiskers, precise
manners and doled-out civility of Mr. Bureau-Chief Broström. The
distance was so immense that even aspirations were precluded on the part
of the boy. He could imagine being king, but not a duly appointed
government official with a salary enabling him to occupy half a dozen
rooms practically by himself.

Of course, there were rumours afloat about a more intimate relationship
between the bureau chief and his fairly good-looking housekeeper, who
nominally had for her own that part of the flat which faced the
courtyard, and these rumours did not escape the boy's keen ears. While
their true inwardness was incomprehensible to him, they made him look
wonderingly at the housekeeper whenever he met her, and when he accepted
her gingersnaps and other tempting delicacies, he did so with a sense of
wickedness that limited his gratefulness.

A retired dry goods dealer and his good-hearted old wife lived on the
second floor. The Fernbloms were the aristocracy of the house in the
lane, having the best rooms, paying the highest rent and giving the
biggest parties, but even Keith guessed quite early that they were
simple souls, risen by thrift from very humble origins. They had a
single daughter, a girl of delicate health and looks with whom Keith
probably would have fallen in love hopelessly if she had stayed in the
house. But she married early, moved to some other city and was rarely
seen in her old home. Reports of her progress were received, of course,
and passed on in the hearing of Keith, but like so many other things not
touching his own life closely, it carried no real meaning to his mind.
The parties continued, and Keith's parents were often invited, partly
because the old couple was too simple-minded to think of social
distinctions, and partly because they both came from the same district
as Keith's Granny. Keith would be allowed to come along at times, and he
liked the idea of going and the good food, but otherwise he found it
dull business watching a lot of grown-up people seated solemnly about
square tables playing cards. Then, one day, the old lady died, and Keith
attended a part of the funeral, and from the window he saw the coffin
taken away in a hearse buried in flowers. It made him ask many questions
of his mother, but none of her answers brought death any closer to his
mind. After all, the old lady had been nothing to him, and if the
parties should cease as he heard was likely, the loss did not seem great
to him. The only thing that made a real difference to him was his
discovery that there would be no more of those ball-shaped gingersnaps
that the old lady used to bake herself and keep in an earthen jar almost
as tall as Keith.

The front part of the ground floor was used as an office of some kind in
those early days, but the middle part facing the long row of outhouses
was a human habitation. The rooms were so dark that a lamp had to be
used most of the day, and the principal entrance was direct from the
courtyard. An old workman and his wife lived there until the office in
front was changed into a coffee-house and those rooms toward the
courtyard became the kitchen. When it happened, some one told Keith's
mother a story which she in her turn conveyed to the boy.

History repeated itself, she said, and Keith already knew that history
was something that had happened before he was born. One hundred years
ago, when Gustavus III was king of Sweden and things were more exciting
than in these later days of outward and inward peace, there used also to
be a coffee-house on the ground floor, and a widely known one at that.
It occupied the floor above too, but this floor was in reality used as a
club, and the club was political and the men who frequented it were
conspiring against the government. This the police knew, and every so
often a lot of armed and uniformed men would surround the house and make
prisoners of those caught in the clubrooms on the second floor. But as a
rule no one was found there but a couple of sleepy and grouchy
attendants who cursed their luck at having to spend their lives in such
a dull place.

"But," Keith interrupted when the story got that far "you just told me
that the rooms had a lot of conspirators in them."

"So they had."

"And yet they were empty when the police came there? Do you really mean
that the people could make themselves invisible?"

"That's where the real story comes in," his mother explained. "You know
there is a long passageway between the front rooms of the Fernbloms and
their kitchen in the rear. It runs back of the stairs. The next time you
go through it, stamp your foot very hard, and you will hear that it
sounds hollow in one place. At that spot there used to be a trap door in
the floor. Now it is nailed down hard, but in the old days it could be
opened any time, and then you found a stairway below. It led into our
part of the cellar, where you still can find a couple of stone steps at
one end. Then the conspirators went down into the main cellar, and at
the back of it there was a tunnel leading under the rear part of the
house and the lane beyond to a house on the other side. That's the way
they escaped, and that's why the police never found anybody in
the club."

"What did the conspirators want," asked Keith after he had pondered the
matter for a while.

"I don't know exactly," his mother admitted, "but the king was killed by
one of them at last."

"I wish I had been there to defend the king," said Keith. Then a new
thought seized him suddenly: "I want to go down and see those steps."

"All right," his mother answered to his astonishment and joy. "Lena will
soon go down to get potatoes for dinner, and then you can go along, if
you only promise to come right up again."

Shortly afterwards the momentous expedition actually took place. Keith
had been as far as the outer cellar door before, but he had never cared
to go further. When you opened that door, you were met by an air so cold
and damp that it struck your face like a wet sheet, and the stairs fell
away into a black abyss that seemed bottomless.

The door was of iron, rounded at the top to fit the arch, and covered
with rust. It looked as if it had been in its place since the house was
built, and Keith had heard that the house could not be less than two
hundred years old. The key, which Keith had been permitted to carry
going down, was of iron too, and nearly twice as long as Keith's hand.
The lock was in keeping with the key, enormous in size and so stiff that
Lena had to use both hands to turn the key.

Having laid a firm hold of Lena's skirt, Keith followed her several
steps down until they reached a place in the opposite wall where a
single very tall step led up to another iron door, square-cut and
narrow, back of which lay the cellar used by the Wellanders. Lena
lighted a candle that burned with difficulty in the clammy air.

Inside nothing could be seen at first but a number of boxes and barrels
full of supplies, and back of them walls built out of enormous stone
blocks and dripping with moisture. As his eyes became accustomed to the
dim light, however, Keith perceived that the end toward the lane was
closed by a wall which even his inexperienced glance recognized as brick
and comparatively new. Squeezing between two large barrels of potatoes
he saw two stone steps at the foot of that wall and managed actually to
put his foot on one of them.

"I wish I knew what's back of that wall," he remarked at last.

"Oh, nothing," said Lena indifferently.

"There might be skeletons," he ventured after a pause.

"Jesus Christ, child," Lena almost screamed, looking as if she had
caught sight of a ghost. "Where in the world does he get such notions
from? Come out of here now. I think the master will have to go down for
potatoes himself hereafter."

"There was a skeleton in the story you told me the other night," Keith
protested with dignity, but not unaffected by the girl's
unmistakable fright.

"This is no place for stories of that kind," she declared pulling him
away from the barrels and almost forgetting to close the cellar door
behind her.

That evening Keith kept thinking of the story and the steps in the
cellar. He was sorry not to be able to walk up those stairs. And there
must be some old things left lying about on them. Then he imagined
himself a conspirator, hearing the police beating at the doors and
making his way through the stairway and the tunnel to some quiet,
unobserved doorway in another lane, much narrower and darker than their
own. It was exciting, the passage through the tunnel, which he could see
with his mind's eye--but the part of conspirator did not appeal to him.
He had seen policemen on the street several times. They were very tall
and carried sabres. Some time when he was conspiring they might be too
quick for him and get him before he could reach the secret stairway. It
would be much better, he decided finally, to be able to look them in the
face and say truthfully:

"I have done nothing at all!"



XVI

The regular meals of the day were four, not counting "afternoon coffee"
which was regarded as a special treat and always subject to
negotiations, though forthcoming as unfailingly as dinner or supper. It
was the natural and nominal counterpart of the "morning coffee," which
served to initiate the day's feeding. This first meal was consumed
separately, as each person was ready for work, and on the whole its name
was appropriate, although plenty of bread went with the coffee. Keith's
turn came generally a little after seven, when he sat down to a large
cup or bowl of half coffee and half milk into which had been broken a
good sized piece of hard Swedish rye-bread. A little sugar was allowed,
but no butter. This regimen began when Keith was less than three years
old, and he enjoyed it immensely, provided the bread had steeped long
enough to become soft, When, at last, he turned to rolls and butter
dipped into the coffee, it did not mean that his taste had changed, but
merely that his increasing sense of manhood found the earlier dish
too childish.

Breakfast was due about ll:30 and consisted generally of sundry
left-overs from the preceding day, bread and butter forming one of the
principal ingredients. Then came the main meal of the day, dinner,
between 3:30 and 4 in the afternoon. As a rule it had only two courses:
some meat dish or fish with potatoes, and a soup served last. Now and
then there was a vegetable. Desserts were reserved for special
occasions. To Keith each such meal was inseparably connected with the
parental admonition: "Eat plenty of bread with your meat, child." The
bread was of the hard kind already referred to--thin round cakes that
one broke to pieces and that gave the teeth plenty of work. Various
superstitions were invoked to promote the consumption of it. Thus the
failure to finish a piece already broken off was alleged to result in
the transfer of all one's strength to the actual consumer of the piece
left behind. Keith was a docile child in spite of his impulsiveness and
he did he was told and believed what he heard, but he often wondered why
the rules so strictly enforced himself did not apply to his parents.

"Afternoon coffee," generally accompanied by some form of sweet bread or
cake, "happened" about 5:30, and at 8 supper was served. The final meal
was commonly made up of sandwiches with porridge and milk, or perhaps,
when fate was remarkably propitious, thin pancakes with cranberry jam.
There might be an extra snack of food at a still later hour in case of
unexpected callers, but such visits were not frequent and Keith would be
asleep by that time anyhow.

It was different when parties were given to formally invited company.
Then Keith had to stay up--or pretend to do so--as long as the guests
remained, and he must have a share of whatever the house had to offer.
To such occasions he looked forward with feverish joy, not so much on
account of the good things dispensed as for the sake of feeling the
ordinary strict rules relaxed. Apart from Christmas, the principal
celebrations took place on his parents' birthdays and "namedays." Every
day in the Swedish calendar carries a name, and all those bearing it
have a right to expect felicitations and presents from their relations
and more intimate friends. In return they are expected to celebrate the
occasion with a party that gives an excuse for showing what the house
can do in the way of hospitality. The same thing applies to the birthday
anniversaries, only in a higher degree. Not to celebrate one's birthday
can only be a sign of poverty, miserliness or misanthropy, and to
overlook the birthday anniversary of a close relative is to risk an
immediate breach of connections.

Nothing was more familiar to Keith than his mother's open worries about
money and his father's occasional stern reference to the need of saving.
To the boy those complaints and warnings meant merely that the parents
were in a depressed and unfaourable mood, tending to draw the usual
constraint a little tighter about him. He was intensely sensitive to
atmosphere, and too often that of his home had the same effect on his
young soul as the low-hanging, leaden skies of a Swedish December day
before the first snow has fallen. It made him long for sunlight, and the
parties brought it to some extent. Then care and caution were forgotten,
although his father might grumble before and after. Then the daily
routine was broken, and Granny became cynically but actively interested,
bent above all on seeing that "the house would not be shamed."

When the great day came, the home, always scrupulously neat, shone with
cleanliness. Every one worked up to the last minute. Cupboards and
pantries were full of unfamiliar and enticing supplies. The dining
table, opened to its utmost length, groaned under the burden of
innumerable cold dishes of tempting appearance, while from the kitchen
came the odours of more substantial courses still in the making. A one
end of Granny's bureau stood a battery of multicoloured bottles. The
other end was jammed with desserts and goodies meant to be served while
the guests were waiting for supper or during the card game that
generally followed it. Better than anything else, however, was the
father's loud laugh and eager talk, so rarely heard in the course of
their regular daily existence. Even then he might be displeased by some
slight slip of the boy's, and a sharp rebuke might follow, but it seemed
forgotten as soon as uttered, and of other consequences there were none
to be feared. Therefore, Keith wished that there might be a party every
day, and while there was one going on he sometimes caught himself
wondering whether, after all, he did not like his father as much as his
mother, or more.

From his own experiences with food as well as from his parents' attitude
toward it, both on special and on ordinary occasions, Keith distilled a
sort of philosophy that it took him several decades to outlive. To him
eating became a good thing in itself, rather than a means to an end. His
parents were neither gluttons nor gourmets, but they liked good food,
and, what was of still greater importance, good eating represented the
principal source of enjoyment open to them. The same seemed true of
their friends, and when company arrived no topic was more in favour than
a comparison of past culinary enjoyments. Keith's father, for instance,
never grew tired of telling about the time when he was still the chief
clerk in a fashionable grocery and the owner gave him permission to
dispose freely of a keg of Holland oysters that threatened to "go bad"
before they could be sold. Four or five friends were drummed together.
The feast took place at night in the store itself. Bread, butter, salt,
pepper, liquor, beer and cards were the only things added to
the oysters.

"And when morning came, and I had to open the store, there was nothing
left but a keg full of empty shells," the father used to shout, laughing
at the same time so that it was hard to catch what he said. Then he
would smack his lips and add with earnest conviction: "I have never
tasted anything better unless it be the Russian caviar we used to import
for the Court."

Always it was a matter of quantity as well as quality. A feast was not a
feast without more than plenty. Eating was always in order. An offer of
a dish was as good as a command to partake. A refusal bordered on the
offensive. Pressing a reluctant guest was the highest form of
hospitality. Dietary precautions were apparently unheard of except in
the case of certain chronic ailments, and then they were accepted as one
of life's worst evils. To eat well was to be well, and the natural
conclusion was that the best cure in case of trouble was to eat. Lack of
appetite was a misfortune as well as a dangerous symptom, and to eat
when not hungry was not only a necessity but a virtue.

Yet Keith longed for other things and he learned early that even eating
has its drawbacks.



XVII

Except on Sundays, the father rarely ate with the rest of the family. He
left in the morning before Keith was up and never came home for
breakfast. His dinner often had to wait until five or six or even later,
so he seldom cared to eat again when the others had their supper.

One afternoon, however, he appeared just as Keith and his mother were to
sit for dinner. It put her in a flutter and she couldn't get an
additional cover laid quick enough.

"I heard that mother was coming," he remarked as he seated himself at
the table.

Instantly Keith's mother shot an apprehensive glance at the boy and
exclaimed:

"Please try to be a real nice boy now, so that your grandmother does not
get a bad impression of you." Then she added, turning to her husband:
"She never says anything, but she always looks as if I spoiled Keith
hopelessly."

"Well," the father rejoined thoughtfully, "she brought up four children
of her own without anybody else to help her, and there was not one among
us who dared to disregard her slightest word."

"How about Henrik," the mother suggested a little tartly.

"Yes, the one spared is the one spoiled," admitted the father with a
sigh. "He was the youngest, and while he was licked like all of us, her
hand never seemed quite as firm with him as with the rest. The worst
thing parents can do to children is to let them have their own will."

Keith was listening with one ear only. His thoughts were on Uncle
Henrik, who would put in an unheralded appearance now and then, always
when the father was away and always to the consternation of the whole
household. Although hustled out of the kitchen as soon as the unbidden
visitor arrived, Keith had had a good look at him several times and had
also overheard the parents discussing him. He was still comparatively
young. Yet he looked like animated waste matter. His face seemed to hang
on him. His mouth was loose and void of expression. His eyes were
bleared and ever on the move. He spoke mostly in a toneless drawl, that
sometimes turned into a shrill whine, but also at rare intervals could
change into a soft, heart-winning purr. His clothing was poorer and
coarser than that of any other person seen by Keith. Once or twice it
seemed to the boy like a repulsive uniform, and he heard his parents
speak with mingled disgust and relief of some house or institution that
was never fully named.

"No one has a better heart than Henrik," Keith heard his father say
once, "but he has no more spine than a cucumber, and he can't keep away
from drink."

Then the food was brought in, and Uncle Henrik was forgotten. As usual,
there was a meat course to begin with, and Keith ate what for him was a
big portion. Nor did he get into any trouble beyond having an extra
large piece of hard bread put beside his plate by the father and finding
the disposal of it rather difficult.

The meat was followed by a large bowl of soup, and the very sight of it
made Keith look unhappy--a fact that did not escape his father.

Keith cared little for soups, while both parents liked them, and he had
a particular dislike of soups made on a meat stock, like the one just
brought in. For some reason that Keith might have thought funny under
other circumstances, it was called Carpenter Soup, and it contained a
lot of rather coarse vegetables. Among these were green celery and
parsnips, both of which filled the boy with an almost morbid disgust.

While the mother was serving and Keith was waiting in dumb agony, it
flashed through his mind that Uncle Granstedt might be eating that kind
of soup. If so, the boy thought, he would rather let himself be killed
than made a carpenter.

As the turn came to his own plate, Keith tried to catch his mother's eye
with a signalled appeal to put in as little as possible, but she was
talking to her husband and not noticing the boy at all. And so, at last,
he found himself confronted with a plate filled to the brim.

The first few spoonfuls went down without much resistance, chiefly
because he confined himself to the fluid part of the soup. Then it
seemed of a sudden as if one more mouthful would choke him, and his
eating became a mere dallying with his spoon.

"Go on and finish your soup," the father urged sternly.

"I can't."

"Why?"

"I have eaten all I can."

"That does not matter," rejoined his father. "One must always finish
what is on one's plate."

"But I don't like it," Keith blurted out in a moment of
desperation--which was unfortunate.

"Children have no likings of their own," said the father, putting down
his spoon. "They must like what their parents give them. And you will
finish that soup--if I have to feed you myself to make you do it."

Two more spoonfuls went down by an heroic effort. Then Keith burst into
tears, and his father's face grew still darker as he asked scornfully:

"Are you a boy or a girl?"

Keith did not care at that moment. In fact, he thought that if girls had
a right to cry, he would rather be one.

His mother was trying to coax him with kind words, and he actually
raised the filled spoon to his lips once more, but the sensation within
him was such that he let it drop again with a splash. That was the
crowning offence, and the feeding process began at once. His father took
him by the neck with one hand and administered the spoon with the other.
It was done firmly and perhaps harshly, but in such a manner that the
boy was not hurt.

Keith cried and coughed and swallowed--and in the midst of that ordeal
he noticed the wonderful softness of his father's hands. But his heart
was full of bitter resentment, and he wished that he could grow up
on the spot.

What the end might have been is hard to tell, had not a slight
commotion been heard from the kitchen at that juncture.

"There is mother now," said the father, letting go his hold on Keith's
neck. "Wipe your eyes and try to act like a boy. Some day we'll put you
into skirts."

Keith did not care. He knew now that he would not have to eat the rest
of the soup. That was the one thing in the world that seemed to matter
to him. His tears ceased. But now his body was shaken by a convulsive
sob. On the whole his mood was one of hopeless resignation.



XVIII

"I am glad to see you, mother," said Keith's father, rising quickly as a
little old woman appeared in the kitchen doorway. His tone surprised the
boy. There was warmth in it, but still more of reverence bordering on
awe, and also something of pride. Thus might a queen be greeted, but
only by those nearest and dearest to her. What struck the boy most of
all, however, was the world of difference lying between that tone and
the one in which the father addressed his wife even in moments of
closest understanding. It gave Keith his first clear glimpse of the
distinction between love and respect, between sympathy and trust.

"So you are home, Carl," the grandmother remarked in her usual quiet,
matter-of-fact manner. Then she turned to her daughter-in-law, who had
also risen to her feet: "Is your head as bad as usual, Anna?"

"Thank you," answered Keith's mother, and the boy could sense that she
was not at her ease although she smiled pleasantly. "Those new powders I
got from Dr. Sköld helped a great deal."

"Hm," grunted the older woman as she walked across the room and sat down
on a chair not far from Keith. "I had no time or money to bother with
powders at your age, but times have changed."

She was taking in every detail of the room as she spoke, without looking
pointedly at anything in particular. Suddenly Keith, who followed her
every movement as if hypnotized, was startled by meeting the hard gaze
of her calm, pale-blue eyes. Those eyes illuminated her small, wrinkled
face so completely that the boy saw nothing else. Gone were her trimmed
wig, her black shawl, her wide skirt of a checkered grey. Gone were even
her thin, tight lips that used to close with the firm grip of a vice.
Nothing was left but the eyes that looked him through and through until
it was impossible for him to stand still any longer.

"What is the matter with Keith," she asked. "Sick, too?"

"No, thank heaven," the mother blurted out. "We have nothing to complain
of his health--"

"No," the father broke in with a suggestion of grim humour, "not about
his health, but--"

"Of course," the old lady said with a nod of comprehension. "I don't
wish to criticize anybody or anything, but I don't think Keith is very
obedient. He wants to pick and choose, I suppose, as if the food were
not good enough for him."

"Well, he can't," the father rejoined.

"Children should eat anything and be glad to get it at that. Mine never
thought of refusing what I gave them. If they ever had...."

She didn't finish the sentence, but it made Keith feel that he would
never have dared one word of protest about the soup if the grandmother
had been there a little earlier. Yet she spoke without marked feeling,
without hardness, almost kindly. It was plain as she went on, that she
believed intensely in what she said, and that it touched the very
foundations of existence as she saw it:

"Children owe everything to their parents, and the least they can do in
return is to accept thankfully what they get. That is what I did in my
childhood, and I never dreamt of anything else. I had no will but that
of my parents, and I knew that I could not and should not have any will
of my own."

Everybody but the grandmother was still standing. The mother's face bore
clear evidence of conflicting tendencies to accept and reject. Looking
at her, Keith felt, as he often did, that there was something within her
that gave his view of matters a fighting chance. The father, on the
other hand, seemed of a sudden to have become a child himself, listening
obediently and with absorbed approval. It looked almost as if he were
still afraid of that white-haired, fragile, tight-lipped little woman,
and the sight of him filled Keith with a vague uneasiness.

"Please sit down," said the grandmother at last. "I did not mean to
disturb you, and Keith looks as if he might fall in a heap any moment."

"Why don't you stand up straight, Keith," asked his mother. "You will
never grow up unless you do, and your grandmother will think worse of
you than she already does."

"I am not blaming the child," the old lady began in the same passive,
quietly assured tone. But before she got further, the father broke in:

"I think Keith had better go and play in his own corner--and please keep
quiet, for grandmother and I have important things to talk of."

Keith retired as directed, and at that moment growing up seemed to him a
more unreal and impossible thing than ever.

Not long afterwards the grandmother left, both parents escorting her to
the outside door. When they returned to the living-room, Keith heard his
mother say:

"I don't see why she should always find fault with Keith. He's not a bit
worse than Brita's Carl, whom she is helping to spoil just as fast
as she can."

"Well, that's her way," replied the father, paying no attention to the
latter part of the remark. "She was brought up that way herself, and
that's the way she brought up the four of us."

He was evidently in high good-humour and did what Keith had never seen
him do before when no company was present. He got out a cigar from one
of the little drawers in the upper part of mamma's bureau and sat down
at the still covered dining table to smoke it. This made Keith feel
almost as if they were having a party, and soon he sneaked out of his
corner and joined the parents at the table. First he stood hesitatingly
beside his mother, but little by little he edged over to the father
until he actually was leaning against the latter's knee without being
rebuffed. The father even put his hand on Keith's head, and the soup
episode became very distant and dim.

"She used to lick us mercilessly," the father said as if speaking
chiefly to himself, and as he spoke there was a reminiscent smile on his
face and not a trace of resentment in his voice. "But she was absolutely
just about it--so just that she used to lick all four of us whenever one
had earned it. That was to keep the rest from thinking themselves any
better, she said, and also because she felt sure that all of us had
deserved it, although she had not happened to find it out."

"I think it hard and unjust," Keith's mother protested. "And I don't
believe in beating children all the time."

"Those were hard days," the father mused on, "and everybody did it, and
children seemed to know their place better then. I don't think we
suffered very much from the beatings we got, they certainly did not make
us think less of mother. She had her hands full, too, and not much time
to think of nice distinctions. We were all small when father died, and
Henrik was just a baby. There was no one but her to look after us, and
how she did it, God only knows. But I have never heard her speak one
word of complaint, and she always managed. Sometimes there was little
enough, and we were mighty glad to get what there was, as she told you
herself, but she always had something for us. Then we had to go to work
just as soon as we could. I was thirteen when I began to add my share to
the common heap."

"Did you go to school," Keith ventured, having recently overheard some
talk of his parents that seemed to bear on his own immediate future.

"I did," the father replied, "but not long. I wanted to study, and my
teacher was so anxious that I should go on that he promised to get me
free admission to the higher school. But mother wouldn't listen. And I
suppose it was not to be."

"Did you like school," asked Keith, not having the slightest idea of
what a school might be like.

"Yes, I liked all about it but one thing. There was a big boy who
bullied all the rest, and no one cared to fight him. He went for me the
very first day of the term, and when I fought back, he gave me such a
licking that I could hardly walk into the schoolroom afterwards. The
next day he asked if I had had enough, and I told him I meant to go on
till he had enough. So we started right in again, and he licked me worse
than the day before. But I just couldn't give in. For three whole months
we fought every day, and each day I made it harder for him. And one day
I got the upper hand of him at last, and gave it to him until he began
to cry and begged for mercy. Then I let him go, but no sooner had I
turned my back on him, than he picked up a small sapling that was lying
around and struck me over the head with it. There was a piece of root
standing straight out, and it hit me right on top of my head so that the
blood squirted out and I fainted on the spot. Then he had to leave
school, and the last thing I heard of him was that the police had got
him for something still worse."

"Oh, Carl," the mother cried with a shudder, "you should have complained
to the teacher!"

"The teacher was watching us all the time, although I didn't know it.
He told me afterwards that he would have helped me any time I asked, but
that he would have thought less of me for asking."

Keith stared hard at his father and tried to imagine himself doing the
same thing, but his fancy did not seem to work well in that direction.
Later, when he was in bed, the father's story came back to him. Somehow
it made him feel very proud, but also uneasy. He felt that there nothing
more wonderful than to fight some one stronger than oneself and win, and
soon he was busy slaying giants and dragons and bears and other monsters
that he had heard Granny tell about. But he tried to think of himself as
fighting a real boy in the way as his father, his dreams seemed to peter
out ignominiously.

Then his mother came to in to tuck him in and make him say his prayers
and kiss him good-night. Suddenly he flung his arms about her neck in a
passion of craving for tenderness and protection. Putting his mouth
close to her ear, he whispered a question that had nothing to do with
the father's story or his fancies of a few moments ago.

"Why must I eat things I don't want?"



XIX

The next Sunday morning found Keith more than usually restless. Half a
dozen times in quick succession he appealed to the mother for
suggestions as to what to do. Finally she turned to the father, who was
preparing to go out:

"Can't you take him along, Carl? He has never seen the bank, and he
really should get out a little."

For a little while the father said nothing. Then he spoke directly to
Keith:

"Put on your coat and cap."

The boy who had been looking and listening with open mouth and a heart
that hardly dared to beat, became wildly excited.

"Now, Keith," the father admonished, "you can't go unless you behave."

"Where's my coat, mother," asked Keith eagerly and unheedingly.

"Don't you know that yourself," growled the father. "You are a big boy
already, and you should keep your own things in order."

"I have hung it up where he cannot reach it," the mother interceded.
"I'll get it for him."

The coat and the cap were on at last, but then began the struggle about
the muffler and the mittens. The mother had crocheted them herself for
Keith and insisted that they should be worn whenever he went outdoors
during autumn and winter. The muffler was long and white, with blue
rings two inches apart, and in shape more like a boa.

Keith wanted the mittens, because his hands got cold easily, but not the
muffler, which, he thought, made him look like a girl.

The father objected to everything of that kind, which he said, tended to
make the boy soft and susceptible to colds. He himself did not put on an
overcoat until the weather grew very severe, and he never buttoned it,
no matter how cold it grew. His throat was always bare, and he never
wore gloves of any kind. Nor did he ever put his hands in his pockets
while walking. He had a favourite trick of picking up a handful of snow,
which he rolled into a ball and carried in his hand until it became hard
as ice. His hands were milk-white, beautifully shaped and well cared
for. It was impossible to believe that for many years they had done the
hardest kind of work, often outdoors and generally in a poorly heated
drafty shop. He was proud of them, although he pretended not to care
when anybody spoke of them, and they filled Keith with admiration and
envy. He tried to follow the father's example, but with the result that
his hands grew red as boiled crawfish and began to ache under the nails
until he had to cry.

"You bring him up a woman," the father muttered, when Keith was ready at
last.

Then they left, having been kissed several times each by the mother, who
warned Keith not to let go of his father's hand under any circumstances
while they were on the streets.

Down in the passageway on the ground floor, Keith started to take off
the muffler.

"No," said the father. "Now you keep it on. Your mother has told you to
wear it, and you must not take it off behind her back."

"But you didn't want me to have it on," Keith protested in genuine
surprise.

"No, I didn't, because I want you to be hardened and grow up like a man.
But there is something I want still more, and that is for you to obey
your mother, first because children should always obey their parents,
and secondly because it makes your mother very unhappy if you don't do
as she tells you."

His tone changed slightly during the last part of his remark. Something
of an appeal came into it and went straight to Keith's heart, filling it
with a glow of righteous determination. It was always that way with him.
A word spoken kindly made him eager to comply, and that was particularly
the case if it came from some person not given to sentimentality.

In the lane they turned and saw the mother lying in the window to watch
them. As usual, kisses were thrown back and forth as they passed up the
lane, but Keith felt rather impatient about it, and it was with a marked
sense of relief he turned the corner into East Long Street. He was eager
to push ahead into unknown regions and did not care to look back.

Although he spoke little enough, the father proved a more genial
companion than Keith had dared to expect. In fact, he had been a little
oppressed at the thought of being entirely alone with the father, which
was quite a new experience to him. But now he found it a pleasure, and
their communion seemed more easy than when the mother was with them. He
walked sedately enough, clinging to one of his father's soft, white
hands, but every so often he ventured a skip and a jump without being
rebuked, and on the whole he felt the kind of happiness that used to
come on Christmas Eve, after the father had started to distribute
the presents.

Keith had frequently accompanied his mother as far as the little square
at the end of the street, and he pointed proudly to the grocery store
where he had helped to buy things.

"Yes," responded the father, and again his tone seemed strangely
unfamiliar to the boy. "I might have had such a store myself, if luck
had been with me."

The idea was more than Keith could digest at once. It was too
overwhelming, and once more he looked at his father with the feeling of
wonder and awe that sometimes took hold of him almost against his
will--a feeling that clashed hopelessly with the nervous shyness
commonly inspired by the father's stern manners.

"Why didn't you get it," the boy ventured at last.

"Because I was born under the Monkey Star," replied the father grimly.

The boy wondered what kind of star that was, but still more he wondered
at the father's mood which appeared to indicate a displeasure not
directed at the questioner. Before Keith could ask anything more, they
had started across one of the open market places that line the
fresh-water side of the old City.

The place was empty except for a few closed and abandoned booths. But at
the foot of it lay rows of one-masted sailing vessels loaded halfway up
their masts with piles of fire-wood. In the background, beyond a small
sheet of water crossed by a low iron bridge, rose abruptly the rocky
walls of the South End, with funny old houses perched precariously along
their edges. Keith stared so hard at all the new things that not a
single question had a chance to escape him before they entered another
street and stopped in front of a stone house that to him looked like
a castle.

It had a real portal instead of an ordinary doorway, and the inside was
still more impressive. Keith had been to church once or twice, and for a
moment he thought himself in one. But he saw no seats, and his father
did not look solemn at all. The walls were of stone curiously streaked
and coloured. The ceiling was so far up that Keith had to bend far
backwards to see it. It was full of ornaments and supported by two rows
of tall round stone pillars so thick that Keith could not get his arms
halfway around one of them. In the background rose a very broad and
seemingly endless stairway of white stone. While they climbed it step by
step, Keith wondered if the king in his palace had anything like it.

Arrived at the top at last, they turned into a sort of lobby--a rather
bare room with several plain desks by the windows and many hooks along
the inner wall. There the father took off both his coats and armed
himself with a huge feather duster and a rag.

"Remember, Keith," he said in his ordinary tone, "that you may look as
much as you please, but that you must not touch anything. If you do, you
can never come here again."

Having passed through several smaller rooms, they emerged finally into a
hall so bright and spacious that Keith stopped with a gasp and for a
moment thought himself in the open air again. It was as wide as the
building itself and three sides were full of large windows A counter of
mahogany that looked miles long ran from one end to the other. The place
behind it contained many desks so tall that Keith could not have reached
the tops of them with his raised hand. But from a distance he could see
that they were full of tempting things--paper and pens and pencils, red
bars of sealing wax, glue-pots and rulers and glistening shears.

Two men, also in their shirt-sleeves, were busy at the desks, dusting
them and arranging the things on top of them. And the father quickly
went to work in the same way.

It seemed interesting to Keith, who would have liked to try his hand at
it. But it also disconcerting for some reason he could not explain and
for a while he watched the father as if unwilling to believe his own
eyes. Somehow it did not tally with certain notions formed in Keith's
head on the night when the church was burning. At last he up to his
father and asked:

"Is this where you always work?"

"No," was the answer given with a peculiar grimness. "This is for the
officials."

"What are they?"

"Oh, tellers and cashiers and bookkeepers."

Keith noted the words for future inquiries. For the moment they meant
nothing to him.

"Why are you not here too," he persisted.

"Because I am only an attendant--a mere _vaktmästare_. That is a fact
you had better fix in your mind once for all, my boy."

"Is that your little boy, Wellander," one of the other men called out at
that moment. "Let us have a look at him."

Hand-shakings and head-pattings followed as Keith was presented to
"Uncle" This and "Uncle" That. He didn't object and he didn't care. They
looked nice enough, and their talk was friendly, but somehow he felt
that his parents did not care for them. Some of the glamour had left the
place. In spite of its magnificence, he did not like it, although he was
glad to have seen it.

Discovering a wastepaper basket full of envelopes with brightly coloured
marks on them, he regained his interest a little. He knew those marks
for stamps and they had pictures on them which attracted him very much.
So he made a bee-line for the basket and proceeded to pick out what he
liked best.

"Have you forgotten what I told you," he heard his father shout to him.

"They have been thrown away," he said going toward the father.

"That is neither here nor there," was the sharp answer he got. "You know
they are not yours, and so you must not touch them. Put them back
at once."

Keith did as he was told, wondering if he really had done anything wrong
or if his father merely objected for some reason of his own.

Then he walked around uninterested and forlorn until they were ready to
go home again. The stairway seemed shorter as they descended, but the
pillars were tall and thick as before. And on the way home his father
found a little shop open and bought him a few _öre's_ worth of
hard candy.

It was the only time Keith could ever remember his having done such a
thing.



XX

The lodger happened to be away when they got home, and the mother had
opened the door to the parlour in order to get a little more air and
light into the living-room. After dinner the father went into the
parlour to take a nap on the big sofa, while the mother settled down
comfortably in her easy chair, a piece of handiwork on her lap as usual.
Keith took up his customary position on the footstool to tell her what
he had seen and done during his morning excursion.

She was eager to hear everything and helped him along with questions,
and yet there ran through her very eagerness a subtle inner resistance
which the boy felt vaguely. It as if she never really cared for anything
concerning him in which she herself had not taken part.

The original glamour had returned to every aspect of his new experience,
and he tried excitedly to describe the wonders of the vestibule, the
stairway and the big hall. In the midst of it he paused suddenly and
fell to staring into vacancy.

"Was that all," she asked, puzzled by his silence.

"Lena dusts our rooms, doesn't she," was his rather startling
counter-question.

"Mostly," the mother replied with a searching glance at his puckered
brows. "Although I sometimes ..."

"You don't have to," the boy broke in.

"No" she admitted, "but then I am sure it is properly done."

"Is that why papa dusts the tables in the bank?"

A pause followed during which it was the mother's turn to stand the
boy's intense scrutiny.

"No," she said at last. "He does it because it is a part of his work,
and a shame it is that he has to. Scrub-women come in and do the rest of
the cleaning, but they are not trusted with the desks, and so the
attendants have to take turns doing that part of it. That's why your
father has to leave so very early in the morning."

Mother and son lapsed into silence once more. It was broken by another
question from the boy.

"Why couldn't I take some stamps that had been thrown away?"

"Had your father said anything about it before you took them?"

"He told me not to touch anything."

"Then you couldn't because he had told you to leave things alone. He is
so careful in all such matters. Sometimes he goes a little too far,
perhaps, but you can be sure that he means right. Other people want the
stamps, and there is a lot of gossip and envy about everything, and he
is too proud to be dragged into that sort of thing. It is always better,
Keith, to leave alone what you know is not your own. Honesty endures
beyond all else."

Keith made no direct response, but sprang one more irrelevant question:

"Why didn't papa get the grocery store?"

"How do you know," the mother demanded with a quick glance at him.

"Papa told me."

"Well," she drawled as if thinking. Then she settled back in the chair,
her mind made up. "Listen, and I will tell you a story. Once upon a time
there was a rich old man who owned a grocery store."

"That's where they sell prunes and raisins and sugar," the boy put in.

"And the store was so fine," she went on unheedingly, "that the old man
was permitted to sell all those things to the king's own kitchen. The
old man had many assistants, but at the head of them all was a young man
who knew just what to do, because he had worked in such stores ever
since he was a little boy. And he was so honest and able and polite that
the people liked him very much and came to the store for his sake, but
the old man liked him more anybody else."

"Was the old man nice," Keith asked.

"Yes, indeed, but he was also very peculiar, and the most peculiar thing
about him was that he hated all women and thought that a man who married
was lost for ever."

"Did he have any children?"

"No, men who want no wives get no children. That is a part of their
punishment. And so when the owner of the store got older and older, and
began to feel tired, he didn't know to whom he should leave the store.
You may be sure that he thought it over many times, because he was
exceedingly proud of the store and wanted it to go on. The result of his
thinking was that he decided to give it to the young man whom he trusted
and liked so much."

"How did the young man look," Keith broke in.

"Something like your father, I should say. But while all this was going
on, the young man had met a princess and fallen in love with her...."

"A real princess," asked the boy with wide-open eyes.

"All princesses are real in their own opinion. And she and the young man
had promised to marry each other, and this the old man learned at last.
Then he was very, very angry and told the young man that he was a fool.
And when the young man answered that there were many of his kind, and
that he had pledged his word, the old man told him that he would not get
the store unless he promised to have nothing more to do with the
princess. But the young man loved her and would not give her up, and so,
you see--he didn't get the store. Don't you think that was nobly
done, Keith?"

"Ye-es," the boy assented without particular enthusiasm, "but if he had
got the store, we should have been rich now?"

"We," repeated the mother in a funny tone. "Why, then there would have
been no _we_."

"Why not," he demanded.

"Or it might have been worse still," she whispered as if momentarily
forgetful of the boy's presence.

"There is your father now," she said a moment later, when a slight stir
was heard in the adjoining room. "Don't say anything more about the
store.... Do you know what your father wanted to be most of all?"

Keith looked up speculatively as his father appeared at the doorway to
the parlour--a man of medium height, who stooped because he was
nearsighted, and so looked shorter than he was, but also stronger
because of the great width of his shoulders.

"I can tell you," the father put in. "When I couldn't study, I wanted to
be a sailor, and I tried to take hire on a ship whose master knew me and
wished to help me. Then they found out that I was too nearsighted to
steer by the compass, and that was the end of it. Didn't I tell that I
was born under the Monkey Star?"

"Don't talk like that, Carl," the mother protested, rising to give him a
kiss. "You have done very well, and there is no man in the bank more
respected than you."

"Yes," he admitted with something like a grin. "They know I wouldn't
steal even if I had a chance, and they let me collect four million
crowns, as I did the other day, but I shall never get beyond where I am
today. So there you are--what's struck for a farthing will never be
a dollar."

Keith's head was still full of what he had heard when he went to bed
that night, and he didn't know whether to feel happy or unhappy about
it. His father had grown bigger and more interesting in some ways, and
yet the boy's chief impression was of a failure and a fall. It was this
impression that stuck most deeply in his mind.



XXI

Keith's home was not one of those hospitable places with the doors
always wide open, to which people are drawn almost against their will
and from which they come away with difficulty. Perhaps it was, above
all, the spirit of the father that settled this matter. To him, more
than to any Englishman, his home was his castle, and he liked to keep
the drawbridge raised against unwelcome company. And most company seemed
unwelcome, although at times, when the right persons appeared at the
right moment, he could be happy as a child and unbend in a manner that
made Keith gape with wonder. When her good mood prevailed, the mother,
too, was touchingly eager for the diversion provided by a chance visit,
but when the dark moments came, she shunned everybody, while at the same
time she watched any prolonged failure to call with morbid
suspiciousness, ascribing it promptly to a sense of superiority toward
herself and her family. Granny was glad enough to talk to anybody, but
she would never ask any one to call, and if no one came, she was apt to
dig out some particularly bitter proverb, like "money alone has
many friends."

Both parents could be hospitable enough when occasion so demanded, but
it was a formal thing with them, exercised only after due preparation.
In many ways, they were large-heartedly generous, but only in a serious
manner, when actual need required it. They might give freely beyond what
they could well afford, but the father could be out of humour for days
if some little thing regarded as particularly his own had been touched
or used by another member of the family.

As it was, people came and went a good deal, but they came formally or
because some specific errand brought them, and most of the errands,
Keith soon realized, were connected with a desire for help. The old
women living like nightbirds in the garret, would drop in frequently,
and almost invariably with some tale of woe that sooner or later drew
from the mother relief in one form or another. And one of Keith's
earliest tasks, half coveted and half feared, was to walk up to one of
the attics with a plate of soup or a saucer full of jam or some other
tidbit. Others would come from the outside, and they, too, were mostly
old women. They always wanted to pat Keith, and he objected passionately
to all of them. His especial aversion was a gaunt old woman with a big
hooked nose and a pair of startlingly large, sad-looking eyes. She
always smiled, and her smile was hopelessly out of keeping with the rest
of her face. The very sight of her made Keith forget all his manners.
Time and again his mother rebuked him and tried to bring him around by
telling the old woman's story--a story of wonderful self-sacrifice and
heroic struggle--but it made no difference to him. There was something
about the sight of poverty and unhappiness and failure that provoked him
beyond endurance, and sometimes he would turn to his mother with a
reckless cry of:

"Why do you let them come here at all?"

For the friends of the family, who came there on an equal footing, he
showed more respect, and for a few of them he felt a real liking. As a
rule, however, they inspired him with nothing but indifference, and his
one reason for greeting them with some approach at cordiality was that
they brought a change into the general monotony of the home, and that
their coming might lead to the distribution of some dainties out of the
ordinary. Some of his parents' friends were poor and growing poorer.
Others had the appearance of doing well and hoping for more. It made no
difference to Keith. They were all middle-aged, sedate and preoccupied
with their own little affairs. They tried to be nice to him, but they
did not interest him, and his main grievance against them--not clearly
understood by any means--was that they brought nothing into his life of
what he wanted.

Had he been asked what he wanted, he would have answered unhesitatingly:

"Some one to play with."



XXII

Having whined and nagged until his mother no longer could bear it, Keith
at last obtained the cherished permission to go and play in the lane.

"But look out for horses," warned his mother as he stood in the doorway
ready to run. "And don't run out of sight, and you must come when I
call, and--you had better keep away from other boys, or you may come
home quite naked this time."

"What do you mean," asked Keith, turning to see whether the mother was
joking or talking seriously.

"Don't you recall when those boys took your coat from you, and you came
up here crying?"

There could be no mistake about her meaning just what she said. Keith
stood still thinking very hard. Here was another memory that he could
not remember at all. There was not a trace of it left in his mind, and
yet it must have happened. It sounded exciting, too, and he wished to
know all about it.

"You had better close the door," his mother suggested.

"All right," said Keith, hastening to close the door from the outside
and make a dive for the stairway. There would be plenty of time to ask
about the loss of his coat later. He was halfway down the first flight
when he heard the kitchen door open behind him, and his heart leapt into
his throat.

"You must go down the stairs quietly," his mother called out from above,
whereupon Keith's heart resumed its normal position.

He descended the rest of that flight on tip-toe. The second one was
taken more rapidly, and down the last one he went two steps at a time,
the little iron plates under his heels hitting the stones with a ring
that echoed through the old house.

In the lane he found them loading a dray in front of the distillery, and
he started across to watch the men straining at the next barrel. He had
hardly taken a step in that direction, however, when a loud pop was
heard from the black cave forming the entrance to the distillery. It
was followed first by a single cry, and then by a hubbub of voices. A
second later a young man came running out and threw himself prone into
the gutter, where a trickle of water was to be seen.

Keith was too astonished to be frightened at once. He could not
understand what made the man act in this way. Then another man came out
in a rush and began to beat the legs of the man in the gutter with his
hands, and Keith suddenly noticed that little blue flames were dancing
up and down the grimy leathern trousers of the first man.

The memory of the night when the church burned leaped into his mind,
making him turn instinctively toward the passageway and his
mother's lap.

At that moment a third man appeared carrying a big tank full of water
which he poured over the man in the gutter. The latter got on his feet
and limped back into the distillery, supported by his two comrades.

Keith was left behind, trembling a little and gazing curiously at the
hanging head of the dray-horse which had not made the slightest movement
during the previous excitement.

"He'll have to go to bed," said a sleepy voice at his shoulder just
then.

Keith swung around as if touched by an electric shock. Before him he saw
another small boy, apparently of his own age, but a little taller, and
light-haired like himself.

"What's your name," asked Keith as soon as he caught his breath.

"Johan," answered the other stolidly, but not unfriendly.

"Have you got another name like me?"

"My name is Johan Peter Gustafsson," was the reply given in the tone of
a lesson painfully learned.

"Where do you live?"

"Right here."

"Not in our house," Keith protested.

"No, down there," Johan explained, pointing to the little side door
leading into the courtyard of one of the corner houses at the Quay.

"What's your father?" Keith continued his cross-examination.

"_Vaktmästare_" said Johan indifferently.

"So is mine," Keith cried eagerly. "Have you got a bank, too?"

Johan shook his head as if unable to grasp what Keith meant.

"My popsey works in the office down there," he said, "and we live beside
it, and at night I go with popsey when he carries all the mail to the
postoffice."

"Why do you call him popsey," inquired Keith, fascinated by the new word
and wondering if he would dare use it to his own father.

"Because that's what he is," Johan declared.

A few minutes later they were playing together as if they had known each
other for ever. They had just discovered an unusually large and tempting
pin in a crack at the bottom of the gutter, when Keith heard his mother
calling from the window above:

"What are you doing, Keith?"

"Oh, just playing," he replied without looking up, forgetful of
everything but the pin that would not come out of the crack.

"Who is that with you?"

"That is Johan," Keith shouted back triumphantly, "and his papa is a
_vaktmästare_, too."

"Come right up and let me speak to you," was the insistant rejoinder
from above.

"Oh, please, mamma," the boy pleaded, his voice breaking a little,
"can't I stay just a little longer?"

"You must come at once," his mother commanded.

"Is that your mumsey," Johan asked.

"It is my mamma," Keith retorted, his attention momentarily diverted by
Johan's most peculiar way of referring to his parents.

"Then you had better go," advised the new friend sagely, "or she will
tell your popsey, and then you know what happens to you."

"I think I can come down again, if you wait for me," cried Keith as he
ran into the long dark passageway.

At that moment a cry of "Johan" rose from the lower part of the lane,
and Keith had to come back once more to look.

"There's my mumsey now," said Johan philosophically, pointing to an open
window on the ground floor of the corner house. With that he slouched
off in a manner that Keith half envied and half resented.



XXIII

The sudden emergence of Johan had filled Keith's heart with a new hope.
Here was a possible playmate at last. The fact that his father was a
_vaktmästare_ like Keith's ought to settle all paternal opposition, the
boy thought. But to his great surprise, he found this not to be
the case.

A severe cross-examination followed his return home. In the midst of it,
Keith made a grievous strategic mistake, lured on by his insatiable
curiosity about strange words.

"Why does Johan call his mamma 'mumsey' and his papa 'popsey,'" he asked
unexpectedly. "It sounds funny."

"Because he does not know any better," his mother rejoined with
unmistakable disapproval. "It doesn't sound nice, and it isn't nice."

"But his papa and mamma don't care," Keith objected.

"That's the worst of it," said the mother. "It shows they are not very
nice people, and I wish to talk to your father before you can play with
Johan any more."

"I have heard of them," the grandmother piped up, making them both turn
towards her, one hopefully and the other doubtfully.

The grandmother never left the kitchen. She walked from the sofa to the
big foot-stool, from the foot-stool to the table by the window, and from
the table back to the sofa. Sometimes she would not be seen talking to
another person for days. And yet she had a miraculous way of surprising
the rest of the family with pieces of gossip picked out of the air, one
might think. There was apparently not a person in the neighbourhood of
whom she had not heard, and about whom she could not give some more or
less intimate piece of information. They were all perfect strangers to
her, but she followed their lives with as much keenness for minute
details as if they had been her nearest kin or dear friends.

"She was a cook in the house of the man whose office Gustafsson works
in," the grandmother went on. "He used to do odd jobs for the family,
cutting wood and such things, and in that way he met her in the kitchen,
and one fine day they decided to get married. She is older than him, and
I guess it was her last chance. But the family was crazy about her, and
when they heard of it, they gave him the place of attendant in the
office downstairs and the two rooms back of the office to live in. He
was just a peasant boy, and she reads the Bible all day and goes to
prayer-meeting at night."

"How do you know all that," wondered Keith's mother, having learned by
this time that the old woman's gossip was generally well founded
on truth.

"Oh," the grandmother said with a queer smile particular to such
occasions, "a little bird sang it to me."

"I think they must be rather low people," Keith's mother concluded.

"Perhaps," the grandmother said, "but they have plenty of religion at
least, and I don't think the boy can do much harm to Keith."

Keith ran up to the grandmother and kissed her impulsively.

That night there was a great family council. Keith's father was told
about Johan and the Gustafssons.

"I think they are about as good as ourselves," was his verdict, given in
a tone suggesting contempt for his own position rather than respect for
that of Johan's father. "But Keith has his toys, and that ought to be
enough for him."

"It _is_ rather lonely for him," the mother rejoined, "and he should get
out a little, I suppose, but I hate to have him playing about the
streets, and I fear Johan's manners are not very good."

"The best thing is to send him to school," said the father.

"What are you talking of, Carl," the mother cried. "The idea--when he is
barely five!"

"He knows more about the letters than I did when I began school at
seven," the father came back unperturbed.

"I don't think it would be very bad for him to play a little with Johan
now and then," said the mother evasively, bending down to kiss Keith,
who had snuggled up to her during the preceding talk. Then she put her
hand through his waves of almost flaxen hair, bent his head slightly
backward, looked straight into his eyes, and asked:

"You don't want to leave me, do you?"

"No," said Keith, hugging her passionately, "but I think I should like
to go to school."

The idea carried no distinct image to his mind, and he felt a little
timid toward all those unknown possibilities implied by the word school,
but this slight feeling of hesitation was swamped by a longing so
restless and so irresistible that it sent tears to his eyes, although he
could not tell himself what it was he longed for.



XXIV

It was true that Keith knew a good deal for his age. In fact, he had
mastered the whole alphabet and was making good progress in spelling
under his mother's guidance. He was eager and quick to learn. Generally
his interest was rather fitful, but along this one line it showed no
wavering. It was as if the boy had known that the art of reading would
offer him an escape of some sort.

He might have advanced still more rapidly if his mother had been more
steady in her teaching. She was very proud of him, and she spoke of
reading and studying as if there were nothing finer in the world.

"No better burden bears any man than much wisdom," she quoted one day
from the old Eddas--probably without knowing the source. "I know, if any
one does, what lack of money means, but I want you rather to have
learning than wealth. Then, when the whole world is listening to you
with bated breath, I shall walk across North Bridge resting on your arm,
and I shall be repaid for all that my own life has not brought me. We
shall walk arm in arm, you and I, at four o'clock, when the King goes
for a walk, too, and all Stockholm is there to see.... Will you do
that, Keith?"

"Of course," he cried, his eyes shining.

But sometimes she was helpless in the grip of one of her depressed
moods, and then days might go by without a lesson. Far from being made
happy by that respite, he would plead with her to be taught "one more
little letter," and finally she would bring down the book from the
hanging book shelf on the wall back of her easy chair. There stood the
a-b-c book she had bought for him, and her favourite hymn-book, and the
New Testament given to the father when he left school to begin earning
his own living, and the miniature copy of Luther's catechism presented
to him at the time of his confirmation. There, too, rested the big Bible
which Keith's mother treasured as much as her wedding ring and the
bureau that was her chief wedding present. It was a gift from her father
when she was confirmed, and on its fly-leaf he had written:

"Belongs to Anna Margareta Carlsson."

It was this Bible rather than the a-b-c book that became the principal
means of instruction. Keith loved it, and he could not have been much
more than three years old when he first began to pore over its quaint
old illustrations. The first of these showed an old man with a long
beard and a trailing white garment floating over a sheet of water out of
which rose two ragged pieces of rock. At one corner a pallid sun emerged
out of the fleeing mists, while, at the opposite corner, a tiny moon
crescent seemed about to disappear beneath the stilled waters.

"Who is that," asked Keith not once, but many times.

"That is God creating the world," explained his mother.

"But I don't see the world."

"It is just coming out," she said, pointing to the rocks.

"Who's God," was Keith's next question as a rule.

"He is the father of the whole universe," the mother said reverently.

"Papa's too," asked the boy once, and seeing his mother nod assent, he
cried jubilantly:

"Then he must be my grandfather, whose portrait you haven't got!"

More frequently he stopped short as soon as he heard about the universal
fatherhood. That was grown-up talk to him, and like much else, it
carried no meaning to his mind. Nor did he waste much thought on it
after having asked once if he could see God and been told that no man
could do that and live. His mind was occupied with food and clothes and
toys and people and things. What could never be seen was easily
dismissed--much more easily than the spook that one of the servant girls
insisted on having seen, thus making Keith's father so angry that he
nearly discharged her on the spot. And from that first picture in the
Bible the boy turned impatiently to another further on, where a small
boy with a sword almost as big as himself was cutting the head off a man
much taller than Keith's father. And at the top of each page appeared
big black letters which he could recognize almost as easily as those in
the a-b-c book, although they were differently shaped and much more
pretty to look at.

To Keith this opening up of a new world was exclusively pleasant at
first, and so it was to his mother, but other people seemed to be
troubled by it at times. One day his free-spoken aunt was visiting with
them, and, as usual, disagreeing with Keith's mother, who evidently felt
one of her dark spells approaching. Wishing to express her disagreement
at some particular point quite forcibly, but wishing also to keep the
listening boy from enriching his vocabulary with a term of doubtful
desirability, she took the precaution to spell out the too
picturesque word:

"R-o-t!" Just then she caught a gleam of aroused interest in Keith's
eyes, and to make assurance doubly sure, she hastened to add:
"Says rod!"

"No," Keith objected promptly. "It says rot, and I want to know what it
means."

"I knew that small pigs also have ears, but I didn't know they could
spell," was her amused comment, uttered in a tone that touched something
in Keith's inside most pleasantly. Then, however, she went on in a
manner grown quite serious:

"You had better send him to school, Anna."

"Yes," replied the mother to Keith's intense surprise, "Carl and I have
been talking it over and practically decided to do so. He certainly
needs some better guidance than he gets from his poor, good-for-nothing
mother."

"Good-for-nothing fiddlesticks!" sputtered the aunt. "You'll make me say
something much worse than rot. Anna, if you keep talking like that when
the boy hears it."

Keith had heard, but his mind was absorbed by the new idea.

"Well," said his mother, "I cannot take care of him properly. He is
running down to that Gustafsson boy all time and most of the time I
can't get him home again except by going for him."

"Johan's mother said yesterday that I hadn't been there half an hour
when you called for me," Keith broke in. "And then she said that I had
better not come back if you don't think Johan good enough for to
play with."

"I don't say we are better than anybody else," said the mother,
addressing herself to the aunt rather than to Keith. "But I don't know
what he is doing when he is down there, and Johan seems such a clod that
I can't see why Keith wants to play with him."

"Why can't Johan come up here," asked Keith.

"Because ...," said his mother, and got no further.

"Yes," the aunt declared in a tone of absolute finality, "you must send
him to school."

No sooner had the aunt taken her leave than Keith assailed his mother
with excited demands for further information. She took his head between
her both hands and looked at him as if she would never see him again.

"Only five," she said at last, "and already he wants to get away. A few
years more--a few short years--and you will be gone for good,
I suppose."

"Oh, mamma," he protested, "you know that I shall never leave you!"

"No, never entirely," she cried, kissing him fervently. "Promise me you
won't, Keith!"

He promised, and then he wanted to know what they did in school. But she
began to talk about difficulties and dangers and temptations and all
sorts of things he couldn't grasp. She spoke with intense feeling, and
as always when she was deeply moved, his whole being was set vibrating
in tune with her mood. His cheeks flushed, his throat choked, his eyes
brimmed over with tears, and at last he began to wonder whether he had
not better stay right where he was. Her eyes were dim with tears, too,
and once more she took his head between her hands and looked an endless
time before she said:

"Now you are beginning life in earnest, Keith!"



PART II



I

One day in the early autumn Keith's mother dressed him with unusual care
and kissed him several times before they left the house. Granny had to
be kissed, too, and even Lena came forward to shake hands and say
good-bye. It was a very solemn affair.

Hand in hand Keith and his mother walked clear across the old City, past
Great Church, until they came to a very broad lane at the foot of which
was a square with a statue in it. At the other end of the square lay a
very large, red building.

"That's the House of Knights where all the nobility hang up their
coats-of-arms," said the mother.

But Keith was too excited to ask any questions at that moment.

They entered a house much finer and neater than their own and stopped in
front of a door on the second floor. A hubbub of shrill voices could be
heard from within. Keith gripped his mother's hand more firmly.

Then the door was opened by a white-haired lady with spectacles and they
were admitted to a large room, containing a score of little boys and
girls. A dead silence fell on the room as they appeared, and every eye
turned toward Keith, who blushed furiously as was his wont whenever he
found himself observed.

After a brief talk with the teacher, Keith's mother to him:

"This is Aunt Westergren, whom you must obey as you obey me. And now be
a good boy and don't cry."

As the mother tarried by the door for a moment to exchange a last word
with the teacher, and perhaps also to cast one more lingering glance at
the boy, a little girl ran up to Keith, put her right fore-finger on top
of his head and cried out:

"Towhead!"

All the other children giggled. Keith blushed more deeply than ever, but
did not say a word or stir a limb. A moment later the teacher began to
cross-question him about his knowledge of letters and spelling, and he
found it much easier to answer her than to face the children. But, of
course, after a while he was quite at home among them without knowing
how it had happened.

That afternoon his mother came for him. The next morning he had to start
out alone under direct orders from the father, and alone he made his way
home again, his bosom swelling with a sense of wonderful independence.
Years passed before he learned that his mother had watched over him for
days before she was fully convinced of his ability to find the way
by himself.

The autumn passed. Winter and spring came and went. It was summer again.
The little school closed. Keith could read the head-lines at the tops of
the pages in the big Bible without help. But of the school where he had
learned it hardly a memory remained. It was as if the place had made no
impression whatsoever on his mind. And the children with whom he studied
and played nearly a whole year might as well have been dreams, forgotten
at the moment of waking--all but one of them.

Harald alone seemed a real, living thing, a part of Keith's own life,
but not a part of the school where the two met daily. He was a year
older than Keith, a little slow mentally, but rather unusually advanced
in other ways. His father was a merchant of some sort, with an office of
his own and half a dozen clerks at his command, and Harald had been
taught to regard himself as a young gentleman. They lived a few houses
from the school, in the same street, and their home was a revelation
to Keith.

Houses less fortunate than his own were familiar to him, but he had
never seen a better one until he was asked to visit Harald for the first
time, and the comparisons made on that occasion stuck deeply in
his mind.

They entered through a hallway where caps and coats were left behind,
and from there they went into a room where every piece of furniture was
of mahogany. Between the windows hung a mirror in a gilded frame that
was as tall as the room itself, so that Keith could see himself from
head to foot. The object that caught the boy's attention most of all,
however, was a chandelier suspended from the middle of the ceiling and
made up of hundreds of little rods of glass. As Harald slammed the door
on entering, some of the rods were set in motion and struck against each
other with a tiny twinkle that seemed to Keith the most beautiful sound
he had ever heard.

That room, Harald said, was used only to receive visitors, and he gave
Keith to understand that there were any number of other rooms on both
sides of it. One of these was Harald's own and used by nobody else. He
could even lock the door of it on the inside, if he wanted. There they
played with tin soldiers several inches high, and Harald had a little
cannon out of which they could shoot dry peas, so that it was possible
to fight a real battle by dividing the soldiers and taking turns of
using the cannon. Finally Harald's mother appeared with a bowl of fruit
and greeted the visitor with a certain searching kindness that made him
a little uneasy in the midst of all his enjoyment.

Keith returned home that day much later than unusual to find his mother
in a state of frantic worry. At first she declared that he must not go
anywhere without her knowing about it in advance, but after a while she
became quite interested and palpably elated by Keith's tale of all the
glories he had seen. She explained that the glass rods on the
chandeliers were prisms that showed the whole rainbow when you held them
in front of a light, and she asked him eagerly if he had been invited to
come again. But when the father heard of it that night, he said:

"I don't think Keith should go there at all. He can't ask such a boy
over here, and the next thing we know, Keith's own home will no longer
be good enough for him."

Keith could hardly believe his ears. He had never felt such resentment
against his father, and just before going to bed, while his father was
out of the room for a moment, he whispered to his mother:

"I think papa does not want me to have any fun!"

"You don't understand," she retorted. "He means well. Remember what
Granny says: Equals make the best playmates."

Three or four times Keith went home with Harald. Then the gates of
paradise were suddenly slammed in his face. One day, as they were
leaving school together, Harald remarked quite calmly:

"You can't come home with me any more."

"Why," gasped Keith, his throat choking.

"Because mamma says I must find some one else to play with," Harald
explained. Then he softened a little: "I can't help it, and I like you."

"But why," insisted Keith on the verge of tears.

"You look like a nice boy, mamma says, but your father is nothing but a
_vaktmästare_, and mine is a _grosshandlare_ (wholesale dealer)."

Keith walked home in a stupor and began to cry the moment he saw his
mother. Her lips tightened and her face grew white as she listened to
the story he sobbed forth.

"Now you can see that your father was right," she said at last. "Of
course, we are just as good as anybody else, but others don't think
so--because we are poor. But we have our pride, and you had better stay
and play with your own soldiers hereafter. Then I don't have to worry
about you either."

But Keith had very little pride. He continued to seek Harald's company
as before, and twice, as they about to part in front of the latter's
house, Keith asked if he couldn't come up and play for a little while.

"Don't you understand," Harald asked the second time, "that my mamma
does not think you good enough for me to play with?"

Keith had not thought of it in that way. He had learned that there were
people who looked down on his parents, just as they, in their turn,
looked down on the parents of Johan, but the idea that he himself might
be regarded equally inferior was entirely new to him. It was so strange
to him that it took him years to grasp it. And when it came into his
mind, he felt as if some one had raised a heavy stick to strike him, and
he cowered under the impending blow.



II

Christmas was approaching.

The days grew shorter and shorter, until at last a scant four hours of
daylight remained around noon. Even then a lamp was often needed
for reading.

The lead-coloured sky nearly touched the roofs. The drizzle that filled
the air most of the time seemed to enter men's minds, too, sapping their
vigour until life became a burden. Meeting on the streets, they would
cry in irritable tones:

"When will the snow come?"

It was always a tedious time for Keith. The incident with Harald made it
worse this year. Except for the daily attendance at school, he was
virtually a prisoner. Johan was to be seen only from the window, whence
Keith enviously watched him prowling about the lane, his hands buried in
the side-pockets of an old coat much too long--apparently inherited from
someone else--and his shoulders hunched as if fore-destined to support
loads of wood like those his father used to carry. If no one was in the
living-room, Keith might shout a greeting to his playmate below, but it
was not much fun, and Johan had a contemptuous way of asking why he did
not come out and play.

Yet the season was not without its compensations. Stores of every kind
were laid in to last through the winter. One might have thought that a
severance of communications with the outside world was feared. Keith
marvelled at the magnificence of it, and once in a while he asked why it
had to be done. The answers were unsatisfactory. The main reason was
that it had always been done, but he gathered also that, while it was
perfectly respectable to live from day to day during the summer, to do
so during the winter would be a distinct proof of social and economic
inferiority.

The fire wood came first--a mighty load of birch logs piled along the
house front in the lane. Two men were busy all day with saw and ax,
reducing those logs into pieces matching the fire-places in the kitchen
stove and the two glazed brick ovens in the living-room and the parlour.
Two more men piled the pieces into huge sacks and staggered with those
on their backs up the five flights of stairs to the top garret under the
peak of the house, which belonged to the Wellanders.

Keith would stand in the kitchen door watching them. First he heard the
slow clamp-clamp of ascending foot-steps. Then the man's heavy breathing
became audible, and Keith felt as if the load was resting on his own
shoulders. Finally the open top of the bag, with its bright stuffing of
newly cut birch wood, showed at the corner of the landing quite a long
time before the head beneath it came into sight. As the man crossed the
landing in front of Keith, bent almost double under his burden, a dew of
pungent perspiration would drop on the slate-coloured stones, leaving
behind a curious path of round spots. Not a word was said at that time,
but coming down the men would sometimes throw a crude jest to the
bright-eyed watcher or stop to refill their mouths with snuff out of a
little thin brass box with a mirror fitted to the inside of its cover.
The sight of the snuff filled Keith with a sense of loathing, although
his father used to put a pinch of it into his nostrils now and then, and
more than anything else it seemed to mark a distinction between himself
and those people from a world far beneath his own. Theirs was a racking
job, heavier than any other known to the boy, and one day he asked
his mother:

"Why do they care to carry all that wood for us?"

"Because we pay them, and because they are mighty glad to get the money.
Otherwise they couldn't live."

"And where does the wood come from?"

"The bank sends it as part of papa's pay."

Once more Keith was so impressed with the miraculous power of that
mysterious being which his father served and cursed and worshipped that
his mother's previous answer was lost for the time being. But it
recurred to his mind later and connected with his father's talk of
making him a carpenter. A strong prejudice against manual labour was
shaping itself in his mind.

After the wood came the victuals: a tub of butter reaching Keith to the
chin; bags of flour; barrels of potatoes and apples; hams and haunches
of dried mutton and smoked reindeer meat; and lastly packages of smaller
size and sundry contents that the mother promptly carried to the pantry
inside the parlour without letting Keith touch them.

This year--it was the winter following the Franco-Prussian war--the
preparations were rendered uncommonly impressive by the addition of a
cheese large as the moon at full. There was always plenty of cheese of
various kinds in the house: whole milk cheese carefully aged until its
flavour was like that of English Stilton or Italian Gorgonzola; skim
milk cheese stuffed with cloves and cardamom seeds; and dark brown goat
milk cheese of a cloying sweetness that Keith detested.

Cheese was more than a taste with Keith's father. It was a hobby, and
one of his few pastimes was to skirmish in strange little shops for some
particularly old and strong-smelling piece at a reasonable price. When
he brought home a bargain of that kind, he acted like a bibliophile
having just captured a rare first edition for a song, and the mother
tried hard to share his enthusiasm. But, she said once, she had to draw
the line at cheese that walked by itself. Half in jest and half in
earnest, the father maintained that the maggots were the very essence of
the cheese, and that to remove them was to lose the finest flavour. This
year the father had bought a whole fresh cheese in order to age it at
home and thus save money in two ways, the price being proportionate
to the age.

The same large-handed system prevailed in other things, though the
parents often spoke of their poverty, and though their resources
undoubtedly were very limited. Shirts, table-ware, bed-linen, china,
etc., must needs be acquired in round numbers. To have less than a dozen
of anything was to have nothing at all. The breaking of a cup was a
family disaster if it could not be replaced. Everything had to be in
sets, and to preserve these intact, the utmost care was preached and
exercised. It bred thrift and orderliness, but also an undue regard
for property.

Finally came the time for baking and other direct preparations for a
holiday season that in the good old days used to last from Christmas Eve
to January 13th known as the Twentieth Christmas Day, when everybody
"danced the Yule out." What interested Keith most in this part of the
proceedings was the making of gingersnaps according to a recipe
transmitted to his mother from bygone generations and cherished by her
as a precious family secret. A whole day was set aside for the purpose
and at the end of it they had a big, bulging earthen jar filled to the
brim. Keith used to boast to other children of those dainties that, in
addition to their taste, had the fascination of many different
shapes--hearts, crowns, lilies, clubs, diamonds, baskets, and so on.
They really deserved all the praise they got, and he had so little to
boast of on the whole. The jar stood on the floor in the pantry back of
the parlour, and once in a while Keith found his way to it without
maternal permission, although, as a rule, he was little given to
lawbreaking.

One morning three or four days before Christmas Lena was heard calling
from the kitchen:

"Keith, Keith, come and look!"

Eager as always when the slightest excitement was promised, the boy
started so suddenly that his little table was upset with its whole
population of tin soldiers and his mother was moved to remark that "it
was no use behaving as if the house were on fire."

"Look at the snow," said Lena, pointing to the window when Keith reached
the kitchen, relieved at not having had to pick up the spilled toys
before he could go.

Huge, wet, feathery flakes were dropping lazily from the sky. Little by
little they increased in numbers and fell more quickly. At last they
formed a moving veil through which the building at the other end of the
courtyard could barely be seen.

Later in the day Keith was permitted to look out through one of the
front windows. The whole world had changed and looked much brighter in
spite of the failing light. The Quay was covered by a carpet of white
that made the waters beyond look doubly dark and cold. The trees on the
opposite shore looked as if they had been painted from the topmost twig
to the root. Down in the lane, two of the workers in the distillery were
pelting each other with snowballs while a third one was shouting at the
top of his voice:

"We'll have a white Christmas this year, thank heaven."

That same evening Keith's long cherished dream of visiting the open-air
Christmas Fair at Great Square was to come true at last. Like other
affairs of its kind, it had been reduced by the modern shop to a mere
shadow of its former glorious self, and it was kept up only out of
regard for ancient tradition. Keith had been told that it was nothing
but a lot of open booths displaying cheap toys and cheaper candy. To
Keith toys were toys and candy candy, no matter what the price and
quality, and so he kept on begging leave to go, until the night in
question his parents, who were going out with friends, deemed it better
to let him see for himself. And so Lena was ordered to take charge of
the expedition.

Lena and Keith were dressed and ready to start when the mother came
into the kitchen to give the boy a farewell kiss as usual. He was in
high spirits, but fidgety with some unexpressed wish.

"What is it, Keith," asked the mother, recognizing the symptoms.

"I want some money," he whispered into her ear.

"Go and ask papa."

"No, you ask him."

That was what always happened, and in the end the mother voiced the
boy's plea to the father, who just then appeared in the door to the
living-room. He was in a good humour and promptly reached into his
pocket. Unfortunately Keith discovered at that crucial moment that one
of his shoe laces had become untied.

"Please, mamma, help me," he said, putting his foot on a chair to enable
her to reach it more easily.

"That settles it," exclaimed the father with a darkening face as he
handed Keith a few small copper coins. "That is all you will get now. A
boy of five who makes his mother tie his shoe strings ought not to have
anything at all."

Keith took the coins silently and went with Lena to the fair, but he saw
nothing worth seeing, and he never wanted to go again. Uneasily he
prowled among the booths trying as a matter of duty to find something so
cheap that his scant hoard would buy it. At last he succeeded in getting
a little box of tin soldiers of poorest quality for one-third less than
the price put on it It was one of the few times in his life when he
found himself able to haggle over the cost of a thing.

From the first he found fault with the new addition to his army, and one
day not long afterwards he charged the whole regiment with cowardice in
the face of the enemy. A drumhead court martial was held on the spot,
and the verdict was a foregone conclusion. The culprits were found
guilty in a body and sentenced to immediate execution. Then Keith
possessed himself surreptitiously of the family hammer, and when his
mother came to investigate the noise he was making the whole offensive
regiment had been reduced to scraps. Never before or after did Keith as
a general go to such extremes on behalf of military morale.

But many, many years later, when he stopped for the first time at a
typical English hotel, he found himself horribly embarrassed by the
assistance forced on him by the obligatory valet.



III

In Sweden the principal celebration with its distribution of gifts takes
place late on Christmas Eve.

Long before that day Keith began to watch every package brought into the
house. Soon he noticed several that disappeared quickly without having
been opened. Nor did it take his shrewd little mind long to figure out
that they must have been stowed away on the upper shelf of the pantry
back of the parlour. This was an excellent hiding-place because the
shelf in question was fully six feet above the floor and on a level with
the lintel of the doorway, so that its contents seemed as much out of
reach as they were out sight from below.

One day, however, Keith succeeded in getting into the parlour when both
parents were out. The night before his father had come home with an
unusually large and queerly shaped package under his arm and had taken
it straight into the parlour. The boy's curiosity was at fever heat and
got the better of his customary inertia in the face of explicit
prohibitions. Having dragged a heavy wooden chair into the pantry, he
placed its tall back directly against the shelves. The crosspieces in
the back of the chair formed rungs on which he climbed up to the top
shelf. It was quite a feat for a very small boy, but the slight timidity
that characterized him as a rule was totally forgotten for the time.

There was the mystifying package together with many others. He could
even touch it with his hand. In spite of its size, it was very light. It
was wider at the bottom than at the top, and it sounded hollow when he
knocked at it. His little brain worked at high pressure, but not a guess
came out of it that was at all plausible. Finally Keith had to climb
down no wiser than he was before. His failure had one advantage. It
freed him from all of guilt. It served also to keep his expectations at
an unusually high pitch, so that when the morning of the great day
arrived at last, it seemed as if he were facing twelve long hours of
actual torture.

Every one was very busy preparing not only for the feast of the evening,
but for the two coming holidays. Christmas Day in Sweden being followed
by a Second Christmas Day, equal to the first one in leisure if not in
sanctity. No one had any time to spare for the boy, who found himself in
the way wherever he turned. In the end he was ordered pointblank out of
the kitchen, where his mother, Granny and the servant girl needed all
the space at their disposal. The door to the parlour was closed although
the lodger had left town for the holidays, and so nothing but the
living-room remained. There Keith whiled away the long hours in vain
speculation on the contents of the mysterious package.

He tried to recall what things he had wished for during the year. He
felt sure that nothing of the kind could be in the package. Any desire
openly expressed was disregarded by his father, Keith thought, if not
actually resented. The reason given was that a Christmas present should
be a complete surprise, and if the recipient had openly asked for it,
there could be no talk of surprising him. Of course, Keith could whisper
what he wanted into his mother's ear now and then but always with the
provision that she must convey the proper information to the father as
coming from herself.

Even this process of elimination failed, however, and so the day dragged
on interminably, with no help from without for a mind weary of waiting.
The customary dinner was passed up. Everybody snatched a bite off the
kitchen table without breaking away from the work. Three or four times
people arrived with packages from relatives or friends. Each visitor had
to be treated, even though he be a stranger of the humblest character.
Then dull monotony reigned once more, and Keith resumed his fidgeting
back and forth between the kitchen door and his own corner. The old toys
were simply unendurable....

It had long been dark when the father returned home at last, laden with
parcels and tired out by personal delivery of Christmas gifts to the
various members of the family. His face was slightly flushed and he
talked with unusual eagerness. An atmosphere of reckless good-will
surrounded him, and when he made a remark about there being no presents,
even Keith knew it to be facetious.

The last hour was the longest. The father and the mother had withdrawn
to the parlour and closed the door behind them. The girl was setting the
table and couldn't be disturbed. Granny was nervous and irritable
because she knew that she would be forced to join the rest at the table
that night. Keith felt like a disembodied soul let loose in infinite
space without goal or purpose.

Toward eight o'clock the parlour door opened and Keith was called in. A
tiny Christmas tree stood on a table in a corner, glistening with lights
and multicoloured paper festoons. It represented a great concession,
because neither one of the parents cared much for the trouble involved.
If there had been a number of children in the family, they said, then it
would have been another matter. The truth was that Keith didn't care
very much either. He clapped hands and shouted excitedly, of course, but
his glances went sideways to the big sofa, where stood a huge hamper
piled to twice its own height with parcels, all wrapped in snow-white
paper and sealed with red sealing wax. The air of the room was charged
with the rich smell of newly melted wax, and to Keith that smell was
always the essence of Christmas, its chief symbol and harbinger.

During those few minutes in the parlour a dozen tall candles had been
lighted in the living-room, transforming the place that a moment before
seemed so dreary. The dining table was opened to its full length and
placed across the middle of the room, at right angles to the
chaiselongue where Keith slept nights. Cut glass dishes and silver-ware
shone in the light reflected from the spotlessly white table cloth. In
the centre stood the Christmas layer cake, its body four inches thick
and its top glistening with red and yellow and green pieces of
candied fruit.

Then began the little comedy regularly enacted every Christmas.

"Isn't Granny coming," the father asked. Then he turned to Lena. "Tell
her we are ready."

"She says she doesn't want to come in," Lena reported after a hasty
visit to the kitchen.

"You go and ask her for me, Keith," was the father's next suggestion.

"Thank you, dear," Granny said when Keith came to her with his message.
"But you tell your father that I think the kitchen is a much better
place for a useless old hag like myself."

"Suppose you go," the father said to his wife on hearing Keith's
modified version of Granny's reply.

"She says she really won't come in," the mother explained a minute
later. "You had better go out and ask her yourself, Carl. It is the one
thing she cannot resist."

The father went with a broad grin on his face. Keith laughed loudly and
nervously, his eyes on the huge cake. But the mother said
apologetically to Lena:

"Mamma is so funny about coming in here, although she knows how much we
want her."

"Here she is now," said Lena.

And the father appeared with Granny on his arm, and Granny was all
dressed up in her best skirt of black silk thick as cloth, with a cap of
black lace on her head.

"Really, I can't see what you want with an old thing like me in here,"
she continued protesting as she was being led to her seat beside Keith.
The girl sat opposite Granny, and the mother beside the girl, facing
Keith. The father, on that one occasion, always occupied the
chaiselongue at the short end of the table, with the mother on his right
and Keith on his left. Beside him stood the hamper with its mountainous
pile of parcels.

Keith said grace with folded hands and bent head, and, of course, he had
to say it twice because the first time he swallowed half the words in
his eagerness to get through quickly. Then the meal began.

It opened with a light _smörgasbord_, hors d'oeuvres, literally rendered
sandwich-table: caviar, anchovy, sardines, shavings of smoked salmon,
slices of bologna, and so on. With it the father took a _snaps_ of
Swedish gin or _brännvin_, and after much pressing Granny consented to
take one, too. The main course consisted of _lutfisk_: dried and salted
codfish that had been soaked in water for twenty-four hours to take out
the salt and then boiled until it was tender as cranberry jelly. It was
served with boiled potatoes and a gravy made of cream and chopped
hard-boiled eggs. It was followed by _risgrynsgröt_: rice cooked in milk
and served with a cover of sugar and cinnamon. Wherever Swedes go, they
must have those two dishes on Christmas Eve. They have had them since
the days when Christmas was a pagan celebration of the winter solstice,
when dried codfish was the staple winter food, and when rice was the
rarest of imported delicacies.

Keith did not become interested until the rice appeared and the father
declared that no one could taste it until he or she had "rhymed over the
rice." Lena had to begin, and blushingly she read:

"To cook rice is a great feat, especially to get it sweet."

Whereupon everybody applauded, and the mother followed:

"Those who don't like rice are worse than little mice."

The father made them all laugh by saying:

"The rice is sweet and looks very neat, but now I want to eat."

The cutting of the cake, with its coating of sugar and its many layers
of custard ... the wine, port and sherry, poured from tall glass
decanters with silver labels hung about their necks to show which was
which ... the blushing native apples and the figs from distant sunlit
shores ... the almonds and raisins that tested best when eaten together
... the candy and the caramels ... the absence of restraint and reproof
... the freedom to indulge one's utmost appetite ... the smiles and the
pleasant words and the jokes sprung by the father ... and in the midst
of it all a pause laden with rose-coloured melancholy....

"Why can it not be Christmas every day," asked Keith suddenly.

"Because Christmas then would be like any other day," the father
replied, reaching for the first parcel which was always for Keith.

One by one they were handed out. Each one was elaborately addressed and
furnished with a rhymed or unrhymed tag that often hid a sting beneath
its clownish exterior. The father read the inscription aloud before he
handed each parcel to its recipient, who had to open it and let its
contents be admired by all before another gift was distributed.

The table became crowded. The floor was a litter of paper. Lena giggled.
Granny's cap was down on one ear. Keith could not sit still on
his chair.

"To Master Keith Wellander," the father read out. "A friendly warning,
to be remembered in the morning and all through the day. He who slops at
meals is a pig that squeals and hurts his parents alway."

Keith took the parcel with less than usual zest. It was rectangular and
very heavy. For a moment he hesitated to open it. There was something
about its inscription that puzzled and bothered him.

At last the wrapper came off, and he gazed uncomprehendingly at a large
piece of wood hollowed out like a canoe.

"A boat ..." he stammered.

"A trough," rejoined his father, a strange, almost embarrassed look
appearing on his face. "This is Christmas and I want you to be happy,
but you must learn to eat decently, and I thought this might serve you
as a lesson and a reminder."

Keith said nothing. He sat looking at that piece of wood as if it were a
dragon that had swallowed the whole Christmas in a single gulp. He
wanted to cry, but for the first time he seemed to feel a pride that
forbade him to do so....

"Master Keith Wellander," the father read out again with evident haste
and in a voice which he tried to make very jolly, "When beaten in the
open field, this will be my trusty shield."

It was _the_ package--and the trough was forgotten.

The boy trembled with excitement. His hands tore vainly at the paper
cover, which, in the end, had to be removed by the father.

On the table, fully revealed at last, stood a real fortress of
cardboard, with a drawbridge that could be raised, and a tower in the
centre, and at the top of it a flagstaff flying the Swedish colours.

It was his heart's most cherished desire, the thing that had seemed so
unattainable that he had deemed it useless to whisper it into his
mother's ear.

For a long while he did not move at all, but just looked and looked,
seemingly afraid to touch the new toy. Then a warm flood of joy shot
through him, and suddenly he was seized by an irresistible impulse to
kiss his father--which was a most unusual endearment between them. As he
put his hand on the table to get off the chair, it touched the trough,
and once more his mood changed. He seemed to stiffen, and all he could
do was to hold out his hand and whisper:

"Thank you very much, papa!"



IV

On Christmas Day morning everybody rose while it was still pitch dark
outside. After a hasty cup of coffee, the parents and Keith set off for
Great Church to attend _julotta_--yule matins--an early service held
only that one day of the year.

More snow had fallen, and now it was freezing, so that every step they
took produced a peculiar, almost metallic crunching. From every quarter
silent crowds in their holiday best streamed toward the old church. They
seemed very solemn, but Keith sensed the happy spirit underlying their
outward sedateness. It filled him with a wild desire to romp, and it was
merely the awe of his father's presence that kept him in check.

The church was packed, but they found good seats. Keith had eyes for one
thing only: the Star of Bethlehem that blazed above the screen of darkly
green spruces surrounding the altar. All the rest of it was lost on him.

Then the organ music burst forth, and for a moment he cowered as under a
blow. It was too much of a novelty, and the vibrations touched his
supersensitive nerves annoyingly. After a while he grew more accustomed
to it, but he did not like it, and he said so loudly enough to bring him
a stern glance from his father and smiles from some of the people in the
pew ahead. During the brief sermon he slept peacefully.

As soon as they were home again, the fortress was brought out and
preparations made for a great siege. In the midst of it he left his
corner to put a question to the mother, who was dozing over a book in
her easy chair.

"How could papa know that I wanted it," he asked, and she knew what he
was thinking of.

"Don't you remember," she answered smiling slyly, "how you came home one
day last summer and talked about something you had seen in a window on
West Long Street, and papa was listening."

"So long ago," mused Keith, "and I didn't know he heard it."

"Oh, yes, he heard, and he remembered. You don't understand papa. He
doesn't want you to ask for things because he finds it such a pleasure
to figure out what you want and give it to you unexpectedly."

Keith returned to his corner thinking hard, as was his wont at times.
The siege was postponed. He took out the trough and studied it
carefully. It would make a good boat. Then he put it down and sat for a
while looking at the little fortress--so like the one he could see when
he looked out of their front windows. His heart swelled, and with a rush
that nearly upset his little table, he made for his father in the
parlour, crawled up on his lap, put both arms about his neck, and kissed
him. And to his surprise he was not repelled. But a moment later his
father put him down on the floor and said in a voice that sounded a
little choked:

"Go back and play with your soldiers now."

Then came dinner, always the same on Christmas Day: _smörgasbord_;
roasted fresh ham with mashed potatoes and tiny cubes of Swedish
turnips fried in butter; rice and milk; cake and wine.

And the day ended as it had begun, happily and peacefully. Never had the
boy felt more warmly toward his father. But at dinner the next day,
which was also a holiday so that the father was at home, Keith happened
to spill something on the table cloth.

"Remember your Christmas present," said the father sharply. "You are old
enough to behave properly at table, and if you won't, we shall let you
eat in your own corner and eat out of the trough."

During the rest of that day Keith could not play with his fortress. Once
he took the trough to the window that happened to be open and
contemplated the possibility of dropping it into the lane. But his
courage failed him.

It stayed with him as part of his little stock of toys, and gradually it
came to be viewed with a certain amount of indifference. But on the rare
occasions when he was permitted to have a playmate at home, he always
managed to hide the trough under his mother's bureau. And even the mere
consciousness of its presence there would sometimes set his
cheeks burning.



V

It was summer again. The school was closed. Keith's pleas to be allowed
to play with Johan became impassioned. Consequently his parents were
pleased when Aunt Brita asked if Keith could spend a few weeks with
them in a little cottage they had hired on an island halfway between
Stockholm and the open sea.

To Keith this was a tremendous adventure--his first excursion from home,
and almost his first acquaintance with real country life. In fact, the
impressions of the journey itself were so many and so novel that his
mind couldn't retain anything at all. The same thing happened over and
over again during the earlier part of his life, so that out of that
epoch-making summer visit, for instance, only a single slight incident
took up a lasting abode in his memory.

The cottage stood in the middle of the island, which was so small that a
fifteen-minute walk took them down to the nearest shore. Thither they
went one afternoon not long after his arrival to bathe--his aunt, his
cousin Carl who was a year younger than himself, Keith, a couple of
other children of the same age, and Mina, an eighteen-year old girl
living with Keith's uncle and aunt in a position halfway between ward
and servant. Across the fields and along shaded wood paths they ran
joyously to a sheltered bay with a sandy beach from which the open fjord
could be seen in the distance. The children stripped helter-skelter and
went into the shallow water as nature had made them, but Mina, who was
to assist them, had for want of bathing suit put on a starched white
petticoat. The upper part of her body was bare, showing two beautifully
pointed breasts.

Keith looked and looked at those breasts until Mina noticed him and
actually began to blush. As if embarrassed, she picked up one of the
other children and began to swing it around in a circle. Her movement
turned Keith's attention to the petticoat, and suddenly he could think
of nothing else.

The children were naked. Why should Mina wear a piece of clothing that
even Keith could see was quite unfitted for such a use. There must be
something to hide. What could it be? At last he could contain himself no
longer, but blurted out:

"Why does Mina wear that silly skirt?"

"Because she is afraid of catching cold," replied his aunt from the
shore with a slight jeer in her voice and one of her shrewd smiles.

"Why shouldn't we catch cold, too," was his next question.

There was no direct answer, but he could hear his aunt mutter between
her teeth:

"Drat that boy!"

Then she burst into open laughter, while Mina rushed ashore and hastily
began to dress behind a close screen of undergrowth.

After that Mina did not go in bathing with the children.

Many years later Keith could still visualize the whole scene as if it
had happened only a few days ago, while all his efforts to recall the
cottage where they lived, or anything else seen that summer, were vain.



VI

In the autumn of that year Keith was sent to a "real" school, selected
after much inquiry by his parents as combining a reasonable degree of
efficiency and social standing with an equally reasonable cost of
tuition. It was private like the first one, kept by two middle-aged
spinster sisters, one of whom was tall, angular and firm, while the
other was short, fat and sentimental. It held about two scores of
pupils, most of whom were girls. These girls ranged in years to the
near-marriageable age, while none of the boys was more than eight years
old. Thus the atmosphere was distinctly feminine, which in the eyes of
Keith's mother marked an added advantage.

The only thing that excited Keith about the new school was that it took
him farther from home than he had ever been allowed to wander unattended
before, into a hitherto unexplored region of the city known as the South
End. It was a poor man's neighbourhood on the whole, but of that Keith
knew nothing at the time. The school occupied a few large and sunny
rooms in the rear part of a sprawling old stone structure built like a
palace around an enormous cobble-stoned courtyard, with a tall arched
gateway providing entrance from the street under the front part of the
house. For a while it was quite impressive and a little disturbing, but
like everything else it soon became familiar and commonplace.

To get there from his own part of town, Keith had to cross the Sluice--a
lock enabling vessels to pass safely from Lake Maelaren to the salt
waters of the Bay in spite of the frequently sharp difference of level.
At either end of the lock was a drawbridge in two sections raised from
the centre to let the larger vessels through. The place was full of
interesting sights, and Keith loved in particular to press right up
against the edge of the raised bridge as some steamer or small sailing
vessel glided leisurely in or out of the ever shifting waters of
the lock.

At first it never occurred to him that he might walk around by the other
bridge when the one right in his way happened to be open, and so he was
late at school several times in quick succession. The first time he was
warned. The second he was placed in a corner of the room with his face
to the wall and kept there for about one quarter of an hour. The third
time the elder Miss Ahlberg applied a ruler to the finger-tips of his
left hand, which she held in a firm grasp within one of her own.

The physical sensation gave the boy a terrible shock. No one had ever
really hurt him before. The spankings administered at home once in a
very great while were like thunderstorms, with a great deal of noise and
small harm done. This was something else, and more intimidating than the
pain was the manifest intention of the teacher to inflict it. Her face
was tense and her eyes flashed fire. Worst of all, however, was the
shame of it, for the punishment was applied in front of the
whole school.

When Keith retired to his own seat sobbing bitterly, he felt that he
could never look the other children in the face, and that they probably
would shun him as a pariah. The only thing would be to tell his mother
that he could not go back to school again. He was still shaking with
sobs, when he heard a boy on the chair behind him whisper into his ear:

"Oh, that's nothing. You just wait till she pulls your hair. She pulls
it right out by the roots. I'll show you a bare spot on my head during
the next pause."

And so he did when the lesson came to an end and they were permitted to
play for a few minutes. Other children joined them, and no one seemed to
think less of Keith for what had happened to him. It was a revelation to
him and opened vistas of considerable interest. But the memory of the
physical and mental shock received was more powerful, and after that he
took care to reach school in time regardless of what might be the
temptations along his path or the effort it might cost him to get there.

In fact, the incident became to some extent determining for his whole
career in school. He never voluntarily did anything that might expose
him to punishment, and rarely was he able to forget himself to the
extent of incurring reproof. He turned out a docile pupil, and on the
whole, docility did not come hard to him. In spite of the vitality with
which he overflowed, there was a certain timidity attaching to him.



VII

It would be wrong to conclude that the little school of the Misses
Ahlberg was characterized by any reign of terror. As a rule, the
atmosphere was peaceful and kindly, and the teaching was rather good.
Keith was eager to learn, and learning came easy to him. In those early
days, of course, there was no studying to be done at home, but even in
later years he never knew what it was to "plug." In fact, he could not
do it. Either his interest was aroused, and then he absorbed the matter
at hand in the way he breathed, without the least conscious effort; or
his interest remained unstirred, in which case no amount of mechanical
application would help. Learning by rote offered no escape in the latter
case, for his memory operated in the same way as the rest of his mind,
sucking up what fitted it as a blotter sucks the ink, and presenting a
surface of polished marble to any matter not germane according to its
own mysterious standards.

Soon he could read without any effort whatsoever--anything. Reckoning
came easy, too, but writing came hard. It seemed so much easier to take
in than to give out in any form. Grammar gave him no difficulty, because
it dealt with words, and words possessed a magic charm that always held
him. Gradually he began to dip into history and geography--wonderful
realms into which his imagination plunged headlong. He took almost as
eagerly to the old stories out of the Bible--stories of which he had
caught more than a glimpse at home--but the Catechism was like washing
in the morning: it had to be done because higher powers so decreed.

Yes, he learned a good deal for a little boy of his age, but he never
knew how it happened. The school was never quite real to him. His home
was real, and his play at home. So was his daily walk to and from school
with its innumerable opportunities for observation in the raw. There
were people in the streets, and shops along the road, and many different
kinds of vessels in the harbour. There was the guardhouse on the little
square halfway to school, kept by a small detachment of soldiers that
were relieved every noon and that never belonged to the same regiment
two days in succession. Watching them gave him many suggestions for
handling his own tin soldiers in a more business-like fashion.

But at school.... He was never absentminded or unattentive, for that
might have brought the quick clutch of the elder Miss Ahlberg's bony
hand into his own supersensitive crop of hair, and most of what was
going on had enough interest in itself to prevent his mind from straying
far afield. He knew the names of his fellow pupils. He played with those
of his own age, and he had likes and dislikes, as was natural. But
through it all he moved as through a mist, seeing only the thing
immediately at hand, and losing sight of everything the moment he had
passed it. The three years spent in that school seemed to telescope into
each other so that soon afterwards he found himself unable to tell if a
thing had happened during the first or last of those years. Nor did the
things he remembered have any connection with the school as a rule, and
out of all the boys and girls he met there not one remained distinct in
his memory as did the figure of Harald from the first school. When he
left the school to go home for the day, he was done with it, and nothing
followed him but what was stored in his head. And that, too, seemed
forgotten at the time, to be re-discovered later with a sense of
pleasant surprise.

And all that time things were happening to him at home and elsewhere
that, as far as importance went, stood in curious contrast to his
quickly forgotten experiences at school--things that burnt themselves
into his mind as a part of its permanent contents....



VIII

There was not a private bathroom to be found in Stockholm in those days.
One washed hands and face and neck whenever compelled to, and some
people, like Keith's father, splashed the upper part of their bodies
with water every morning regardless of weather and temperature. Once a
week every self-respecting person went to a public bath for a thorough
steaming and scrubbing.

Keith's mother did like the rest, and generally she took the boy along
as he was admitted without extra charge. Then mother and son would get
into a tremendous tub full of hot water--so large and so full that
Keith had to sit up in order to keep his head above water. He always
enjoyed it very much, and especially he enjoyed feeling his mother's
soft body close to his own.

On an occasion of this kind he had already finished his bath and was
sitting on a wooden bench beside the tub wrapped in a big sheet. The old
woman attendant stood ready with a similar sheet for his mother, who was
just stepping out of the tub facing the boy.

She was still young, and her skin, always beautiful, was aglow with the
heat of the bath and the friction of the scrubbing.

Keith stared open-eyed at her, unconscious of any particular interest,
and yet filled with a vague, slightly disturbing sense of pleasure.

Then his mother caught his glance. Their eyes met. A slight flush spread
over her face.

Grabbing the sheet from the old woman, she flung it about herself. As
she did so, he heard her say to the attendant:

"That young gentleman will have to bathe with his father hereafter, I
guess."

At first he was conscious of a rebuke, and the cause of it left him
quite at sea. He would probably have puzzled over it a great deal more
than he did, had not his mind become preoccupied with the idea that he
would be allowed to accompany his father to the men's part of the
establishment. It was an idea that filled him with a sort of
shrinking pride.



IX

Among the less intimate friends of his mother was a young widow with a
little girl about a year younger than Keith. For some reason unknown to
the boy, those two came to see his mother several times that Spring. It
was the first time in his life Keith met a girl on familiar terms.

Clara was slender and elfish, with a wealth of yellow tresses falling
down her back. She was tender and gay, too, and Keith liked to hear her
laugh. When they played, she was always ready to fall in with any whim
of Keith's.

One afternoon, when the days were growing longer, Clara's mother asked
permission to leave her with the Wellanders while she attended to some
business in the neighbourhood. Keith's mother was occupied in the
kitchen in some manner making her wish to have the door to the
living-room closed. Thus the two children were left to play by
themselves.

He never could remember how it began, and he could not tell what put the
idea in his head....

It was a new game, and she played it as readily as any other he might
have proposed. They had crawled so far into his own corner by the window
that they were almost hidden behind mamma's bureau.

At first they whispered to each other, eagerly as children do, but only
with the eagerness they might have shown if playing hide-and-seek. Then
he raised her little dress, and she didn't seem to mind. He also undid
his own dress, and they studied each other's bodies, noting the
differences.

The end of it was that they laid down together on the floor. He put his
mouth to hers and hugged her just as tightly as he could. When they had
been lying in way for a while, he whispered to her:

"Isn't it nice?"

And she dutifully whispered back: "It is!"

A few minutes later they were playing with his tin soldiers, and soon
after Clara's mother returned to take her away.

During their entire play both doors had remained closed. Keith was quite
sure of that. He had looked before he started the new game, although he
was not aware of trespassing on prohibited territory.

Afterwards he felt rather uneasy. There was a distinct sense of risk
attaching to that game, and he wondered whether Clara might tell her
mother. At the same time the thought of what he had done filled him with
inexplicable satisfaction, as if, in some way, he had put something over
on the grown-ups.

As for his own mother--she seemed to be watching him with unusual
concern during the next few days, and he could not escape a suspicion
that she knew. Closed doors did not seem to prevent grown-up people from
knowing what children did.

At the same time he wondered why he and Clara should not be playing as
they had done. There was really nothing to it. And the comparisons they
had made took no hold of his imagination. The differences revealed he
accepted as he accepted anything that had no direct bearing on his own
happiness.

As far as he could recall afterwards, he never saw Clara again. Nor did
he seem to miss her.



X

Summer again.

The incident with Clara was forgotten. Yet Keith had a sense of being
watched a little more closely than usual. He was rarely permitted to go
out alone after his return from school. And he was scolded if he ever
was late in coming home.

There was mystery in the air. The parents talked together a good deal in
a way that made Keith understand they were talking about him and did not
want to be overheard.

As soon as school closed the secret became revealed. He would be sent
into the real country for the summer to board with perfect strangers.

"Any children," was Keith's first question. Yes, a couple of sons in the
house, and probably one or two more boys from the city, boarders
like Keith.

It seemed the thing had been planning for a long time. The mother said
something about the necessity for Keith of going where everything was
clean and wholesome--the air, the food, the people. The boy knew that
she had been worrying about him for some reason he could not guess.

An advertisement in a newspaper had led his mother on the track of what
she wanted. She read it to him--"a religious family with children of
their own would take a few well-behaved boys of good family for the
summer months and give them a real home and as good as parental care."

It turned out to be the sexton of a country parish on the northern shore
of Lake Maelaren who had devised this means of eking out his probably
limited professional income. The ensuing correspondence had proved quite
satisfactory. The mother was evidently pleased. It was almost as good as
staying with the pastor himself, she said.

Keith knew what a pastor was. He had several times heard one preach from
a funny hanging box in Great Church, and he thought of him as a man who
was always dressed in black and who was even more serious than the
father. But it did not bother him, partly because he realized that,
after all, a sexton was not the same as a pastor, and partly because his
mind was full of something else. It was not the country, although his
previous experience of it, when he was staying with his aunt, had given
him a rather favourable impression. No, what occupied him to the
exclusion of everything else was the thought that he would be able to
play with other children all day long, and that there would be no one to
pull him away just as a game was becoming really interesting.

Exciting days of preparation followed. And finally the day of departure
dawned.

The greater part of the journey was to be made by boat to the little
town of Enköping, where Mr. Swensson, the sexton, would be waiting with
a team. The mother could not go along, and so Keith was placed in the
hands of some people going the same way, who promised to look after him
and see that he did not fall into wrong hands when the steamer landed.

Keith had to stand in the stern of the boat and wave his handkerchief as
long as his mother remained visible. Then he was free, at last, to
surrender himself to the novelty of his situation. And as always upon
such occasions, when new impressions came crowding in upon him, the
record became too blurred for clear remembrance. This was true not only
of the trip on the steamer, the arrival at Enköping with its little
old-fashioned red houses, the meeting with Mr. Swanson, the drive of
thirty miles or more inland, the arrival at the sexton's house not far
from a white spired church, and the introduction to a seemingly endless
number of new faces, but of the whole long summer. A couple of months
sufficed to wipe out of his memory everything but a few comparatively
trivial incidents and impressions.

Only one name escaped the general oblivion--that of the sexton himself.
Only one view left a lasting image behind--that of a tremendously large
boulder, a memento of the glacial period, that rose like a crude
monument right in the centre of a tilled field almost, but not quite out
of sight of the house. Only one face would come back in recognizable
shape when he tried to recall that rather momentous summer--that of a
boy a few years older than himself, who was the leader of all the games
played around the big rock in the open field.



XI

Quite a gang of boys gathered daily about the big rock, generally on the
farther side of it where they could not be seen from the house. Beyond
the rock in that direction was nothing but an open field, and then the
woods, rarely disturbed by a visitor. Thus they were really more safe
than indoors as no one could approach them without being detected while
still far away.

The two sons of the sexton were there, and a couple of boys from the
city besides Keith, and three or four sons of neighbouring farmers. They
ranged in ages from eight to eleven or twelve. Keith was the baby, but
this was never held up against him. He was commonly treated as an equal,
which raised his self-confidence tremendously, but it had also a
somewhat embarrassing effect when the others seemed to take for granted
that he knew as much as they concerning the matters that most occupied
their minds--to judge by their talk at least.

The oldest of the lot, and their undisputed leader, was a peasant boy of
remarkable ugliness, squint-eyed and snub-nosed, with tufts of yellow
hair always falling over his face and several teeth missing. His clothes
were in rags and he never wore shoes. He boasted of never washing unless
"the old one" stood over him with a stick, and his language was worse
than both his manners and his looks. An unbroken stream of profanity
and obscenity poured from his rarely silent mouth, and he heaped
withering scorn on any attempt at decent speech.

Keith had now and then picked up questionable words while playing in the
lane where he lived. Johan sported some of them in moments of furious
rebellion against his mother's "holiness," as he called it. Once or
twice Keith had repeated such words at home and suffered for it. Soon he
learned to know the type at first hearing, and he disliked this part of
the vocabulary even when he could use it without danger to himself. He
developed a greater daintiness in words than in anything else, but this
summer formed an exception. The force of suggestion brought to bear on
him was too overwhelming, and he strove boldly to vie with the rest in
foulness of tongue and thought. As soon as he was back in the city, this
habit dropped off him as the soap lather is washed off a bather when he
dives into the clear waters of a lake. But the game he had learned to
play back of the big rock could not be unlearned in the same way.

This game was in itself a revelation to Keith. He was not shocked or
startled, because he had no standards in the matter, but at first he
experienced a distinct revulsion. This wore off quickly, however, and
soon he accepted what he saw as a natural thing. The boy whose face
stuck in Keith's mind with such strange persistency set the pace, and
everybody seemed to hold him a hero on that account. Even the other city
boys surrendered after a brief resistance and tried humbly to emulate
the acknowledged leader.

Everything took place openly in the most brazen fashion, as if they had
been playing leap-frog or hide-and-seek. Every one boasted of his own
achievements and tried to outdo the rest in unashamed performance. Yet
it was not so much a question of companionship in indulgence as of
sportsmanlike competition. Pleasure had little to do with it. What they
did, and still more what they pretended to have done, was an assertion
and a proof of manliness, and so was the language they used among
themselves. If they hid from the older people, that was not because they
regarded themselves as engaged in any sinful pursuits, but because the
grown-ups to them appeared jealous of all childish pleasures, and
particularly jealous of the pleasures most treasured by themselves.

Outwardly Keith played the part of an interested but passive observer.
When taunted for his timidity, or as being a mere infant, he parried by
using a number of nasty words, some of which he did not know the meaning
of. When by himself, he soon found that he could play the game as well
as the rest, and it increased his sense of self-importance very much,
but of this he said nothing to any one. Something within his own nature
protested against the flaunting of such an act, though the act itself
carried no offence to his childish mind. The inner protest was not
strong enough to break into words or to make the companionship of the
other boys seem repulsive to him. Nor was it concerned with anything
Keith did by himself.

The summer went very fast. Keith was sorry when told that it was time
for him to go home. He would come back, of course, but his regrets were
only momentary. No sooner was he started than the idea of seeing his
mother, Granny, and his tin soldiers again, put everything else out
of his mind.

His mother was overjoyed to see him and revelled in his healthy looks.
She made him tell her at great length, over and over again, about
everything he had seen and done, about the place and the people, about
the food and the games he had played. Keith talked and talked, eagerly
and freely, but of the game played behind the big rock he never said
a word.

He was then not quite seven years old.



XII

That autumn and winter he was permitted to play a good deal with Johan,
and always in Johan's home. His mother had a bad spell of depression,
and while it made her fret and worry more than ever about Keith, as well
as about everything else, she was either too weak to resist his pleas,
or she felt his absence as a relief.

To his intense surprise, Keith found that Johan already knew all about
the new game, and that he was quite willing to play it. And for a couple
of years it became an important part of what they had in common. Chances
were not lacking, for Johan's mother was too wrapt up in her postils and
religious speculations to watch them closely, and there was always the
outhouse to which they could retire for privacy.

Their relationship was a peculiar one. Although the younger by a few
months and the smaller by several inches, Keith was the leader and the
aggressor. Johan remained passive--too passive, Keith often thought.

There was nothing of love in Keith's feelings toward Johan, nothing
emotional. The tenderness that was such a marked feature of his
character did not come into play at all. In fact, he rather looked down
on Johan, who frequently annoyed him by his dullness and his lack of
personal neatness. The truth of it was that he played with Johan merely
because he was the only other boy in sight, and in so far as that
particular game was concerned, Johan was simply an accessory to it in
same way as his tin soldiers and his toy fort.

In playing it, Keith had always a sense of seeking something else, but
he had not the slightest idea of what this something might be. It must
have some relation to girls, he felt vaguely, but beyond that vague
feeling he could not get. Clara remained forgotten.

Gradually Johan became more and more indifferent and reluctant as far as
that game was concerned. Dull as he was, he seemed to have some sort of
scruples that Keith couldn't understand. More and more Keith was thrown
back on himself. Once more a new set of interests began to take the
lion's share of his attention, although the game learned behind the big
rock would reassert its puzzling fascination from time to time.



XIII

His eagerness to read and his lack of reading matter had for some time
presented a growing problem. The books of his father--and there were
quite a number of them--were taboo for a double reason: first, because
they were not held safe for him to read, and, secondly, because his
father regarded them as his particularly private property that must not
be touched by any one else.

So he fell back on the old Bible and chance pickings. The stirring and
bloodcurdling stories in the Books of the Maccabees were his favourites.
He read them over and over, and he tried to dramatize that unbroken
record of battles with the help of his tin soldiers. But the reason he
could return to those stories so often was that he began studying them
while reading was still a partly mastered art, and half the time he was
more interested in the game of reading, so to speak, than in what
he read.

A year in the new school had made a great change. He read anything with
ease, and while he read rather slowly without ever skipping, his mind
took in what he read quickly and thoroughly so that going back over a
thing once perused became less and less attractive. He wanted new
material for his mind, and he wanted it in steadily increasing
quantities.

One day he made a great discovery. Books could be borrowed from other
people. One of his schoolmates came to school with a wonderful
illustrated copy of "Don Quixote" arranged for children. Keith went into
ecstasies over it. The mail-clad figure of the Knight of the Rueful
Countenance on the front cover was to him the beckoning guardian of a
world of wonders, the very existence of which he had never before
suspected. Tears came into his eyes at last as he stared hopelessly at
the object of his newly born desire. As a rule he blurted out any wish
he might have, but the thing was clearly too precious to ask as a gift
or acquire by bartering, and he had never heard of any other way of
getting it.

"Mercy," cried the other boy after having watched him for a while. "You
can take it home and read it, if you only promise to bring it back."

For a moment Keith was too overcome to speak. Then he became hysterical
with joy. The rest of the school day passed in a trance. He ran a good
part of the way home. Arrived there, he almost forgot to give his mother
and Granny the inevitable kiss of greeting. And he might even have
refused to be bothered by such a thing but for his fear of being put
under some discipline that might prevent him from plunging straightway
into the unexplored country of make-believe.

On seeing the book, his mother hesitated for a moment, but soon she was
delighted with the results it produced. Keith had no thought of asking
leave to see Johan that day. He was lost to the world around him. Not a
sound was heard from him. There was no nervous running about in futile
search for "something to do." The home was as quiet as if he had been
away, and yet there he was, safely ensconced in his own corner, where
his mother could watch him all the time.

Everybody was happy until the father returned home and heard of what had
happened. Having looked the book over for a moment, while the boy
watched him with a shrinking heart, he said at last:

"You must return it tomorrow, and I don't want you to borrow any more
books. You may spoil it in some way, and then you will have to pay for
it, and where are you to get the money?"

Keith tried hard not to cry, but the blow was too overwhelming. He was
driven out of his new paradise after a tantalizing glimpse at it. And he
could not understand why. So his tears must needs flow freely and his
throat contracted convulsively with half-choked sobs, and the final
result of it was that he was ordered to bed at once. That ended his last
chance of abstracting a few more thrills from the borrowed treasure.

Of course, the book was returned the next day. Keith had not yet arrived
at the point where the evasion of a parental decree seemed conceivable.
And to the sorrow of missing the promised enjoyment was added the
humiliation of confessing what had happened at home. To lie about it was
another thing that never occurred to him, and to act without explanation
was quite foreign to his nature.

A few sad days followed. Then his life resumed its customary tone, and
it was as if the lank, but to him far from ludicrous, shape of Don
Quixote had never crossed his horizon. And soon after Christmas recurred
once more.

Among the many packages falling to his share, there were two of a shape
that suggested the possibility of more tin soldiers. But when he held
them in his hand, they failed to yield to pressure as would a cardboard
box. Curiosity turned into genuine suspense. And when at last two books
lay in front of him as his own, with the implied permission that he
could read them to his heart's content whenever he chose, a pang of
something like real love for his father shot through his heart.

Those two little volumes became at once his most priceless possession
and the foundation of his first library. To others they might appear
quite commonplace books, without much value from any point of view. To
him they were passports to a realm of action and freedom and colour,
where he could roam at will in search of everything he missed in real
life. One was bound in white with the picture of an African lion hunt on
the front cover. The other one had a plain brown binding. Both had
coloured illustrations and contained stories of hunting and travelling
adventures in all sorts of out-of-the-way places. There were tales of
lion hunting with Arabs and tiger hunting in the jungles of India, of
whaling in the Arctic and hair-breadth escapes from giant snakes in
South America, of cruises in southern seas and caravaning across the
high plateaus of Central Asia.

One story in particular stuck in his mind, and more particularly one
little detail out of that story. It was one of comparative repose and
few sensational incidents relating the perfectly peaceful, but
nevertheless strange and interesting experiences of a European traveller
through some desert region back of the Caspian Sea. Arriving at a nomad
camp far away from all civilization, this traveller was met with
touching hospitality. During a formal visit to the chieftain of the
tribe, he was offered tea. With the tea was handed him a bowl containing
a single lump of sugar. In European fashion he picked up this and
dropped it into his cup. Not a word was said, but something told him
that he had committed some dreadful mistake. By and by, as he watched
the others, he understood. Sugar was so rare that to use it in ordinary
fashion was out of question, and so the solitary lump served was meant
to be licked in turn by each, and he, as the guest of honour, had been
given the first chance. To Keith's mind that story seemed as clearly
realized as if he had played a part in it himself. And what occupied him
more than anything else was the pitiful existence of those poor nomads
to whom even such a common thing as sugar was an almost unattainable
luxury. It was his first lesson in human sympathy, and it was typical of
his own existence and bent that it should have come out of a book.



XIV

From that day one of his main objects in life was to acquire books. He
had little pride as a rule, in spite of all his sensitiveness, and when
books were concerned he had none at all. Having discovered that a friend
of the family, who until then had been regarded with supreme
indifference, held some sort of clerical position in a publishing house,
his devotion to Uncle Lander suddenly became effusive and he begged so
shamelessly and so successfully that at last his father had to
intercede. Out of a half-hour sermon on things that must not be done,
Keith grasped only that, as usual, he could not do what he wanted. Money
was still a mystery to him, and he never suspected that Uncle Lander
would have to pay his employers for every book taken out of the stock.

The sole check to his passion sprang logically from the very fervor of
that passion: a book being such a precious object to himself, he could
not dream of taking it away from somebody else. As in a flash the true
spirit of his father's objection to borrowed books was revealed to him.
That objection became his own and stuck to him through life: if he liked
a borrowed book, the inescapable duty of returning it was too painful to
be faced, and if he didn't like it, there was no reason for borrowing
it. Books became sacred things to him, to be cherished and protected as
nothing else. The loss of one was a catastrophe.

Soon he had a small library of his own, kept on a shelf in the huge
wardrobe that stood in the vestibule leading to the parlour. Made up at
first of odds and ends bearing no real relation to his desire for
reading matter, it gradually acquired a certain homogeneity reflecting
the boy's state of mind. Books of travel and adventure continued to
prevail for a long while. Equally favoured were stories dealing with
Norse Mythology and the heroic legends of his race. The grim record of
the Niebelungs was familiar to him at the age of eight, and the first
heroes of his worship were young Siegfried of divine aspect and Dietrich
of Bern, who seemed to the boy the final embodiment of worldly wisdom.
To these should be added Garibaldi, of whose South American campaigns,
so touchingly shared by the faithful Anita, he read graphic accounts in
an odd volume of an illustrated weekly. The word liberty first came to
him from the lips of the picturesque Italian, while Anita and the women
of the old Germanic sagas struck him by their contrast to his mother.

In the main, all his reading made for escape and compensation. He read
to get away from his own surroundings, and he revelled in characters of
fiction and legend and history that possessed qualities lacking in
himself. By nature he was a queer mixture of rashness and timidity, but
through his mother's anxiety on his behalf the latter quality was
constantly being nursed at the expense of all tendency to action. And
so, in order to keep the balance, he revelled in the imaginary or real
deeds of men whose very life-breath was danger. The more the books gave
him of what he craved, the less he thought of looking for it in life.

Consequently his new passion seemed a godsend to his mother, who
encouraged him in every possible way. It brought a solution of many
difficulties and worries by keeping him at home and quiet. The only
resistance came, as usual, from the father, who repeatedly counselled
moderation and often made the boy drop his book and turn to something
else--which seemed to Keith the worst of all the tyrannies to which he
found himself exposed. But most of the time the father was powerless
because of his absence from home, and soon Keith learned that his
reading formed the only exception to his mother's general refusal to
permit any circumvention of his father's explicit command.

It also became plain to Keith that the mother favoured his love for the
books not only as a means of relief to herself. Evidently she held it
admirable in itself and a promise bearing in some mysterious manner on
his future. His mother's approval flattered him, but otherwise her
attitude was a riddle which he did not care to solve as long as it
brought him permission to explore at will this newly discovered world of
perfectly safe enjoyment. In the end, however, that strange reverence
shown by his mother combined with his own increasing ability to live the
cherished life of his dreams at second hand into an influence that more
or less warped his entire outlook on life. It robbed to some extent of
his sense of proportion.



XV

His father noticed his timidity and seemed to view it with a sense of
humiliation. Once, in the presence of company, he threatened to put him
into skirts "like any other girl." Keith had played too little with
other children to have acquired the usual male consciousness of
superiority, but his father's words cut him to the quick nevertheless,
because he knew them to be meant for an insult. He resolved then and
there to show his mettle in some striking way, and promptly be began to
dream of such ways, but chance being utterly lacking for even a normal
display of boyish daring, it merely served to plunge him more deeply
into the sham life of his books.

Yet he was not without courage, and it was not physical pain, or the
fear of it, that brought the tears so quickly into flowing. Once, when
returning home with an uncovered bowl full of molasses from the grocery,
he stumbled at the foot of the stairs and fell so his forehead struck
the edge of the lowest step and his scalp was cut open to the width of
nearly an inch. The blood blinded him so that he could barely make his
way upstairs. When he reached the kitchen at last, his mother was scared
almost out of her wits, and her fright was augmented by the manner in
which he sobbed as if his heart were breaking. When at last the flow of
blood was partly stenched and his crying still continued, his mother
tried to tell him that there was no cause to be scared.

"I am not scared," he sputtered to her surprise. "I didn't know I was
hurt, but ... but ... I spilled all the molasses."

That night his father gave him a shining new silver coin without telling
him why, and the boy couldn't guess it at the time, though later he
learned the reason from his mother.

A favourite method employed by the father to test and to develop his
courage was to send him alone after dark on some errand into the cellar
or up into the attic, and the boy went without protest, no matter how
much he might dread the task at heart. Even the servant girls felt
reluctant about visiting the cellar at night, and the occasional
discovery of a drunken man asleep in front of the cellar door made the
danger far from imaginary.

Going down to the cellar, Keith was permitted to bring a candle along,
but the danger of fire made this out of the question when the attic was
his goal. One night on his way up there, he discovered a white,
fluttering shape by the square opening in the outer wall. He stopped on
the spot, and his heart almost stopped, too--but only for a moment.
Driven by some necessity he could not explain to himself, he picked
himself together and pushed on, only to find that the intimidating
spectre consisted of some white clothing hung for drying on the iron rod
of the shutter and kept moving by a high wind. It was a lesson that went
right home and stuck.

During that one moment of hesitation, the idea of a ghost tried to take
form in his more or less paralysed consciousness. He had read of ghosts,
and overheard stories told by the servant girls in apparent good faith,
and that whitish, almost luminous thing in front of him, stirring
restlessly with a faint hissing sound, looked and acted the part of a
ghost to perfection. But the idea was rejected before it had taken clear
shape and without any reasoning, instinctively, automatically. His
father always became scornful at the mere mention of ghosts, and that
settled it.

When it was all over, and he was safe within the kitchen door once more,
he told no one what had happened. He thought that, in spite of his
initial scare, he had acted decidedly well, and he was eager for
approval, but he was kept from telling by an uneasy feeling that his
father would laugh at him if he did.



XVI

The boy's timidity took quite different forms. One day the whole family
was astir. His parents had in some way obtained tickets to that
evening's performance at the Royal Opera. As the custom of the place was
to permit the holders of two adjoining seats to bring in a child with
them, it was decided after much discussion that Keith might go along.
His mother tried to explain the nature and purpose of a theatrical
performance, but what she said made no impression on the boy, who was
more excited by the thought of accompanying his parents than by what he
might hear or see.

Their seats were in a box in the third tier. It was like being suspended
halfway between the top and the bottom of a gigantic well. The depth of
that well affected the boy unpleasantly, while the strong light and the
hum of talk confused him. He clung closely to his mother with averted
face. Suddenly the light went out, and he heard his mother whisper:

"Look now!"

Glancing up, he found that a new room full of people had appeared where
before was nothing but a flat wall.

"What became of the wall, mamma," he asked aloud. She hushed him with a
smile, and he heard some one in another box titter.

"Now keep very quiet and try to follow what happens on the stage," his
mother admonished in another whisper.

They were giving Auber's "Crown Diamonds." The rich dresses appealed
somewhat to him, but not strongly. The music made no impression on him
whatsoever. The general effect on his mind was one of bewilderment, that
soon lapsed into bored indifference. Then he discovered that most of the
men on the stage were armed, and that some of them acted as if they
might put their weapons into use at any moment. And he, the ardent
participant in all the bloody deeds of Siegfried and Dietrich and
Kriemhild, he, the passionate hunter of big game on five continents,
became so nervous that nothing but fear of his father kept him from
burying his head in his mother's lap in order not to see any more. When,
at last, a shot rang out on the stage, even that fear could no longer
restrain him, and there was nothing for his mother to do but to escort
him out of the box into the corridor. There, under the care of a
friendly doorkeeper who treated him to candy out of a paper bag, he
stayed in perfect contentment until his parents were ready to go home.

"Oh, we must go again, Carl," he heard his mother cry in a tone of high
exultation.

"All right, you go," said the father with a yawn, Keith and I don't
care--do we, Keith?"

"No," Keith replied mechanically, but even as he spoke he became
conscious of a desire to share his mother's enthusiasm rather than his
father's indifference. If they would only promise not to shoot! ...



XVII

Three years he remained in the school of the Misses Ahlberg. Three times
fall and winter and spring were followed by that painfully delicious
period of almost unbroken daylight, when the very books seemed to lose
some of their magic, when even the air of the old lane became fraught
with some mystic urge, and when life within stone walls turned into an
unbearable burden.

He rose by degrees from mere spelling to the study of a foreign
language, German. He learned his Catechism by heart--or rather by rote,
for the time-worn phrases dropped from his lips at demand very much as
water runs down a mill sluice, without leaving any trace. In fact,
little of what he learned appeared to touch his real life at all. Nor
could he be made to take it very seriously, although, on the whole, he
was counted a good pupil.

He used schoolbooks, of course, but he was rarely caught reading one of
them. His mind seemed to master the offered knowledge by some mysterious
process of absorption of which he himself was never aware. Study in the
sense of close and painful application was quite foreign to him. Yet he
seemed capable of mastering anything that aroused his interest--or that
stirred his vanity, for he loved to shine. Unfortunately most of his
schoolmates were dull plodders who had not yet reached a stage where
plodding counted, and so his triumphs came easy and there was nothing to
spur him into serious effort.

At the end of the third year he had practically exhausted the
possibilities of the little school in the South End, and it was
understood that he would not return in the fall, when he would be nine
years old. But nothing had been decided about what he was to do instead.

He had not been unhappy with the Misses Ahlberg and his leave-taking
lacked none of the expected emotional colouring. Yet he left without a
pang, without regrets. It was as if he had passed through that school in
his sleep, waking up only when he reached home and his books. He had
made no friends and formed no ties at school, and outside of it he had
never associated with any of his schoolmates. Not one of them left a
mark on his memory as Harald had done. In a place full of girls, his
little heart never was betrayed into a single quickened beat of
anticipation. Nor did he make any new connections outside of the school
during those years. One might almost say that he had ceased to realize
the existence of things or persons except in so far as they administered
to some immediate need within himself.

Summer came early that year, and with it came a marked change. His
restlessness grew almost morbid, so that his mother found it nearly
impossible to keep him indoors. He was every minute pleading for leave
to play with Johan, and on several occasions when permission had been
granted, he and Johan left the quiet lane to play with strange boys on
the Quay. It drove his mother almost to despair, and she tried one thing
after another to keep him at home.

She was doing some embroidery at that particular time and the work
seemed to interest the boy a great deal. Sometimes, when he had given up
all hope of getting out, he could stand for many minutes at a time
watching the needle with its tail of brightly coloured yarn pass in and
out through the wide meshes of the fabric. Finally his mother suggested
that he try his hand at it, and he grabbed eagerly at that chance of
diversion. For about three days he was as devoted to his needle as any
girl. By that time he had filled a small square with a sort of design of
his own, and when his father returned home in the evening of the third
day, Keith displayed his achievement with considerable pride.

"Fine," remarked the father dryly. "Now we know what to do with him if
Uncle Granstedt does not think good him enough for a carpenter. We'll
apprentice him to a tailor. He'll make a good one, I am sure, as it
takes nine tailors to make a man, he need not have as much courage as a
woman even."

That disposed of the embroidery once for all, but it seemed also to
bring matters to a head. As soon as the father was done with his meal,
the mother made him accompany her into the parlour, and there they
stayed an endless time. When they returned to the living-room, Keith
could see that his mother had been crying, but she was smiling brightly
at that moment, and her voice had a ring of triumph when she said:

"Papa has something to tell you, Keith."

"Yes," the father drawled. "Your mother, as usual, has persuaded me to
do what I doubt is right. Because she has pleaded for you, I'll let you
enter the public school in the fall. That will cost money, and I am not
sure it is good for a poor man's son like you, but we'll see. It means
that you will have to do some studying at last, for if you don't--well,
then you'll have to learn a trade."

As always on such occasions, Keith took his cue from the mother, and her
mien told him that he ought to be pleased. It was a new departure
anyhow, and it implied evidently an advance that would administer to his
rather undernourished sense of self-importance. For anything doing so he
had a passionate craving, and so he was ready to rejoice.

The new school was still far off, however, and in the meantime there was
close at hand a problem that piqued him annoyingly. Had his father
really meant to make a carpenter or a tailor of him if his mother had
not interceded, or was the talk about it merely an expression of the
father's peculiar unwillingness to admit any sort of tender feeling
toward the son?

That was not the way Keith put it, in so far as he attempted any
formulation at all, but it was in substance what his momentary
speculations amounted to, and the solution of the problem lay quite
beyond him. He never could make out just what his father meant or
thought or felt in regard to himself.



XVIII

Then several developments followed each other in quick succession. First
of all his father bought him a season ticket at the public baths in the
North River and made him join a class of small boys for instruction in
the manly art of swimming. The world was opening up, Keith felt, and his
father was lured to the verge of openly expressed satisfaction at
finding that the boy's timidity did not extend to cold water.

No sooner, however, had he mastered the mechanics of the thing
sufficiently to graduate from the board-walk onto a cork pillow in the
water, than he had to quit because the whole family was "going into the
country" for the summer. To Keith this meant a chance of playing with
other children without having to ask permission every time and rarely
getting it. To his mother it meant a distinct social advance, as no
family staying in town all summer could be held really respectable.

The "country" was located on one of the numerous islands forming the
outskirts of the city and could be reached by the father after he
finished work by a fifteen-minute ride on one of the innumerable little
steamboats running back and forth like so many busy shuttles across
every sheet of water in the vicinity of Stockholm. Even then it was a
suburb, but the houses were called villas, and there were plenty of
trees between the buildings, and the roads meandering whimsically among
miniature lawns and gardens had no pavements, and the lake came right up
to the door.

There the father had rented a single room from some acquaintances who
made their home on the island all the year round. The man was a German
who had recently returned to Sweden after serving as a noncommissioned
officer in the Franco-Prussian war--a stocky Bavarian with a tremendous
black beard, a fondness for top-boots and long-stemmed pipes, and a
startling tendency to shout every communication in the form of a
command. He was a good-natured soul nevertheless, in spite of his
appearance, his occasional bursts of temper, and his exaggerated regard
for discipline, and he was full of stories about real fighting that
differed puzzlingly from what Keith had read about such matters. Uncle
Laube had a pet phrase that stuck in the boy's mind and exercised a
corroding influence on some of his most cherished sentiments:

"A man must be able to fight, but it is black hell when he has to."

There were three children in the family--a boy two or three years older
than Keith, a girl of his own age and a baby sister. The boy was named
Adolph and the elder girl Marie. All three of them, but especially the
boy, were being brought up in strict Teutonic fashion, which made a sort
of super-religion out of obedience. At the mere sound of his father's
voice, Adolph trembled and stiffened up like a recruit under training.
Once the two boys and Marie strayed beyond bounds to a place where some
timber rafts were tied up along the shore. Adolph led the way onto the
rafts and the two others followed. It was great fun jumping from log to
log where two rafts met, until Marie suddenly slipped into the water and
began to sink like a stone. Quick as a flash Adolph dropped on his knees
on a log that was partly under water, grabbed the girl by her hair and
pulled her out. On their return home, Adolph was licked until he could
not stand on his feet for leading the smaller children into mischief.
Then he got a crown for the pluck shown in saving his sister's life.

This even balancing of justice made a deep impression on Keith. He
thought and thought of it, and his reason, which already was very
active, appreciated the logic of such a dispensation, but his heart
rebelled strangely and turned for a while to his own father as a paragon
of mildness, while the black-bearded Uncle Laube became an object of
repulsion bordering on hatred. Fortunately the disciplinarian was away
most of the day and Keith was running wild around the island. This was
not possible without some protests from his mother, who regarded all
water outside of a tub with deep distrust. He nevertheless maintained an
unusual degree of independence until one day, while playing in one of
the rowboats lying outside a small pier near their house, he, too, fell
in and was pulled out by Adolph.

The children were alone at the time. Keith had no consciousness of
having been in danger, but he was in a funk because of his wet clothing.
Instead of going home at once, he ran to an open spot at the other end
of the island and played in the sun to get dry. After a while his mother
appeared, disturbed by his long absence. There was nothing to do but to
respond to her call, although he did so most reluctantly, his clothing
still being damp. His slow movements aroused her suspicion, and in
another moment the awful truth was out.

"You might have drowned," his mother cried, too frightened to scold. "Or
you might have caught cold and died of that. Perhaps ... you had better
come home at once."

"No," protested Keith. "Adolph was there, and it hasn't been cold at
all."

"But think, Keith," his mother remonstrated, her eyes dim with tears,
"you wouldn't care to die and leave me?"

"I don't want to leave you," the boy said, "and I was not going to."

She took his head between her two hands and looked long into his eyes
before she asked at last:

"Are you not scared of death?"

"I don't know," he stammered, wincing slightly under her stare. He could
not grasp what she was driving at. Death carried no clear meaning to
him. It had never touched his real inner life, and he never thought of
it. No matter how frightened he became, it never occurred to him that he
might cease to exist. Even his dreams had no colouring of that kind.

In spite of his mother's anxiety, he learned to swim that summer. He
liked it and did it rather well for his age. But he never ventured very
far out. Rebel as he might against the check on his movements, his
mother's attitude had left a lasting mark on him, and avoiding needless
risks seemed a natural thing to him. As a result of this inhibition, all
his outdoor playing lacked that complete abandon which is the soul of
it. He been made an indoor child beyond retrieve.



XIX

Being so much in the open air and moving about as a child should, his
nights during that summer passed mostly without dreams of any kind, and
also without other disturbances worth speaking of. He was too healthily
tired for anything but sleep.

The winter nights, following days spent largely indoors with little
company and less exercise, were quite different. Then the passing from
wakefulness to sleep took him through a dangerous twilight period, when
games of the kind learned behind the big rock seemed not only natural,
but the most enticing thing in the world. And the more he was thrown
back on his own resources, the more tempting those games became. They
represented, besides, something that was entirely his own, with which no
one else could interfere. It was a secret that would have been the
sweeter for being shared with some one else, he felt, but Johan's
peculiar attitude in this matter had filled him with a shyness not his
own by nature.

Then, with the sleep, came also the dreams. At first they were, or
seemed to be, mere plays of fancy--shadowy repetitions of daylight
experiences in clownish distortion. Then they began to change. An
element of unrest, and finally of dread, began to fill them. This did
not happen, however, until the same elements had found a place in his
waking life, and particularly not until the hours of that twilight
period had developed into a source of increasingly acute conflict.

Nothing palpable had happened. Nothing had been said openly to convince
him that his secret was known and that it was evil. Yet the air about
him seemed full of suspicion and suspense and menace. The mere way in
which his mother looked at him at times filled his soul with sinister
misgivings. And she was always talking about temptations and dangers
that walk in the dark. Or else she dropped mysterious warnings about the
duty of keeping one's soul and body clean and pure.

It was all very disturbing, and he should have liked to ask questions,
but always some imperious force within himself kept him back. He felt
that his sweet secret would never bear open discussion, but the more
desperately he clung to it, the more his mind was poisoned with doubts
out of which soon grew fears.

Thus began the new dream life.

He was as a rule the only living being in those dreams. Everything else
consisted of lifeless things, and mostly of spaces and dimensions rather
than of objects. The dominant characteristic was an increase of size
proportional to the increase of distance from himself. He found himself,
for instance, in the midst of a vast space laid out in squares. Where he
stood at the centre, those squares were just large enough to hold him.
Then, as his glance passed outward, the squares became larger and
larger, until at last their dimensions became gigantic. Soon they began
to move toward him, growing smaller as they approached, and yet filling
his soul with a horror based entirely on the monstrous size of those
squares that were still miles away. Or he walked down a corridor built
of stones that, as it opened out in front of him, expanded indefinitely
until it assumed proportions that filled him with a sickening sense of
his own smallness. As he moved forward, the corridor automatically
contracted, but always the horror of those immeasurable vastnesses still
ahead of him continued dominant and inevitable. At other times sums of
figures came moving toward him from every direction, and the farther
away from him they were, the more enormous they grew, until his mind no
longer could take them in, and his heart quaked at the thought that
sooner or later one of them would reach him in its original
awe-inspiring immensity.

He tried once to tell his mother about those dreams, but found it
impossible to express what he wished to describe. Not long afterwards he
was aroused in the middle of the night by his mother calling him by
name. Her voice betrayed worry.

"What's the matter, Keith," she asked when at last he woke up
sufficiently to answer her call. "Were you dreaming?"

"I don't know," replied the boy, and at that moment he didn't know.

"I thought first you were crying," explained the mother, "and then I
heard that you were counting something."

"He was probably repeating his multiplication table," muttered the
father. "I wish he would learn his lessons in the daytime, so that we
could sleep in peace at night."

The next morning Keith had forgotten all about it but his mother
reminded him of what had happened during the night in order to find out
whether he had any bad dreams. Keith shook his head. Then a thought
flashed through his mind.

"Do I often talk in my sleep," he asked.

"Hardly ever," said his mother. "But the other night you read the Lord's
Prayer from beginning to end, and I wish you would read it as nicely
when are saying your prayers before going to sleep."

"He is studying too much," Granny put in from the kitchen. "His nose is
always buried in a book. That's the whole trouble, I tell you."

"No, mamma, I don't think reading does him any harm," said Keith's
mother, and for some reason Keith felt relieved by the diversion.



XX

Even Keith could not escape a feeling about this time of having arrived
at some sort of station or landmark on his road through life.

He was frightfully self-centred. He seemed to be thinking about nothing
but himself. In reality, however, he was not reflecting at all on the
character and probable course of his life. It was all a matter of
feeling and what concerned him was merely the comforts or discomforts,
pleasures or pains, exhilarations or boredoms of the passing moment. The
future was a word that, at the most, implied things that might happen a
few days after tomorrow. The convinced visioning of events a year or
more distant was still utterly beyond him. And the past seemed to vanish
with the setting sun of the day just ended.

Yet he was dimly aware of facing a transition that, somehow, must make a
great change in his entire life. Something that he could not define was
drawing to an end, and something else, equally indefinable, was about to
begin. The "school for small children" which he had left, and the
"school for boys" into which he would soon enter, were the symbols used
by his mind to express the passing out of one phase of life into
another, but as such they suggested the actual change without revealing
it. And there were moments when Keith's vague efforts to look ahead were
accompanied by a sense of crushing dread, while at other times they
might fill him with a never before tasted fervor of existence.

He was near the completion of his ninth year. It seemed quite an age,
but this appearance was contradicted by troublesome facts. He was very
small for his age and hopelessly tied to the apron strings of his mother
in spite of all his father's efforts to pry him loose. The reason for
this failure was that his father lacked the time or the capacity for
winning the boy's whole-hearted attention and affection.

The one thing the father seemed to care for on his return home was to be
left alone with his own preoccupations, and these did not include the
boy. He could not unbend. He could not subordinate his own momentary
desire or disinclination to an interest essentially foreign to his own
self. In other words, he was just as self-centred as Keith, and just as
unreflecting on the whole. Both lived completely in the present, and
both wished to escape from it. The only difference between them was that
while Keith sought his escape in space, so to speak, by means of his
books, the father's only road of escape led him into a past of which the
boy formed no part.

Either through some fault of his own nature, or through the restrictive
policy of his parents, Keith at nine had formed no real attachments
outside of his immediate surroundings, and no life of his own that was
not enclosed by the walls of his childhood home. This state of affairs
tended always to throw him back on the mother as his most satisfactory
source of inspiration and the magnetic pole of his emotional compass.
And she on her part left no effort untried that could help to fasten his
affections more closely to her.

Unconsciously but increasingly she worked to cut the boy off from all
the rest of the world in order that she might have him the more
exclusively to herself. She expressed openly the wish that he might be a
girl, because girls in those days were so much less likely to escape the
parental protection.

The boy was pleased by her attempts at monopolization. There was
something flattering and softly reassuring about her passionate pleas
for the uppermost place in his heart. And yet he rebelled with
increasing violence against the closeness of her clutch on him. He
seemed to choke at times, and a blind hatred rose within him without
ever revealing itself as in any way related to his mother. One of the
dominant emotions of this and the following period of his life was one
of intense impatience that seemed to be directed toward no particular
object. Once in a great while he turned toward his father with an
expectation of relief, but this expectation was always foiled, and so he
was plunged back again and again into an inner life of his own that fed
almost exclusively on books and had little or nothing in common with the
reality to which the new school was supposed to form a gateway.



PART III



I

The new school was located in another part of the South End, separated
only by the churchyard from the old church of St. Mary Magdalene. It was
a state institution demanding an entrance fee, which, although quite
reasonable, yet sufficed to keep out the children of mere wage earners.
It was a school for the offspring of the "better classes" and good
enough for all but the most select who must needs turn to certain
private institutions of still greater exclusiveness for instruction.

Its official title was St. Mary's Elementary School and it had only five
grades or classes, as they were called, being supplemented by a
"gymnasium," from which the pupils passed on to the university. No boy
was admitted under nine, but there seemed to be no limit at the other
end, for at the time of Keith's entrance the upper grades still held a
few youngsters with well developed moustaches who, from the viewpoint of
Keith's own peach-skinned diminutiveness, looked like veritable
patriarchs. Stories were afloat about their actually being addressed as
"mister" by the teachers.

Admission was conditioned by examinations held in the school itself, and
thither Keith was escorted by his mother one late August day. All
novelties stimulated him, and to his inexperience the rather dingy old
school seemed enormously impressive. The mere fact that it occupied a
whole building all by itself was enough. In addition, however, it had
an assembly hall large enough to hold several hundred boys, and there
were numerous rooms capable of holding thirty or forty boys. Every pupil
had a seat and a small desk of his own. Seeing these desks, with
inkstands sunk into their tops, and special grooves for the penholders,
and lids that could be raised, Keith knew that he must pass the
examinations or die from a broken heart.

The officiating teachers were stern but not unkind. Keith was nervous
from eagerness, but neither frightened nor embarrassed. The questions
asked were ridiculously easy, he thought. When his turn came, he
answered triumphantly, as if he had been playing a game in which he was
quite skilled. Finding him willing and well prepared, the examiners felt
themselves challenged and pressed him more and more. Still he held his
own. It ended with a sense of triumph on his part, but nothing was said
about his having passed.

The wait that followed until all the boys had been questioned was the
only difficult part of the ordeal. Waiting patiently was not a strong
point with Keith. Finally his mother appeared to take him home, and the
moment he looked at her he knew. She was in such high spirits that she
had to try a joke.

"Too bad you couldn't pass," she said in a voice she vainly tried to
make sad.

He knew it was a joke, and yet his heart leaped into his throat and his
eyes filled with tears. Then she had to console him, and to do so, she
let out the whole story. The teachers had told her that he knew enough
to go right into the third grade, but on account of his age they had
advised her not to let him start above the second grade. It was a whole
year saved, but that was not what she was thinking of. Her son had
distinguished himself by giving proof of a brightness that had aroused
unusual attention among the teachers. Her pride in this fact was such
that Keith really began to think that a new life was about to begin
for him.

And that night, when his father came home, the whole story had to be
told over again with new details, and Keith had the pleasure of seeing
an expression of undisguised satisfaction on his father's face. It did
not last very long, but it was sweet to watch while it lasted. Then the
father resumed his usual manner of stern indifference as he turned
to the boy:

"That's all very well, Keith, but it means also that they will expect
more of you than of the other boys, and so you have to study harder than
ever in order to make good with them."

Keith didn't care. It had been a wonderful day, he felt. He had had his
first taste of public approval, and he had noticed the effect of it on
his father and mother. As for the need of studying--that was easy. And
he didn't have to begin his studies at once anyhow.



II

After the opening of the term, it took Keith only a day or two to
realize that, literally, he had entered a new world, quite different, in
spirit as well as in appearance, from anything previously experienced.

The first shock came as soon as he had taken his place in the class and
the first lesson had begun. He was no longer Keith. Christian names were
not at all in use. Everybody was addressed by his family name both by
the teachers and by his fellow pupils. Keith had become Wellander, and
the first time he heard himself called by that name he blushed as deeply
as if his most intimate privacy had suddenly been violated. In a few
hours, however, the unfamiliarity of the name as a standing appellation
had worn off, and then the pride of the thing sent a pleasant glow
through his whole body, making him for a brief, dizzy moment glimpse the
glory of manhood.

His next discovery went far deeper. He had attended school four years in
succession, but only as you drop into a strange room on a visit. He had
never belonged in or to the school, and the school had neither limited
nor extended his individuality. Now he found himself completely taken
possession of and made a part of something larger than himself, a
carefully correlated and guarded system of ranks and rules and
traditions. In retrospect the former school seemed as accidental and
fleeting as a street crowd, while the new one was an institution with a
jealously preserved and deeply revered history to which each new pupil
was expected to add more lustre. But most remarkable of all seemed the
fact that this collective body added something to the stature of every
boy that became a part of it.

Membership was as onerous as it was honourable, not only within the
school precints but anywhere. To belong to "Old Mary" was to carry a
sacred duty along wherever one went. She was like an ambitious parent,
never jealous of the reputation of her children. Mostly it was a
question of refraining from this or that thing which less conspicuously
placed boys might venture at will, but at times it might imply the
performance of fierce deeds of bravery in the face of overwhelming odds.
There was the rival school of St. Catherine and several "popular"
schools that had no social standing whatsoever, but contained pupils
with harder fists and less generous ideas of fighting than any boy
within Old Mary. When certain words of derision were flung upon the air
by members of those inferior institutions, there was nothing left for a
pupil of St. Mary's but to fight.

Little by little these strange facts penetrated Keith's subconsciousness
and set up a never ending conflict between pride and precaution, between
his wish to rise to a new ideal and his instinctive tendency to obey his
mother's almost hysterical injunctions against fighting of any kind.
Fortunately his road to and from school permitted him to follow the
principal streets where the traffic was sufficient to act as a check on
combative youngsters, and an additional protection was derived from his
small size which caused the hostile elements to overlook his existence
unless he appeared in the company of more developed schoolmates. And as
he mostly walked alone, his comings and goings were uneventful as a
rule. But that did not prevent him from imagining dangers and to suffer
from them almost as much as if they had been real. There were times when
he could not help thinking of himself as a coward.

Such estimates of himself were not wholly checked by an incident that
occurred within the school precincts early in the first term. There was
another boy in the same class named Bauer, who seemed the living
counterpart of Keith--just as undersized and lonely and nervous. From
the first there was a hostile tension between those two, and soon it
came to open war. It broke out in a pause between two lessons when
practically all the boys were gathered in the schoolyard. Before Keith
quite knew what had happened, he found himself fighting Bauer. First
they used their fists and then they wrestled. The rest of the boys
formed a ring about them and egged them on.

They were well matched in their common weaknesses and both developed a
certain courage during the stress of conflict. The difference between
them was that Bauer apparently wanted to lick Keith, while the latter
thought of nothing but to defend himself. The idea of inflicting pain on
another human being was so foreign to Keith that it never took tangible
form in his mind. The result was that Bauer's greater aggressiveness
carried the day, and soon Keith found himself prone on his back with a
triumphant Bauer straddling his chest.

At that moment both boys became guilty of serious breaches against
time-honoured school etiquette. Bauer struck the defenceless Keith
square in the face with his clenched fist, and Keith burst into tears.
Quick as a flash one of the older boys grabbed Bauer by the scruff of
his neck and hurled him halfway across the yard, while another one
plucked Keith from the ground and shoved him toward the stairway with a
contemptuous:

"The classroom for cry-babies."

The humiliation felt by Keith was so intense that he wondered whether he
could stay in the school. Nothing but the thought of his father kept
him from returning home. But the cloud had a silver lining. Though no
one else knew, he knew that he had started crying from rage, and not
from fear. And this fact in connection with his realization of not
having had any thought of running away during the fight made him
hesitate in his final judgment upon himself. But he felt quite sure that
fighting was not his chosen field. The effect on his nerves was
too damaging.



III.

In the lower three grades, a single teacher with the title of Class
Principal had complete charge of the morals, manners and instruction of
the children in his grade. Keith had the luck of falling into the hands
of one of the kindest and shrewdest men in the school--a man who seemed
to understand that his mission was to guide rather than to drive, and
who, in addition to his broad, human sympathy, possessed a genuine sense
of humour.

His name was Lector Dahlström, but everybody spoke of him as Dally, and
little did he care. He was large of body and large of mind, with a most
impressive girth and a voice that commanded attention without grating on
supersensitive nerves. He had very rarely to assert his authority, but
if ever the need arose, no one remained long in doubt as to who was the
master, and a recurrence of the offense was unheard of. Even on such
occasions he never used corporal punishment, although at that time the
right of such administration still remained with him. He simply appealed
to the self-respect and the sense of fairness in his pupils, asking no
one to render what lay beyond his capacity. The main secret of his hold
on the boys, however, lay in his ability to keep them interested, and to
do so he frequently broke away from the text books and time-worn
pedagogical methods. If there was anything he deposed, it was learning
things by rote.

The boys sat in rows of four and were placed with regard to scholarship
and behaviour, so that the best pupils were farthest away from the
teacher and the least reliable ones right in front of him. Keith found
himself number two in the class, and that position at first tickled his
pride considerably. Later, as the term went by, and boys now and then
were shifted up or down, he began to wonder why he always remained
number two. It was reassuring in a way, as showing that he held his own,
but he failed to see why another boy should always remain _primus_,
although his performances during lessons did not surpass those of Keith.
Once he dared even give utterance to some such speculation in his
father's hearing, but was promptly put down with a stern:

"If the teacher puts another boy above you, he has probably some very
good reason for doing so, and you had better feel thankful for being
where you are in the class."

"Humph," said his mother. "You forget, Carl, that the father of that boy
is one of the richest bankers in the city."

This was a way of looking at it which had never occurred to Keith. He
was pretty contented, on the whole, and like all the rest, he placed the
most implicit trust in the teacher's justice. From the very start, he
had a feeling that Dally kept a special eye on him, and yet he was
rarely spoken to except when questions were passed around. Even then the
teacher was rather apt to leave Keith alone to such an extent that the
boy now and then began to think himself disliked. Always, however, when
he got to this point, some little incident would occur that restored his
faith both in himself and in the teacher.

There could be no doubt that he knew his lessons as well as any one in
the class, if not better, and he shone still more when Dally appealed to
the natural intelligence of the boys by straying far away from the
beaten and dusty path of the text books. Whenever he had stirred them by
some excursion of this kind and began to ask questions in order to find
out how far they had followed him, Keith's right hand was sure to shoot
excitedly upwards in order to get him the coveted chance of answering.
And it seemed as if he could answer almost every question asked except a
few that went so far beyond the bounds laid down for the class that the
teacher deemed it fair to warn them that inability to answer would be no
shame. That was the kind of questions Dally generally reserved for
Keith, and when Keith couldn't answer, it didn't console him very much
that no one else could. Once, when his hand went up as usual and, to his
astonishment, he obtained the permission to answer, Keith, to his still
greater astonishment, suddenly discovered that he had no answer to give.

"I thought so," said Dally with a broad grin on his good-humoured face.
"Do you know what a fuzzy-wuzz is, Wellander?"

Keith shook his head, his face crimson with chagrin and humiliation as
the whole class burst into anticipatory laughter.

"That's a chap who wants to do all of it all the time," explained Dally.

Keith did not quite see the point, but he kept his right arm a little
more in check for a while after that, until one day the lesson was
forgotten and history repeated itself.

"Now Keith is fuzzy-wuzzying again," said Dally, and Keith thought he
would sink through the floor. His mind was quite made up never to ask
permission to answer another question again, but that same afternoon,
during the lesson in Swedish history, Dally dropped all questioning and
asked Keith to explain to the class the main factors leading up to the
Wars of Reformation--which Keith spent twenty minutes in doing while all
the rest of the class had to sit still listening to him.



IV

Keith could not remain isolated to the same extent as in the earlier
schools. Inevitable community sprang from similarity of sex and age
alone. In the same direction worked the system of teaching which called
for the united attention of the entire class during every moment of the
lesson. It was impossible to form a part of the class without being in
contact with all its other members. The boy who read aloud or answered a
question became subjected to the criticism or admiration of all the
rest. Rivalry in any field of study was just as likely to arise between
two boys at different ends of the room as between those sitting side by
side. The spirit of Dally tended to assist this fusion of personalities
in every way, and the boy who kept apart was sure sooner or later to run
foul of his good-humoured but well-aimed sallies. His attitude implied
no tyranny, and he strove for no deadening conformity. On the contrary,
he always spoke of a strongly marked individuality as the object of all
education, but he tried to develop it by fearless contact with others
rather than by jealous withdrawal.

Keith for the first time found himself part of a society, and he liked
it because the teacher's insistence on scholarly achievement as the only
standard of comparison gave him a chance to hold his own among a group
of boys, most of whom counted themselves his superiors in every other
respect. He was small and poor, of humble origin, without influential
connections, without worldly advantages of any kind, but when mind was
pitched against mind, he felt second to none--except in mathematics,
where he could compete neither with Davidson, the Jewish banker's son
who was _primus_, or with that gawky, cumbersome Anderson whose dullness
in every other respect always kept him near the bottom of the class. For
this reason Keith differed from most of the others by liking school
better during the lessons than at any other time.

There were games in the schoolyard during the pauses, and some of these
were played in large groups or by teams. This occurred particularly when
echoes from some war abroad caused the whole school to divide into rival
armies for the staging of regular battles, as during his second year,
when all had to be Turks or Russians. But Keith didn't like battles
except in books, and mostly the pauses broke up the class communities
into small coteries or pairs. And the moment this happened, Keith found
himself outside. He belonged to no special group. His appearance in the
yard raised no delighted hails. He had no chum of his very own with whom
to exchange secrets or lay plans for common adventures. And but for
Dally, he would probably have spent most of his free time in the
classroom.

It was worse when the big pause came at eleven and every one went home
for lunch, or when three o'clock brought school to a close for the day.
Going to school alone was an experience shared by all, but on leaving
it, the hurrying horde of youngsters, exuberant with freedom as so many
colts, broke into little groups of two or three that had homes in the
same neighbourhood. Now and then Keith would join a couple of other boys
headed for the old City like himself, and they would not refuse his
company, but there always was something between him and them that
precluded real fellowship, and so he trudged his way homeward, alone
most of the time. Then he was also sure of reaching home in the shortest
possible time, so that his mother had no chance to become worried
over him.

It happen now and then that a larger group was formed for some unusual
exploit and that Keith became part of it by chance rather than choice.
Once he accompanied such a group to that part of the harbour where
tall-masted fullriggers with foreign flags lay nose by stern in unbroken
line along the quay. Strange odours, fragrant or repulsive, filled the
air. Jolly, loud-voiced men toiled mightily or lounged like monarchs
among piles of casks and bags and boxes. For once Keith lost his usual
timidity under such circumstances and threw himself whole-heartedly into
anything the gang suggested. He even ventured to climb the mast of a
ship as far as the foretop. When at last reluctantly he turned homeward,
he felt like a hero, but when he caught sight of the tear-stained,
fretted face of his mother, he knew at once that even such exaltation
was not worth the price to be paid for it.

Unfortunately he had made himself popular that afternoon, and the next
time a gang formed for a similar purpose, he was asked to join. But he
shook his head, and being foolishly truthful by nature, he blurted out
an embarrassed:

"My mother won't let me."

The answer was passed along. It was repeated in school the next day.
Keith heard echoes of it for weeks. And it added a good deal to the
invisible wall that seemed to rise about him wherever he went.

Yet he was not unhappy. There was in his nature a wonderful resiliency
that never let his spirits drop beyond a certain point, and that always
brought them back to highwater mark at the slightest encouragement.



V

He had discovered the school library. It was to him a marvellous
treasure trove. Any book could be taken home, one at a time, after being
registered with the teacher acting as librarian for the day. Nor were
the books handed out to you arbitrarily. You browsed all by yourself,
and picked and picked, and calculated, and went back on your choice a
dozen times, until at last you struck a book so fascinating in its
promises that all hesitation disappeared.

The father started to object, but was silenced by the explanation that
the school authorities wanted the boys to borrow books from the library.
That settled it, for discipline came first and even pleasure must be
allowed if required by discipline. Had Keith been less honest or more
imaginative in what may be called practical matters, his father's regard
for authority might have offered more than one chance at liberties now
denied, but this possibility never occurred to him, and so the library
remained his one avenue of escape.

The books he chose puzzled and almost shocked the rotatory guardians of
his sanctum. Once he picked an enormous volume on Greek mythology, full
of pictures and translated passages from Homer and the dramatists.

"You don't want that, Wellander," the teacher said, eying him
curiously, when Keith presented the book for registration.

"Yes, I do," replied Keith stoutly, but his heart began to quake at the
thought that the cherished volume was going to be denied him.

"Do you mean to say that you intend to read it through?" the teacher
persisted.

"Yes, I will," said Keith.

There was a long pause during which the teacher seemed to weigh the book
in his hand as if wondering whether its very weight would be too much
for the undersized little chap in front of him.

"All right," he said at last, "but I suppose that means you will have
reading for the rest of this season."

Keith looked at the book more hopefully, and with hope came courage.

"I'll read it in three weeks," he said.

So he did, too, and when he turned in the book, the same teacher
happened to be on duty, recognized him, and began to ask questions. When
Keith had proved that the whole Olympian hierarchy was duly installed in
his acquisitive brain, the teacher said with an amused but
friendly smile:

"I think we shall let you have anything you want hereafter. What is it
to be this time--philosophy?"

"No, I want another book of exploration," answered Keith, thawing under
the smile. "And I want a real good one."

That was his favourite subject, and the book he chose was Speke's
"Discovery of the Source of the Nile." Once launched on that memorable
journey, he had no thought left for any explorations of his own.



VI

During the fall and spring terms of that first year Keith had no sense
of time. Days and weeks and months rolled by so smoothly that their
passing was unnoticed. It is a question whether at any other period of
his life--with one possible exception--he was more completely interested
and, for that reason, satisfied.

One day he observed casually that the old trees in the churchyard
sported tiny green leaves under a deliciously blue but still rather cold
sky. A few days more, and he heard that commencement was at hand.

It was a time of great excitement in school. Who would pass and who
would not? Falling through might mean another year in the same class,
but beyond all doubt it meant a summer spent at work instead of playing.
It was worse than a disgrace. It was a menace to liberty at the time of
the year when liberty meant most.

Being second in the class, it never occurred to Keith that he might fail
of promotion to a higher grade, but at that end there were possible
prizes to consider. The class was full of gossip and speculation. Boys
who had hardly spoken to each other before broke into heated discussions
or formed belated friendships. In one way and another the fever infected
Keith and spread from him to his parents, though his father as usual
feigned complete indifference. From his mother he learned long before
the startling fact was meant to reach his ears, that his father had
actually asked a day off at the bank in order to attend the exercises.
This news increased Keith's fear by several degrees. He had no idea what
might happen, and it would be unthinkably dreadful to have the father
present if anything went wrong. But on the other hand, if ... well, what
was there to happen anyhow?

On the morning of the great day, a host of parents and relatives and
other interested spectators crowded into the big assembly hall where
places were reserved for them in the rear and along the walls. In the
meantime the pupils gathered in their respective class-rooms, and from
there they marched by twos to the hall, the lowest grade leading. Every
boy was in his best clothes, and every one showed his nervousness in his
own peculiar way. Keith laughed hysterically a few times before they
started, and then he turned into an automaton that breathed and moved
and heard and saw only as part of a gigantic machine. His own
individuality seemed to melt and become a mere drop in the all-exclusive
individuality of the school.

This mood lasted through the early part of the exercises, the prayer
read by the _primus_ of the senior class, the hymn singing, the Rector's
speech, and so on. Everything came to him as out of a mist, and he was
not even sufficiently conscious of himself to look around for a glimpse
of his parents. When the distribution of exercises began, the whole
atmosphere changed. Until then it had been collective and impersonal.
Now it became intensely personal. Every one wanted to hear. Necks were
craned, whispered questions asked. It was as if a sudden breeze had
stirred waters which until then had been still as the mirroring surface
of a forest pool. Keith's mood changed with the rest, and he grew
painfully conscious of himself and his surroundings.

Starting with the lowest grade, the Rector read out the names of the
prize winners, the character of the prizes, and sometimes the reasons
why they were bestowed. At the mention of each name, a boy rose from his
seat, squirmed past his closely packed comrades, marched up the centre
aisle to the platform, bowed awkwardly to the Rector, grabbed the prize,
bowed still more awkwardly if possible, and marched back to his seat
with a face that burned or blanched, grinned or glowed, according to
temperament.

The second grade was soon reached. Most of the prizes consisted of
books. Davidson, _primus_, got two gilt-edged volumes of poetry. Keith
caught a glimpse of them and experienced a twinge of envy. His heart was
beating so that he thought he could hear it. His eyes clung to the
Rector's mouth, and when the next name was read, he half rose. Then he
sank back, and around him an ominous stillness seemed to reign.

The name was that of Runge, _tertius_, who got some historical work.
Then _quartus_, Blomberg, who was a passionate botanist, received a
valuable text book on his favourite subject. Still the rector went on,
and Keith felt sure that his name had been passed over by some mistake,
and that now it would come.

"A German lexicon for special attention to the student of that
language," the Rector droned on.

Again Keith started to rise from his seat, but even as he did so, it
flashed through his mind that he was given no more attention to German
than to other studies.

"... to Otto Krass of the Second Grade," the Rector completed his
sentence, holding out a book.

As Keith sank back on the bench, Krass, _quintus_, rose with an
expression on his face as if he had become personally involved in a
particularly incredible miracle.

A whisper ran through the rest of the class. Glances were cast at Keith,
who felt them like so many lashes on bare skin although in every other
respect he had once more become utterly unconscious of what happened
about him.

By slow degrees he recovered so far that he could try to think, but the
process was unendurable. There could be no accident. It was a deliberate
slight aimed at him for some specific reason. He tried to think of the
past year and its happenings in and out of school, but this effort
produced no solution to the riddle.

Suddenly he bethought himself of his speculations concerning his place
in the class. It seemed that he had been deeply envious of Davidson all
that year. With a quick turn of the head he surveyed for a moment the
haughty expression and narrowly drawn postures of the boy beside him.
There was a trace of a sneer on that face, and again Keith's heart was
flooded with resentment. But this mood changed abruptly into
contriteness. Perhaps he was being punished by some one, by God--he
hesitated at that thought--for grudging his schoolmate the place and the
honours that he probably had deserved. Keith was the meanest of
the mean....

Krass was back in his seat showing his book. He showed it to Keith also,
but with a palpable embarrassment that touched the latter as an
additional blow. Keith tried to say that it was nice, but his lips were
too dry and stiff to produce a sound.

The Rector was still reading off names. To save himself from his own
thoughts, Keith tried to listen. Soon he noticed that, without fail, the
prizes went in unbroken sequence to the first four or five pupils in
every grade. And suddenly he wondered whether his father and mother had
noticed. What would they say? What could _he_ say?

Then he remembered his mother's remark on hearing about his place in the
class, and he wondered if it could be possible.... But the parents of
Krass had neither wealth nor position. That much he knew.

The Rector's voice and manner became more and more impressive, and the
prizes more and more valuable, as he passed higher and higher, until at
last the senior class was reached--the boys who were now graduating into
the _gymnasium_. They were his own pupils, and for each of the prize
winners from the two branches of that class he had a word of special
praise and good-will.

A restless stirring passed through the assembly as the boy expected to
be the last recipient of special honours made his way to the platform
and everybody prepared to rise for the singing of a closing hymn.

Still the old Rector, with his smooth-shaven and deeply furrowed Roman
face, remained standing, and once more an expectant hush fell upon
pupils and spectators. Apparently he intended, contrary to custom, to
follow up the main ceremony of the day with some important announcement.

"One more prize remains to be distributed," he resumed with more than
usual deliberation. "We do not have the pleasure of bestowing it
regularly, because its conditions are unusual. It was the will of the
donor that it should be given to that pupil who, regardless of grade and
age, during the previous year had shown the relatively greatest
aptitude, industry, and actual advance in knowledge. This year the
prize, which consists of one hundred crowns in gold and is the largest
at the disposal of our school, is to be distributed, and the pupil found
worthy of this exceptional honour is...."

Every eye was on the Rector as he paused dramatically. Every one in the
hall listened breathlessly to catch the favoured name. Keith listened
like the rest, a little enviously perhaps, but without serious
attention, for it had just occurred to him for the tenth time that the
situation would have been so much less unbearable if only his father had
stayed away.

"... this pupil is Keith Wellander of the Second Grade," the Rector
concluded.

A murmur swept the hall, and Keith felt himself the centre of many eyes.
The murmur grew as the winner failed to appear, but Keith could not move
a limb. Dumbly and unbelievingly he stared at the Rector and the group
of teachers seated around him on the platform.

"Come forward, Wellander," the Rector said in a friendly voice as if he
could well understand the overwhelming effect of such distinction. At
the same time Keith noticed Lector Dahlström rising partly from his seat
on the platform as if to see whether anything might be the matter.

Had the ceiling opened and an angel appeared in a fiery chariot to call
him heavenward, the boy could not have been more startled. It was as if
a terrific blow had paralyzed all his senses. His classmates had to push
him forward. He never knew how he reached the platform, where the Rector
was waiting for him with a small package ready for delivery. Keith felt
the weight of that package in his own hand and the gentle touch of the
Rector's hand on his head. Words were uttered that he did not catch, and
the room became filled with the noise of boisterous applause.

He bowed mechanically and turned to walk back to his seat, and as he did
so, he noticed a white handkerchief waving at him from the rear of the
hall. Behind the handkerchief he caught a glimpse of his mother's face,
and a thought shot through his head:

"Papa is here and has heard all this!"

Then he relapsed into a state of utter oblivion of the surrounding
world. The thing was too tremendous to be felt even. Automatically he
moved out of the hall and back to the classroom with the rest. Dally was
saying things to him, but he could not grasp a word. Now and then he
became vaguely conscious of awed glances cast at him by the other boys.
Some of them spoke to him, and in some strange way he managed to realize
that Davidson was not among these.

At last he woke into full consciousness on the street, where he found
himself walking homeward by his father's hand. The pressure of that hand
seemed unusually soft and pleasant. The mother was talking eagerly and
wiping her eyes between little happy bursts of laughter. The father
listened for a long while in silence.

"Yes," he said at last, "it is not a bad beginning--if he can keep it
up."

Keith felt for a moment as if he were walking on air, and he knew that
he would keep it up--that after such a day nothing could prevent him
from keeping it up. Then a bewildering thought appeared out of nowhere
and began to buzz in his tired and over-excited brain.

"If I have done all that the Rector said," this thought demanded of him,
"why in the world has Dally kept me sitting below Davidson who got
nothing but books?"



VII

Keith next day was permitted to have a good look at the five
twenty-crown pieces found in the package handed to him by the Rector.
Their weight and brightness made them delightful to handle, but they
were not "toys for children" his father remarked, and with that remark
they passed out of sight for ever. Once or twice he put timid questions
to his mother, who never answered directly, but reminded him of all the
money his father had spent and was spending on him for food and clothes
and schooling and all sorts of things. Keith almost wished that he had
received some nice books instead, or anything that could make him feel
that he really had got a big glorious reward for something he really had
done. Now the achievement seemed as illusive as the reward.

He tried to reason the case out with himself, and the conclusion at
which he arrived was that his father probably was entitled and
certainly welcome to the money, but that as he, Keith, had earned it and
owned it, something should be said to him about the use of it. And as so
often was the case, it became a question of abstract justice. The value
and possibilities of the money lay beyond his grasp, but the ethics of
its disposal, from his simple childish point of view, seemed too clear
for serious discussion. Once or twice he stole a look at his savings
bank book, which his mother kept among her own papers, but no new entry
appeared on its meagre credit side. By and by he almost lost sight of
the whole incident, engrossed as he was with the experiences of the
current hour, but the memory of it recurred fitfully, and in moments of
dissatisfaction it tended to assume the shape of a grievance, if not a
charge, against the father. From this tendency he fled instinctively to
an idea of money as not worth bothering about. And that idea also helped
when the atmosphere of worry about money matters surrounding his mother
became too intense and depressive.

There was comparatively little of it that summer. His mother was in
better health and spirits than he had seen her for a long time, and she
was as happy as Keith when the father announced that they would have a
summer place of their own on one of the islands in Lake Maelaren,
somewhat farther out than the one where Uncle Laube lived. It was too
far away to have become absorbed by the rapidly growing city, and yet
too close at hand to be quite desirable as a summer location for the
more prosperous. The island was of sufficient size to hold a couple of
real farms in the centre, while the shore line was occupied by
occasional villas. Halfway between these two mutually foreign regions,
on a sharp slope that still remained largely uncleared, stood a little
red house with just two rooms in it. One of these was occupied by the
old couple that owned the house. The other one had been rented to the
Wellanders for the summer, and in that one room the mother, the
grandmother and Keith established themselves, with the father appearing
as a regular week-end guest.

Taking it all in all, it was the freest, and in many ways the happiest
summer of Keith's childhood. He was permitted to roam around pretty much
as he pleased, and there were several other small boys to play with,
none of them enterprising enough to arouse the distrust of Keith's
mother. They were all city boys however, as foreign to nature as Keith,
and there was no older person on hand to give their excursions and games
a constructive twist without turning them into lessons. There was plenty
of wild life about, and it helped in many ways to give them a better
time, but that was as near as they got to it. Exactly the same thing
happened during subsequent summers, and so the boy always looked upon
flowers and trees and birds and insects as delightful but puzzling
representatives of a world of which he did not know the language.

It was good fun, however, and temporarily it took Keith farther away
from himself and from his cherished books than he had been since his
first discovery of the latter. The boys proved decent, wholesome
company, more bent on discharging their surplus energy than on doing
mischief. Much of their time was spent in or near the water, so that
Keith developed into a pretty good swimmer for his age, though always of
the cautious type. And between games they would discuss the world from
a boy's point of view. There was particularly one boy of the same age as
Keith with whom he had talks of a kind quite new to him. Oscar's parents
were still very young, and he spoke of them more as chums than as
masters. And he spoke of them with a sort of restrained enthusiasm that
set Keith thinking very hard. He loved his parents, especially his
mother, and admired them, especially his father at certain times, but he
was not conscious of any feeling about them corresponding to the one
displayed by Oscar, whose father, after all, was nothing but a captain
on one of the small steam sloops running between the city and some of
the surrounding islands.

Oscar was especially eloquent when he spoke of the love his parents had
for each other. He gave examples that seemed exaggerated to Keith, but
nevertheless impressed him. In return Keith boasted similarly of his own
parents, and he meant every word he said, but always what he had to tell
fell short of the pictures drawn by Oscar.

"You don't understand," cried Oscar one day when again they were
debating this fascinating topic all by themselves. "It's all right for
your mother to kiss your father when he leaves and when he returns, and
to be looking for him all the time. But that's not enough. That's not
the way my parents love each other. And I don't think your father cares
so very much for your mother. But my father is so much in love with my
mother that he would like to eat what she has chewed!"

"No--o!" protested Keith, rather appalled by the illustration used, and
yet feeling as if he had beheld some undiscovered country. There was a
pause during which he stared incredulously at Oscar.

"I mean just what I said," insisted Oscar a little more quietly after a
while. "Anything that has to do with my mother is sweet to my father, I
tell you. And that is love. If you don't know it, you don't know what
love is either."

"But why," demanded Keith, his mind still so full of the disturbing
image called forth by Oscar that his jaws moved uneasily as if he had
taken into his mouth something unpalatable.

"Because," Oscar hesitated ... "because it is that way."

Keith left shortly afterwards to think it over in solitude. It was
probably the first time the word love had been presented to him as
anything but a commonplace term for laudable but commonplace feelings.
He puzzled over it, but to little purpose, and for some reason he
thought it useless or unwise to ask his mother for information.



VIII

The third grade proved merely a continuation of the second. Little had
changed over summer. A few boys had been dropped behind and a few others
overtaken. That affected the bottom of the class, but not the top. Dally
remained their principal, and when he welcomed them back at the opening
of the fall term, Keith waited excitedly for the distribution of
places. Few changes were made however. Davidson remained _primus_ as
before, with Keith next. Then came Runge and Blomberg as before. For a
day or two Keith swung violently between fits of rebellion and deep
depression. It seemed almost incredible that he could have received the
highest prize bestowed on any pupil in the school.

Then the routine of instruction and study seized him. New text-books
were acquired, not without some grumbling on his father's part. New
interests were stirring and, as usual, cleverly nursed by Dally. Above
all, the magnetic power of the teacher asserted itself once more, until
Keith felt that the only thing really worth while in life was to
please him.

Algebra was one of the new subjects, and the use of letters instead of
figures amused Keith for a while. But it took no serious hold on his
mind. The whole field of mathematics left him strangely uninterested
although he was good at arithmetic. He thought the problems of Euclid
stupid. Once he had learned how to prove a theorem, it seemed so
ridiculously self-evident that he wondered why anybody should bother his
brain about it. There were other boys who could figure out the
demonstrations in advance without looking at the book. Keith tried it
once or twice, but failed miserably and gave it up as a worthless and
thankless job. Apparently his brain did not work in that way. It had to
touch real life to be at its best. History and geography were his
favourite subjects, and in those he led the class. This was openly
admitted by Dally himself.

Literature was another new subject. They read and analysed and
criticized classical Swedish poetry--Tegnér and Runeberg and Geijer.
Most of the poems chosen for the purpose were historical and took their
themes from the old viking days or from the glorious centuries of
Gustavus Adolphus and Charles XII, when Sweden so nearly rose to be a
great power. Keith liked to take certain sonorous passages into his
mouth. There was a satisfying fullness and richness about them that
seemed somehow to enhance his own feeling of self-importance. Their
rhythm also pleased him and became a sort of substitute for the singing
of which he was incapable. Chiefly, however, it was the stories told by
the poems that interested him, and on the whole he did not think much of
poetry. But this opinion he never dared to put into words. To do so in
the face of Dally's clearly manifested reverence would have been like
openly confessing a particularly degrading form of inferiority.

Nor did it seem to matter so very much what he studied. The main thing
always remained what Dally said and did in his efforts to bring out
something within the self of each boy for which only he seemed to have
an eye. Keith at times felt as if he would give anything to know what
Dally expected of him in particular. He felt sure that it must be
something wonderful, and he had odd moments of almost being on the verge
of grasping it, but in the end it always eluded him, and no sooner was
he out of Dally's presence than the whole thing seemed very unreal
and foolish.



IX

Young Davidson had a bent toward sarcasm that sometimes lured him out of
his usual cold aloofness. In one of these rare communicative moments he
said of little Loth that he crossed the equator at least once a week and
didn't mind. He referred to the fact that Loth was more frequently moved
than any other pupil but always managed to retain a place near the
centre. And no matter what fate might bring him of ups or downs, Loth
always retained a perfect composure. Yet he was small and nervous and
highstrung like Keith and Bauer. One day Keith asked him how he could
stand being shoved about like that.

"Because my father says I am going into business anyhow," answered Loth,
"and I don't know whether I hate business or books most."

"What would you like to do," asked Keith looking puzzled.

"Draw," said Loth vaguely, "and play the piano, and go to the theatre,
and--yes, and read poetry books that don't teach you anything."

This view of life was so new to Keith that he really tried to become
acquainted with Loth in order to learn more about it. His own
indifference to anything but books promised small success, but in the
end a tie was found in their common love of tin soldiers. So he was
admitted to Loth's particular circle and was even invited to Loth's
home for a birthday party--the first and last of its kind that he
attended during his five years at Old Mary. Before permitted to go, he
was warned that the servant girl would come for him at nine. No amount
of pleading helped to ameliorate that condition.

Loth's father was a prosperous storekeeper on West Long Street and lived
in a spacious and richly furnished apartment above the store. It was a
home like that revealed to Keith through his shortlived friendship with
Harald. The impression on Keith, however, was quite different because of
his own growth since that first year at school. And the actions of the
eight or ten boys who were the other guests impressed him still more.
They wore gloves when they arrived. They showed neither forwardness nor
timidity, but greeted each other and their host with grown-up dignity
and formality. They seemed to know what to do at every moment, and how
to do it. Keith was accustomed to decent manners. Social intercourse in
the parental circle was not without grace, but this was something
different. At the time he was utterly incapable of telling where the
difference lay, and years afterward he realized what subtle shadings it
depended on. The main thing at the time was that something in himself
responded instinctively to the higher degree of polish and
self-assurance which he now for the first time was able to observe at
close quarters.

The principal entertainment of the evening was a monster battle with tin
soldiers on the cleared floor of the huge dining-room. The battle was at
its height and supper was not yet in sight, when Keith learned that the
girl was waiting for him. There was nothing to do but to obey, but the
hostess could not think of letting him go without having eaten. A
special service was prepared for him in the kindest way possible, and
Keith enjoyed very much the many dainties offered him. Nevertheless he
felt the situation as humiliating and was actually glad when he got away
at last. But the gladness was only a surface gloss on a burning core of
regrets and dissatisfaction.

In a way that evening, which was never repeated, proved a new starting
point in his life. He had had his first close contact with life on a
higher social level, and he could not forget it. New standards had been
furnished him, and unconsciously he was applying them all the time to
all sorts of things--his parents included. Until then he had blindly
accepted them and their ways and their environment as representing the
best this world had to offer. Now the basis had been laid for doubts
that gradually developed into positive criticism.

The immediate result seemed quite irrelevant. He developed a sudden
objection to running errands for his mother, and especially to doing
anything that involved the carrying of bags or bottles or baskets
through the streets. Packages looking as if they might contain books
remained unobjectional. There was a time when being sent to the grocery
store was a privilege and a distinction. Later it became an opportunity
for clandestine meetings with Johan. Even during his first year at Old
Mary he continued to perform such tasks without any thought of what
others might think of them. He must have heard things, however, and
inner resistances must have developed, which were now brought into
sudden appearance by the inner echoes of Loth's birthday party.

He did not dare to breathe a word about his new state of mind in his
father's presence. And it was long before he gathered courage to voice
it openly before his mother. But he used all the arguments and evasions
and tricks he could muster to escape what had become a dreaded ordeal.
It developed into a test of will and strength between Keith and his
mother--the first of its kind, and the forerunner of numerous others
still more deep-reaching. After a while the father discovered or learned
what was going on, but, contrary to custom, that was not enough to
settle the matter. In this case, neither argument nor threats had any
effect on Keith. He avoided open conflict with his father for good and
sufficient reason, and he did what could not be escaped, but he did it
in a spirit of passionate rebellion that introduced a new element of
division and strife the home. Both parents seemed instinctively to
interpret the boy's changed attitude as a reflection on themselves, and
they resented it keenly, but to no avail. While pretending to insist on
full obedience as before, they gave way in reality by making the servant
girl do the errands in place of Keith.

"One of these days I suppose we shall not be good enough for you any
longer," said his mother bitterly one day while the contest was
still on.

"Why, mamma," cried Keith, disturbed by the emotional appeal back of her
words, "what has that to do with my not wanting to be laughed at by
other boys?"

"I almost wish I hadn't persuaded your father to send you to the public
school," the mother rejoined.



X

The school year was drawing to its close again Dally's tone grew less
bantering. On several occasions he delivered little impromptu sermons on
the seriousness of life and the difficulties of living. One afternoon
about two weeks before commencement he told them to close their books.

"I want each one of you to tell me what you expect to become in life, or
what kind of a career your parents have chosen for you."

A stir of excitement swept over the class.

Then Dally went on to explain why he wished to know. The first three
grades were divided into A and B classes, but that had nothing to do
with the teaching, which was the same in both classes. The fourth and
fifth grades, on the other hand, were divided into a "Latin" and an
"English" branch, with quite different curricula. Boys headed for the
various professions ought to choose the former branch, while the second
one led to more practical pursuits.

"You are going to be an officer, I understand." Dally said, turning to
_primus_.

"Yes, sir," the young Jew answered with a self-importance that even
Keith could not miss. "My father wants me to try for the General Staff,
and so I have to specialize on mathematics."

"Humph," was Dally's only audible comment as he made a note, but he
looked as if he had tasted something unpleasant.

"And you, Wellander," asked the teacher.

"I am going to be an explorer," replied Keith without moment's
hesitation, and the whole class broke into a roar of laughter with Dally
joining them.

Keith, as usual, blushed a deep crimson, but did not move.

"That's neither a trade nor a profession," said Dally after a while,
still smiling. "I fear you are fuzzy-wuzzying again, Wellander. What do
you mean by an explorer?"

"One who explores rivers and deserts and unknown countries and such
things," said Keith brazenly.

"And you really mean that you are going in for that sort of thing?"

"I do," Keith insisted, while the whole class watched him in a hush that
might easily turn either into derision or into approval.

"There isn't much exploring left to be done," Dally mused, looking
intently at the small boy at the other end of the room. "Most of the
globe is mapped already."

"There is a lot left in Africa," Keith retorted eagerly.

"And what does your father say about it," was Dally's next question.

There was a long pause broken only by some gigglings by the
irrepressibles down at the bottom of the class.

"I have not asked him," Keith admitted at last. "But I am going to be an
explorer just the same."

"In these days that means you have to become a scientist," Dally
remarked in a changed tone. "It is your only chance, and so I advise
you to choose Latin. It is what I think a boy with your head should
take anyhow."

"All right, Sir," assented Keith, flattered by the last part of Dally's
remark and utterly ignorant of what his choice implied.

That evening he told his father that he had been asked whether he wanted
to enter the Latin or the English branch of the fourth grade, and that
he had chosen the former.

"Why," asked his father.

"Because Dally says I ought to," replied Keith.

"Well, he ought to know," said the father.

But when Keith appeared in the schoolyard during one of the pauses next
day, he was met from every side by the cry:

"There's the explorer! There's the explorer!"

The younger boys jeered openly at him. The older ones pretended to ask
him serious questions about his plans. For days he was the laughing
stock of the whole school, and even on his way to and from school he was
pursued by jibes and taunts. Through it all Keith stuck quietly to his
guns, without a sign of retraction or evasion. And in the end his
seriousness conquered. But from that day he was known to the entire
school as "the explorer," and he heard that term more often than his
own name.



XI

It was the afternoon of the last day before commencement. The atmosphere
in the class was solemn and more than a little wistful.

"It is our last hour together," said Dally when all were back in their
seats after the pause. "History is on the schedule, but--schedules are
not made for moments like these. Let us just have a friendly talk."

He did practically all the talking, and he talked to them more as an
older boy, a chum with somewhat wider experience, than as a teacher and
class principal. It made them feel their own importance rather heavily,
but still more it made them conscious of an irreparable loss. They knew
that school would not be the same in the fall, when Dally no longer was
with them. In accordance with established custom, he would go back to
the first grade and start piloting a new generation up to the point
where they had just arrived.

The class would break up, too. Some would have to stay behind. One or
two had gone as far as they could and would make a premature transfer
from school to life. Others were bound for other schools or other
cities. The rest would split in two and join with the corresponding
parts of the parallel section to form two entirely new classes. It gave
them a foretaste of what it would mean to graduate into the _gymnasium_,
and from there into the university. And it filled their hearts with
wistful pride.

The last hour was drawing to a close and everybody was talking at once,
when Dally unexpectedly asked them to give him their full attention once
more for few minutes.

"An act of justice remains to be performed," he said. "There is a boy
among you who has not received all that he had justly deserved. It was
withheld from him by me for his own welfare. The time has now come when
he and you should know all about it."

As he paused for a moment, the boys looked around at each other with
something like consternation. Their curiosity was intense. He spoke with
a tensity of feeling they had hardly ever noticed in him before, and not
one of them had an inkling of what he was driving at.

"It means that some of you have received more than they deserved," he
resumed. "That also should be known--for the good of all. It is a
reflection on no one but myself, however, and I think you know me well
enough by this time to be sure that I have been moved by no other
consideration than the future good of the one most nearly concerned."

Again he stopped, the class waiting breathlessly for him to go on. At
that moment Keith became aware that the teacher's gaze rested firmly on
him with an expression that sent the blood in a hot stream to his face.

"Wellander," Dally began again, and in spite of the beating of his own
heart, Keith noticed that the teacher's voice trembled a little as he
spoke. "Will you do me the favour of rising a moment? You are the boy I
have in mind."

Keith rose like an automaton. His eyes clung to the lips of the
teacher, and he seemed to expect from those lips some utterance that
must make his whole future life different. As often happened in moments
of intensified emotion, he became strangely oblivious of all the little
eddies and cross-currents of thoughts and feelings that made up his
ordinary, every-day consciousness of himself.

"For two years I have kept you number two in the class," Dally said,
speaking in an easier tone as if to lighten the strain on everybody.
"You should have been number one. Davidson, whom I placed above you has
at no time been your superior in anything but self-control. But it was
just your--what I have sometimes called your fuzzy-wuzziness, that made
me afraid of placing you where you rightly belonged, at the head of the
class. It is my belief that you have in you greater gifts than any other
boy in this class, but I am not yet sure of what you will do with them.
It was my eagerness to see you make full use of them that made me poke
fun at you and keep you out of the place that rightfully was yours.
Perhaps I did wrong, but my meaning was right. I shall always watch you
closely, and I hope you will try your best not to disappoint me. Will
you promise that?"

"I will," gasped Keith.

The clock had already struck three. The moment Dally stopped, the class
broke up, but only to gather about Keith--every one of them except
Davidson, who slipped out of the room with a face white as chalk. Keith
caught a glimpse of that face, and a sense of reckless elation shot
through him.

He sped as never before on his way home. It was still impossible for
him to think the matter through. First he must tell his parents and hear
what they had to say about it.

On hearing what had happened, his mother hugged and kissed him, her face
all smiles while big tears dripped down her cheeks. Then the father came
home and was told everything. His mother looked serious by that time,
and Keith noticed a wavering expression in her voice.

"Your teacher evidently knows you," was the father's first remark to
Keith, but by his tone the boy knew that he was pleased. Then he
hesitated, and after a while he said as if speaking to himself: "But if
Keith really had earned the first place...."

"That's what I have been thinking," the mother broke in with blazing
eyes. "Do you remember what I said about that boy Davidson? He was the
richest boy in the class, and Lector Dahlström simply did not dare to
put Keith above him. Now he is trying to make up for it when it's
too late."

"Perhaps," said the father thoughtfully. "The sum of it is what I have
always said: the coin that was made for a farthing will never be
a dollar."

"But Keith was not made for a farthing," the mother retorted sharply and
indignantly. "That is the main point of what his teacher confessed in
school this very day."

"Well, if not," said the father wearily, "it is up to him to prove it."

And Keith, too, all of a sudden felt very, very tired.



XII

Keith was one of the first to enter the class room on the morning of
Commencement Day. He was still standing near the door when Davidson
appeared and evidently meant to walk past him without a greeting.

"Say, Davidson," Keith cried impulsively, holding out his hand, "I don't
mind!"

"Well, what do you think I care," the other boy asked icily as he turned
on his heel and walked out of the room again without taking the
proffered hand.

It was the first time that Keith felt the sting of real hatred. He could
never have acted like that--not even toward one who had wronged him
seriously. What galled him most was that he had been made to look as if
he were apologizing. Then a sense of triumph returned little by little,
but it was not very vivid, and what he missed utterly was the fact that
no other situation could have been quite so hard on Davidson's pride as
the one in which Dally had placed him. A realization of that fact came
only years afterwards.

Then Dally himself arrived, and soon the commencement exercises were in
full progress, Keith feeling quite superior to any curiosity or
excitement. Again he received a prize, and again it was in the form of
money, but a smaller sum not accompanied by any special encomiums. He
walked home very quietly with his parents, and they had not much to
say either.

Had Keith known what an anti-climax was, he would undoubtedly have used
that word to describe the experiences of his second Commencement Day
at Old Mary.



XIII

The summer was spent quietly on the same island where he had been so
happy a year before. Oscar was not there. Other boys took his place, but
no real intimacy sprang up between them and Keith. They certainly did
not talk of love, and what they knew of sex took Keith back to the days
spent around the big rock. He had a good time on the whole, but more and
more a sense of missing something fretted him, and he could not tell
what it was. For emotional outlet he was wholly dependent on his mother,
and though he seemed as devoted to her as ever, he had queer spells of
wishing to get away from her. The father was more in the background than
ever during the summer. Once in a while he would show up on a weekday
evening very tired, and leave again with the first morning boat. During
the week-end he wanted above all to rest, and Keith was partly happy and
partly unhappy at being left alone.

Once only during that summer did his father appear under circumstances
that impressed themselves on the boy's memory. It was the day of the
annual regatta of the Yacht Club. When the races were over, the yachts
were towed back to the city by a large steamer, escorted by a whole
flotilla of every kind of craft loaded with sightseers. It was the gala
evening of the season. As the tender twilight of the August night
descended on the smooth waters of the Lake Maelaren, every villa along
the shores became brightly illuminated, while the progress of the fleet
was marked by incessant bursts of fireworks.

The Wellanders had a splendid view from the little platform on which
their cottage stood. Some friends had been invited for the day, and the
father had brought with him from the city a package of fireworks. But
instead of wasting money on sky-rockets or other expensive pieces, he
had concentrated almost wholly on blue and red lights, which he placed
among the trees and over the plateau and set off in batches, first one
colour and then the other. Because the place was so high up, apart from
the rest, and so heavily wooded, the effect was probably very pretty
from the water. Anyhow a burst of applause was heard from the
passing flotilla.

"That's for us," said Keith's father, "and not for those rich people
down by the shore."

As usual when very much pleased, he laughed while speaking so that it
was hard to hear what he said. But Keith heard, and a glow of pride
swelled his chest. It was the crowning climax of a scene that touched
the boy with a sense of joy bordering on pain. "Beautiful" was a word
used repeatedly by the grown-up people about him. He knew now that
beauty was something that turned ordinary life into a pleasure more
keen than could be had out of eating, or playing, or reading, or
getting presents at Christmas even. To this wonderful thing his father
had added a personal triumph in which the whole family participated. It
silenced incipient criticism for a long time.

Nevertheless there was another side to that self-satisfied remark of his
father, and it also stuck in his memory. Back of the proud words lay
envy and deference, and a suggestion of hopeless separation. In Keith's
mind it became tied up with his memories from Loth's party, and all of
it formed a complex of thought from which he tried his best to get
away--and most of the time successfully.



XIV

For lack of sufficient accommodations in the over-crowded old building,
one class had to use the assembly hall. To make the many disadvantages
more palatable, this location was presented as an honour reserved for
the class shepherded by the old Rector himself. Of this "honour" Keith
became a participant when the fall term opened.

There were no desks--only benches without backs. The rest of the school
left with a sense of relief after using them only during the fifteen
minutes of morning prayer. To sit on them hours at a stretch turned the
day into torture before it was half done. The only way of resting was to
bend far forward with humped back, and no sooner did the Rector
discover a boy in that position than he descended on the sinner:

"Straight in the back, boy! What do you think you are--an old hag
sorting rags?"

No attempt was made to arrange the boys according to merit. On the first
day every one chose a seat to suit himself, and so Keith found himself
number five without knowing how it had happened. Number four was a boy
of his own size and age named George Murray, who seemed to be as
friendless as was Keith.

Instead of one teacher, they had a dozen at least, few of whom gave
instruction in more than a single subject. It smacked of university and
made the boys feel much advanced. The curriculum showed an imposing
array of new subjects--Latin, French, universal history, physics,
chemistry, and so on. Their novelty caught and carried Keith for a
good while.

Latin was still the most important study of all. It was taught by the
Rector himself, who worshipped everything classic with a religious
devotion and who maintained in so many words that a man's culture was
measured by his mastery of the Roman tongue. In the lower grades it had
been spoken of with bated breath. Keith had looked forward to the first
lesson with trembling impatience. He plunged into the declination of
_mensa_ with the fervour of a convert. He translated the text-book's
_colomba est timida_ with a sense of performing a sacred rite. Days went
by before he dared to admit to himself that his interest was waning,

Even then he went on studying without a thought of rebellion. The habit
of application had become deeply rooted. The pride born out of his first
easy successes still had urged him to master any subject offered. But
there was a change in his manner of studying as well as in his general
attitude toward the school. Until then he had been an acolyte in sacred
precincts. Now he turned gradually into a time-server doing his duty out
of vanity and a desire to remain a public school pupil. Until then he
had never felt that he had to study. Now fear of the old Rector and of
his father entered more and more as conscious motives.

He missed the kind guidance of Dally. The Rector never became the soul
and guardian of the class in the manner of Dally. The other teachers
came and went without other interest than to insure a decent showing in
their respective subjects. All had favourites chosen from those pupils
who showed most aptitude for mathematics, natural history or whatever it
happened to be. No one was interested in the class as a whole, and no
one cared for its individual members as human beings in the make. Within
a short time Keith was simply drifting, although neither he nor those
appointed to guide him were aware of it at the time.



XV

Keith took a liking to George Murray from the start. During the first
couple of days he looked at him frequently as if to invite acquaintance,
but the other boy always appeared deeply attentive to the subject of the
hour. During the pauses he withdrew into a corner as if to forestall
possible advances. At the end of the second day Keith and Murray
reached the stairway simultaneously and started for the street side by
side. Murray's pale, aristocratic and very narrow face with unduly
prominent teeth still bore a look of indifference, but his attitude had
lost a little of its previous stiffness.

"Where do you live," Keith ventured with for him rare forwardness.

"On the Quay," replied Murray in a voice that neither encouraged nor
discouraged.

"Where," asked Keith eagerly.

"Corner of St. John's Lane."

"That's my corner," cried Keith. "I live in the lane, and we have the
same way home."

"All right," was Murray's only answer, which Keith accepted in the
affirmative.

Little more was said until they reached the top of the hill above Carl
Johan Square, when Keith explained that he always kept to the left along
the shore of Lake Maelaren.

"I always take the other way," rejoined Murray, suiting his actions to
his words.

"All right," said Keith in his turn, going along toward the saltwater
side of the harbour as if it had been the route of his own choice. They
stopped for a moment to watch the sloops in the fish market loaded
almost to the point of foundering with live fish. Further out a number
of large sailing vessels rode at anchor. Still further away, where the
southern shore drew close to the point of the island with the turreted
red fort, a big black steamer was seen slowly creeping toward its
landing place at the Quay. For a moment Murray studied it intently,
shading his eyes in sailor fashion to see better.

"That's one of our steamers," he said at last.

"Do you mean you own it," gasped Keith incredulously.

"The company does," explained Murray.

"Which company?"

"The one of which my father is managing director."

"Are there many of them," Keith asked to be polite. It sounded too much
like a fairy tale.

"Seven," replied Murray casually. "They are all painted black and sail
on foreign ports."

"Did you ever travel on one," inquired Keith with something like awe in
his voice.

"Yes," said the slim youngster by his side as if it had been the most
natural thing in the world. "Many times, as far as the pilot station,
with papa. And last summer he took me along on a real journey to
England. That's where our family comes from, and we were gone three
whole weeks."

"Were you scared," Keith asked almost in a whisper.

"No." Murray shook his head with quick assurance. "That is, not much. We
had a storm in the North Sea coming back, but papa said it was nothing
to be afraid of, and for a while I was too sick to care."

"Sick!" Keith echoed. "And were you not awfully scared?"

"No," Murray insisted, looking rather pleased. "Not much."

Keith was too overwhelmed to ask more questions just then. The rest of
the way home was traversed in silence. At the corner of the lane they
parted with a mutual nod. Then Keith bolted up the lane and up the three
nights of stairs. Entering the kitchen breathlessly, he yelled out with
his cap still on his head: "I walked home with Murray who lives at the
corner and whose papa owns seven ships and who sits next to me in
the class."

"Little boys should be civil," suggested Granny with a glance at the
cap. "And they should also remember that equals make the best playmates,
and that all is not gold that glistens."

"Oh, he's my equal," Keith declared triumphantly.

"With plenty to spare," retorted Granny. "But are you his?"

It made Keith walk home alone the next day, and as he shuffled along
listlessly, the almost obliterated memory of Harald came back to him.



XVI

The attraction had been established, however--on one side at least--and
it would not let itself be smothered. Nor did Keith make any strong
effort in that direction. It was not his way. He found it as hard to
abstain from what gave him pleasure for the moment as to bear whatever
seemed unpleasant or painful.

Murray made no approaches of any kind, but he did not resist. His
acceptance of Keith's friendship was purely passive, and there was
always a limit to it. At first they simply walked home together from
school. Of course, they sat side by side during the lessons, but Murray
gave his whole attention to the teacher or to his book. If Keith tried
to whisper to him, Murray merely frowned at him. During the pauses they
were often together, chatting or playing, but it could also happen that
Murray chose to mix with some group of fellow pupils in such a manner
that Keith could not get near to him. Sometimes Keith would then also
join them. More often he would hover on the outskirts in a state of
utter misery.

Even when the school closed for the day, it depended entirely on Keith
if they were to have company home. Murray never waited. If Keith was not
in sight when he reached the street, he went right on. Several times
Keith had to run several blocks to overtake his friend.

"Why couldn't you wait a minute for me," he asked when he had recovered
his breath after one of those pursuits.

"Oh, that's so silly," was Murray's only reply, and a repetition of the
question on two or three subsequent occasions brought no more
satisfactory response. Keith did not press the matter beyond that point
and uttered no protest at Murray's real or assumed indifference.

Until then Keith had always taken East Long Street on his way to school
in the morning. Now he turned invariably down the lane to the Quay. On
reaching the corner, he took a long look at the corner house where
Murray lived. Two mornings he saw no one and walked on. The third
morning Murray happened to appear just as Keith reached the corner.
After that Keith waited for his friend, and they walked together to as
well as from school. Having waited very long one morning and fearing
that his friend had passed already, Keith ventured into the house, when
he caught sight of Murray coming out of a door reached by a little spur
of the main stairway.

"Is that where you live," asked Keith.

"That's the kitchen door," said Murray. "Our main entrance is in front
on the landing above. It's quicker for me to get out this way in the
morning, and I don't have to disturb anybody."

A few mornings later, Murray was late again, and Keith after long
hesitation walked up to the kitchen door and knocked. A pleasant-faced
serving girl opened.

"Oh, you are the little fellow who waits for George every morning," she
said with a smile. "Come in and wait here. He'll be ready in a moment."

After that Keith went straight up to the kitchen every morning. It was a
room as large as a hall, shiningly clean, and well furnished as a dining
and living-room for the three women serving there. Keith became quite
familiar with it, but he always remained by the door, and he always felt
that he ought not to be there. Yet he could no more resist going there
than he could stop breathing, it seemed.

That kitchen was the only part of Murray's home he ever saw. He never
caught a glimpse even of his friend's mother, who evidently was a very
exclusive lady. Two or three times he saw Murray on the street after
school hours in company with a tall, portly and handsome gentleman, whom
he took to be the father. Later his guess was confirmed, but Murray
never showed any inclination to let his parents become aware of Keith's
existence.

For a long while this did not matter to Keith. In fact, he was not
aware of anything but his own devotion. Murray's willingness to accept
it only when nothing else was in sight did not bother him. He had found
some one to worship at last, and he gave himself to that feeling with an
abandon that knew of no reserves and that asked no questions. He looked
up to the other boy as, in ages long gone by, a faithful vassal used to
look up to his liege lord. And it seemed only meet that such a superior
being as Murray should bestow or withhold his favour in accordance with
his own sweet pleasure.



XVII

Keith had just parted from his chum at the corner of the lane one
afternoon, when he caught sight of Johan near the big back door of the
house opposite the one where Murray lived.

"What are you doing," he said without much enthusiasm.

Johan beckoned mysteriously and would not say a word until he had got
Keith into the shadow of the huge gateway leading to the paved yard in
the rear of the house.

"Can't you come on," he cried impatiently at last "I don't want mumsey
to see me."

When both were hidden from the kitchen window through which Fru
Gustafsson used to keep a religiously preoccupied eye on the doings of
her son, Johan pulled a cigarette from within his coat sleeve and a
match from his pocket. Then he scratched the match on the seat of his
pants and lit the cigarette with the air of a man who knows what is
bliss. Keith watched him with feelings too confused for expression.

"What would your mamma say if she saw you," he asked at last,
instinctively dropping his voice to a whisper.

"She'd tell popsey," Johan rejoined promptly, "and I'd get another
licking. But it's worth it."

There was a long pause during which Keith watched his old playmate's
unmistakable enjoyment with a mixture of consternation and admiration,
of envy and resentment.

"I have got another," said Johan after a while. "Try it."

Keith shook his head. He was on the verge of saying that "mamma won't
let me," but checked himself in time as he recalled the results of an
earlier use of that too truthful explanation.

"Murray wouldn't smoke," he ventured after another pause.

"Him up there, you mean," inquired Johan with a gesture of his thumb
toward the house across the lane, Of course, he wouldn't. He's a miss."

"He is not," Keith cried passionately.

"And he's a stiff, too," Johan went on without any particular display of
feeling. "And you're a fool, that's all."

There was a coolness between them.

"I think mamma is waiting for me," remarked Keith as he started to walk
off.

"Of course she is waiting for her baby," Johan retorted with a leer.

Keith stopped and thought. Murray would fight for a thing like that, he
said to himself. Or would he? Without having reached a decision Keith
made for his own house, trying to look as if Johan didn't exist.

"He has no real use for you, and you'll find it out," was Johan's
parting shot.

Keith was suddenly struck with the coarseness of Johan's manners and
speech. He was making comparisons in his mind, and as a result the image
of Murray seemed more resplendent than ever.



XVIII

"Did you ever try to smoke," he asked Murray next morning.

"No," was the disdainful reply. "I know papa wouldn't like it, and it's
nasty anyhow."

"How do you know," wondered Keith.

"Because I know," rejoined Murray. It was a way he had, and it always
settled the matter. A cold, tired look would appear on his face if Keith
tried to press a subject after such an answer, and before that look
Keith quailed.

His state was hopeless. He accepted as law whatever his friend said or
did. And although their friendship, such as it was, lasted only two
years, Keith did not take up smoking until he was in camp as a
conscript at the age of twenty.

In school it was the same. And the fact that Murray attended to his
studies with scrupulous exactness was probably one of the factors that
helped Keith through the grade without any loss of standing as
a scholar.

Like Loth, Murray had mildly artistic leanings, and because he liked to
draw and to sing, Keith, too, had to join in those studies, although
both were elective, and although the singing classes twice a week
consumed one of the two precious lunch hours that otherwise could be
used so profitably for play or study. Keith had neither aptitude nor
interest for draftsmanship, being curiously set toward the written word.
He would have liked to sing well, as he had noticed that boys having a
good voice were always popular and received a lot of flattering
attention. But his ear was so poor that for a while it looked as if he
would not even be admitted to the singing practices. His persistence
prevailed in the end, and when he and Murray stood side by side, using
the same song-book while practicing some brave old student song, he felt
as much happiness as ever fell to his share in those days.

They had common hours in gymnastics, too, but they were compulsory three
times a week, and Murray took them as a duty rather than a pleasure.
Keith them on the whole, and unlike most of the other boys, he preferred
the slow routine of the setting-up exercises to the more athletic
features. While he never consciously realized the cause of that
preference at the time, it would not have been difficult for a fairly
intelligent observer to discover it.

Keith was still one of the smallest boys in the school utterly lacking
any physical superiority, although he was in excellent health and never
had experienced a single one of the ailments that commonly dodge the
steps of childhood. He could not shine in jumping or leaping or
climbing, but in the drill his painstaking attention placed him on a par
with everybody else. It was his one chance of feeling himself the
physical equal of his schoolmates, and it was the only field of common
endeavour outside the lessons where he was not made to feel his own
inferiority.



XIX

The insufficiency of one room as a living place for three persons had
long been evident. Keith was in his twelfth year, and he still slept on
the chaiselongue opposite his father's and mother's bed. He had ceased
to pretend that the corner between the window and his mother's bureau
could possibly be considered a satisfactory "play-room." Then a tenant
who had lived with them quite a while left, and the parlour became
unexpectedly vacant. Keith revelled in the free use of it, and his
mother talked seriously of not renting it again, but the father insisted
that they could not afford to keep it for themselves.

Then Keith's mother had a bright idea. She inserted an advertisement
offering a home and "as good as parental care" to a boy from the
country for the school season. An answer was received, negotiations
progressed favourably, and soon Albert Mendelius, the son of a minister,
was installed in the parlour with understanding that his use of it was
exclusive only at night. In the daytime it was common ground for both
boys, and Keith did his studying in there, but he continued to sleep on
the chaiselongue.

The boys got on very well together, and yet no real friendship sprang up
between them. Albert, who attended a different school, had his own
associates, and Keith could not take much of his mind off Murray. It
made a great improvement in Keith's living conditions, however, and he
hoped it would last.

When Albert went home to celebrate Christmas, Keith was asked to pay him
a visit after the holidays. This invitation became still more attractive
when Keith received a fine pair of skates for a Christmas present. He
had never seen the country in winter, and the impression it made on him
was a little startling. The sight of the dark pines against the white
carpet of the snow filled him with a mystic longing so strong that it
almost frightened him. When he and Albert put on their skates and
stretched out at full speed across the lake that spread its floor of
dark glass within a stone's throw of the vicarage, he had a sense of
never having lived before. The spaciousness of the house and the
pleasant evenings spent cracking nuts and eating apples in front of the
blazing fire-place were also revelations that filled his mind with many
new thoughts. Why was his own home not like this?

The boys went back to Stockholm together, but before they started, Keith
learned that Albert was going elsewhere to live. An aunt of his had
offered to take him in for the rest of the season.

"And, of course," said Albert's mother apologetically, "when you can be
with your own kin, it is better you know."

Keith wondered a little. On his return home, his mother said indignantly
that she supposed their humble home had not been found good enough. A
few weeks later the parlour was rented in the old way to a
gentle-looking young man with very pink cheeks who coughed a good deal.

And Keith once more found himself restricted to the living-room for all
the time spent at home.



XX

Keith had been home for lunch and was on the way back to the school. He
was alone. Murray was in bed with some slight ailment.

It was in January, a cold but brilliant day. The streets were covered
with deep snow. Everything that usually moved on wheels was now on
runners. As runners make no noise and the sound of the hoofs was
deadened by the snow, every horse carried a bell, and some of them had a
whole little chime. The bright sunlight on the white snow and the
tinkling of all those bells made a stimulating combination, and people
hurried along with smiling faces, although they had to rub their noses
and cheeks frequently to keep them from freezing.

Keith was never sensitive about his face, but his hands were buried
deeply in his coat pockets. His schoolbooks were tied up in a leather
thong and slung over his shoulder like a knapsack.

At the Sluice he stopped and looked long at the people skating merrily
on the rinks down on the ice of the lake between the Corn Harbour and
the railway bridge. A number of boys near his own age were among the
rest having a good time. Many of the boys brought their skates to school
and never went home for lunch, but just ate a couple of sandwiches in
order to spend as much as possible of the noonday pause on the ice.
Keith had asked permission to do the same, but the refusal had been
peremptory. The fact was that he was granted little or no chance to use
his new skates. Once in a while he got leave, after begging long and
hard, to run over to the rinks at the New Bridge Harbour, in the North
End, for a brief while in the late afternoon. Most of the time even that
scant leave was denied him. To his mother's general disinclination to
let him out of sight was added her dread that he might fall into the
water and get drowned. He promised by everything sacred that he would
not leave the rink, which she ought to know was perfectly safe, but her
morbid fears would not listen to reason. More and more he was beginning
to give up asking even. The disappointment of a refusal was too bitter
to be borne often.

As he stood leaning against the bridge railings, his eyes strayed
farther and farther along the surface of the lake, which lay frozen as
far out as he could see. There were rinks on the other side of the
railway bridge, too, and here and there he noticed isolated black
figures gliding along the unswept spaces outside the rinks. Suddenly he
caught sight of a large gathering of people very far out. They were
moving slowly toward the shore, and evidently they were held together by
some common purpose. He wondered what they could be doing out there, far
beyond the last rink, but the distance was too great to give him any
basis for speculation.

After a while he had to leave in order not to be late. He had almost
reached the school when he was overtaken by a boy from the English
section of his own grade, about whom he knew nothing but that his name
was Bergman.

"Have you heard," cried Bergman when he was still several steps behind,
although he and Keith had never exchanged a word before. Keith turned
in surprise.

"Three boys were drowned skating during the lunch hours," continued
Bergman breathlessly. "Two were in my class--Hill and Samson, you know.
The third, Dahlin, was in your own class."

"Is Dahlin dead?" asked Keith blankly. The thing seemed impossible to
him. He had been talking to Dahlin that very morning--a tall boy, slow,
self-possessed, older than most of the other pupils, and advanced for
his age in everything but studies.

"He is," said Bergman with emphasis. "And so are the other two. They are
dragging for the bodies now."

So that was what I saw those people doing out there, Keith thought.

"Little Moses was with them," Bergman ran on. "The Jew, you know. We've
always thought him a coward. And he nearly went down, too, trying to
save them."

By that time they were separating at the door to Bergman's classroom. On
entering his own class, Keith found it in a state of unexampled though
subdued excitement. The boys were gathered in groups which constantly
shifted membership. Every one spoke in a whisper. Reports and rumours of
the most fantastic kind passed from group to group, giving rise to
fierce discussions. Six boys had been drowned instead of three, some one
asserted. In another minute they heard that no one had been lost. Most
credence was given to a circumstantial report of the miraculous recovery
of Dahlin after he had been fully fifteen minutes under water. His big
sealskin cap, they said, had become stuck over his face as he went
under, so that the water could not choke him.

Keith was among the most excited for a while, running eagerly from group
to group and telling what he had heard from Bergman, who evidently had
the very latest news. Soon, however, his mood changed, and he retired
quickly to his own seat. There he sat by himself, his elbows on his
knees and his face resting in his hands. A stupor had descended on his
mind. The whole thing seemed so incredible. He could not grasp it. Those
boys, who had been right among them only a few hours ago, would never
appear again. There would be a funeral, and then they would never be
heard of again. Tears broke into his eyes. He choked with a vague sense
of pity. Samson, he knew, was the only son of a poor widow. Hill's
mother was very sick, some one had said. And Dahlin....

Keith instinctively raised his head to look at the place which Dahlin
had occupied that very morning. What did it mean ...?

At that moment the Rector entered, long overdue to give them an hour in
Latin--an hour of which a goodly part already was gone. The boys dropped
into their seats. A murmur of expectation passed through the class.
Every eye was on the Rector's face which seemed to twitch in a
peculiar fashion.

"The school has suffered a terrible loss," he said at last, his voice
sounding very hoarse. "There is only one thing we can do--work! Will
_primus_ please begin translating from the top of the twenty-second
page, where we left off yesterday."

The boys stared at him, but no one dared to speak. They knew there was
no escape, and they tried to fix their attention on the books. Keith saw
before him a blurred page full of dancing letters. _Primus_ stumbled and
blundered. He was followed by _secundus_ and _tertius_. Keith had
recovered a little by that time, and he knew they were making mistakes
that ordinarily would have called forth a storm of reproof from the
Rector. Now he paid no attention, but merely repeated:

"Go on--go on!"

At last the lesson came to an end, and then they were dismissed for the
day.

On his way home Keith's thoughts ran in a futile circle around the day's
event. If they had never left the rink ... if they had been saved ... if
the story about Dahlin could have been true....

Always his thoughts returned to the same point: the strangeness of the
fact that those boys would never appear again. At no moment, however,
did it occur to him that the same thing might have happened to
himself--or might happen some time in the future. He was Keith
Wellander, to whom such things never happened.

He was nearly home when he suddenly stopped in the middle of East Long
Street and said to himself:

"Now I suppose I'll _never_ get leave to go skating again."



XXI

Among other new duties that accompanied Keith's entrance into the fourth
grade was church-going. Until then he had known little about public
worship beyond what he observed during two or three attendances of Yule
Matins, that was almost like going to a party. The rule of the school
was that all pupils in the higher grades who not going to church with
their parents elsewhere must attend services with their respective
classes every other Sunday at the Church of St. Mary Magdalene.

Judging by the number of boys who turned up, the percentage of
church-goers among the parents must have been very small. Keith's father
went to communion once a year. That was all. The mother went a little
oftener, but as a rule something else turned up about the time she ought
to start, and so she stayed home and read a chapter in some Lutheran
postil instead. Keith thought little of that kind of books. He had tried
them and found them dull beyond endurance.

"Do you really like reading that stuff," he said to his mother one
Sunday.

"Keith!" she protested sternly. Then she continued more mildly: "It is
not a question of like or dislike, my boy, but of saving your soul by
humbling it before the Lord."

"Can you do that by reading," asked Keith innocently.

"N-no ... not exactly," his mother hesitated. But you can.... Oh, I know
I ought to be in church instead of sitting here, but I am such a weak
vessel, and I am sure that the Lord will understand and forgive me."

"Well, then you don't need to worry, mamma," said Keith consolingly,
stirred as always by the appearance of an emotional note in her voice.

"We should always worry," she rejoined very gently, "because we are all
sinners and we have a chance only by His mercy. But I don't believe in a
hell, whatever they say, and I don't want you, Keith, to pay any
attention to anything of that kind they may teach you."

"But why do they teach it then," asked Keith, his logic alert.

"Because ... it's a long story, and you will understand it some day. Now
I want to finish my chapter, or I won't be able to do so before dinner
is ready."

Keith would have liked to ask more, but what concerned him was the
apparent contradiction in his mother's words rather than the subject of
religion itself. His main impression of religion so far was that it was
something very tedious to which grown-up people submitted for some
mysterious reason never really revealed to children. And this impression
was abundantly confirmed by his subsequent experiences in the prudishly
ugly precincts of St. Mary Magdalene.

Seats were reserved in one of the side galleries for the pupils from Old
Mary. Two teachers sat in one of the front pews, so that they could look
down into the church. Aspiring youngsters who wanted to make sure of
good marks were apt to look upon the same pews with special favour. The
rest of the boys wanted to sit as far back as possible, where they could
whisper, and show each other pictures, and eat candy without too much
danger of being discovered. These pursuits brought no relief to Keith,
partly because he possessed neither pictures nor candy, being always
very shy of pocket money, and partly because either fear or some sort of
pride made him draw back from engaging in any sort of mischief behind
the teacher's back.

The hymn singing was not without a certain enjoyment. The slowness of
the tempo made it possible for Keith to keep in tune by leaning very
close to the boy sitting next to him. Even the reading of the gospels
and other recurring features of the service could be borne. But when the
sermon began, Keith fell into sheer agony. The other boys seemed capable
of letting the words of the preacher drop off them as water drops off
the oily feathers of a water-fowl. But one of Keith's characteristics
was that he had to listen to anything said loudly enough in his
presence. For him there was no escape. Through an endless hour, that
sometimes would verge on the five quarters, he had to sit there and take
in every word of a long-winded, moralistic discourse dealing in
forbidding terms with things that left his brain as untouched as if they
had been uttered in a strange tongue. He had a sense of warnings and
threats that seemed to connect with what his mother had asked him not to
heed. He was told to believe, but he could not make out what it was he
should believe--unless it was the Small Catechism, and that had always
left his mind a perfect blank although he knew it by heart from the
first page to the last.

When at last the ordeal was over, he rushed away with a sense of relief
that was marred by the thought of the same thing happening two weeks
later. It was the only feature of his schooling that left behind an
actual sense of grievance which the passing years could not mollify.



XXII

A little before commencement the whole school was stirred by important
news. A reorganization of the entire school system was in progress, and
one result of it was the merger of the old _gymnasium_ or high school on
Knight's Island with Old Mary and the expansion of the latter to nine
grades under the new name of St. Mary's Higher Latin School. A building
across the street had already been acquired for the four new grades, and
a new rector of higher rank was to take charge in the fall.

"It means that we'll stay right here until we go to the university," one
of Keith's classmates explained in a tone implying that it must make
quite a difference to their lives. Then he asked suddenly: "You'll go on
to the university, Wellander, won't you--you with your brilliant mind?"

Keith looked at him in dumb astonishment. In spite of his two prizes, it
was so strange to be called brilliant. And then the question of going to
the university had been raised. Until then he had really never given a
thought to it. And the question of cost leaped into his mind. He was
beginning to learn at last that money was needed for a number of things
you liked to do. Would it cost much, and could his father afford to pay
that much, and, most important of all, would his father consent to pay
it? Those were novel questions--and as he did so often when faced by
something unpleasant or disturbing, so, now again, he pushed them aside,
fled from them, refused to have anything to do with them. There were
still five grades between him and that threateningly attractive
possibility, the student's white cap.

"I don't know," he said at last, being a truthful fool in most matters,
"I have not asked papa yet."

And there was a smile on the other boy's face which Keith disliked
without guessing the significance of it.

Commencement brought him a prize again--a German dictionary just like
the one Krass got when Keith carried off the highest prize in school
after thinking himself ignominiously passed by. Of course, a prize was a
prize, but--and he thought his father looked rather disappointed when he
heard of it.

However, George Murray also received a book, and It was no better than
Keith's, although Murray professed to see a great difference between a
German Dictionary and a Latin Classic.



XXIII

Murray was going off with his family to their private summer residence
in the archipelago outside of Stockholm and Keith gathered that it must
be a very magnificent place. The Wellanders didn't go to the country at
all. Keith's mother had a very bad period again, full of worry and
depression. The summer dragged along joylessly, and Keith had to fall
back on Johan's company in so far as he could obtain it. But Johan was
getting very independent. He had plenty of other acquaintances, and what
Keith saw of them made him deem it wiser not to mention them at all to
his mother. He was gradually learning discretion of a kind.

He read a good deal, and he was beginning to make unauthorized visits to
his father's bookcase in the parlour. There he had discovered certain
volumes by one Jules Verne, and if he could only have plunged freely
into these, the summer might have proved quite bearable. One day when he
could not get at the books, and his mood was more than usually fretful,
and his mother seemed at her lowest, she suddenly turned on him and said
in a strangely bitter tone:

"All I have to go through now is your fault, Keith."

"Why," he asked dumbly, staring at her.

"Because when you came into the world you hurt me so much that I have
never been well since."

"How," he demanded, and as he spoke an idea flashed through his mind
that his mother might not be knowing what she said. Just how such a
thing could happen was still a mystery to him, but what she said sounded
so absurdly impossible.

At that moment her mood suddenly changed.

"There is one thing I have never told you. But for my being made so sick
when you were born, you would have had a little brother, and you would
not have been so lonesome, and perhaps everything would have been
better. But he was born dead. And now I have no one but you, and I shall
have no one else, and you are everything to me, and you must love me
very much and never leave me."

Her arms were about him, and she was crying. And soon both felt better.
But Keith had heard things he could not forget. And there was food in
them for a summer's thought.



PART IV



I

Form the very start the fifth grade was a disappointment. Once Keith,
like all the rest of the smaller boys, had looked up to it with
awe-stricken yearnings as to a peak that only a few fortunate few could
hope to climb. It was then the top of the school. Its pupils were
revered seniors--olympians tarrying momentarily among ordinary mortals
before they took flight for the exalted regions where they really
belonged. All this had been changed by the reorganization. The fifth
grade now was merely a continuation of the fourth and a stepping stone
to the sixth. And Keith's class was the first one to miss the honours of
which successive generations had dreamed as far back as the school had
existed. It was a thing no one had considered when the great news was
passed around in the spring. Now it was brought home to those most
nearly concerned with that poignancy of realization of which only youth
is capable. It gave to the whole class a peculiar atmosphere as if it
had been marked in advance for defeat. The teachers seemed to feel it,
too, and especially the old Rector, who, after so many years of supreme
command, suddenly found himself reduced to a subordinate position.

Keith felt robbed like the rest. And like them, he felt that the
instruction had become a mere humdrum routine enabling a certain number
of boys to get the proper marks at the end of a certain number of
months. What had lured him on as an adventure had turned into a tedious
grind. And more and more he drifted back into a dream world of his own
out of which he had been dragged by Dally's good-humoured jibes. And
yet, what could he expect? Had not Dally even, his best friend in the
whole school, cheated him of the honour he had rightfully earned--an
honour that, once lost, could never be recovered?

The subjects, on the whole, were the same as in the previous grade. You
simply went further into them--that was all. The teachers were the same,
and the relationships once established between them and the boys
remained the same, for good or bad. Every one knew what to expect, on
both sides, and no one quite escaped from the resulting sense of
staleness.

The old Rector went on cramming the class with Latin grammar. He had a
way of making some poor stumbler conjugate the same verb fifteen to
twenty times in succession, so that the correct sequence might never
again escape his memory. And as the red-faced sinner stammered out the
tenses, the Rector would make a tube of his left hand into which he
poked his right thumb. This gesture was always accompanied by the same
mocking remark:

"That's the way to stuff sausages!"

His language grew more picturesque and unrestrained every day. He
belonged distinctly to an older and less circumspect generation, and he
was a good deal of an eccentric besides. His heart was of gold, and no
one ever took the pedagogue's mission more seriously, but whatever he
possessed of refinement went into his appreciation of the language that
was his life's passion. When he spoke Swedish, he called a spade a
spade in a manner that gave Keith shock after shock. Always rather given
to a certain aristocratic exclusiveness in his speech, Keith had through
his association with Murray become something of a prude in this respect.
He could still descend to obscenities when his "manliness" had to be
proved, but vulgarity repelled him irresistibly.

Until then he had never dreamt of questioning any authority. Even at
this juncture he obeyed directions explicity and maintained on the whole
his reputation as a good pupil. But a tendency to criticism was growing
within him, and from the men who taught him it began gradually to pass
to the subjects taught. There came a day when the truth could no longer
be evaded: he was bored most of the time. And the result was that he
grew more and more listless.

If asked, Keith could not have told what was wrong. In fact, it is not
at all certain that he would have admitted that anything was wrong. No
rebellious stirrings had yet found tangible form within him.

He had to learn long lists of foreign kings that had been dead for ages.
He was even expected to know when each king ascended his throne and left
it. He had to learn mathematic formulas and grammatic rules. And on the
heels of each rule hung at least a dozen exceptions. It was impossible
to tell which were of greater importance, the rules or the exceptions.
He had also to learn the exact number of pistils and stamens possessed
by every flower likely to be found in the vicinity of the Swedish
capital. The same thing happened in every subject embraced by the
curriculum. There was no end to it. Yet he did not rebel. Every one
knew that there was no other way of teaching things, so what was the use
of rebelling?

His memory was good, although tricky. In a case of aroused interest he
could absorb an astonishing number of dates, or figures, or lines of
poetry, at first glance or hearing. But he could also drop them as if he
had never heard of them the moment his interest was gone. And they
always seemed to drop out of sight when he left school and returned
home. That word interest seemed to give the key to the situation. And
all sorts of vague and queer and inexplicable things within himself
determined whether he was to be interested or not. It was not a question
of choice or will. He was or was not.

Facts as facts did not interest him at all. Even things as things did
not necessarily, though they might. The class made excursions into the
fields and woods framing the capital, and under the guidance of their
teacher of botany they observed and analysed all sorts of living
flowers. Keith was delighted to get out and charmed with the flowers,
but the facts about them pointed out by the teacher left him profoundly
unmoved. They had exciting little experiments in chemistry, and Keith
effervesced with the rest, but nothing of what he saw brought him more
than a momentary diversion.

All those things left his own real life untouched. And yet he was not
merely looking for fairy tales and adventures. His mind already was
hungry for something else. He found it often in the books he read at
home, many of which had been borrowed from the school library. Not
facts--but how different sorts of facts hung together, so to speak. The
school ought to tell him, and sometimes he had an uneasy feeling that
the teachers were trying to tell him this very thing. But they failed
somehow, and the farther he advanced, the more exasperating that
failure became.

He was in his thirteenth year, and he was no longer certain that he
cared to study. But reading was still his dominant passion--reading and
George Murray.



II

Relations with Murray had been resumed on the old basis. Day after day
they walked to and from school together, and hardly ever was their
friendship disturbed by a misunderstanding. In school, too, they spent a
good deal of time in each other's company, and they continued to sit
side by side. Being so much seen together, they gradually came to be
known as "the twins," which pleased Keith tremendously. But once they
had parted for the day at the corner of the Quay and the lane, there was
no more communication between them. And no matter what Keith said or
did, he could never persuade his friend to break that rule.

Then Murray's birthday came along, and he told Keith quite casually that
his mother had promised to let him have a party and invite five of his
schoolmates.

"Will you ask me," Keith blurted out, his eyes shining with eagerness.

"I don't know," said Murray guardedly.

"But I am your best friend in school," Keith protested.

"It depends on mamma," Murray explained, and his voice lacked a little
of its customary complacency.

"Of course, I should like to have you," he added after a pause, but his
words carried no conviction.

Keith was too hard hit to say a word.

A couple of days later, on their way home from school, Murray said
unexpectedly that he and his mother had looked over the school catalogue
the night before, and that his mother had picked the five boys whom he
was to invite. And he started to name them. The first name was that of
Brockert, a boy in their own class.

"But I have never seen you speak to him," Keith interrupted him.

"He is a very fine boy and comes of excellent family," Murray retorted.
Then he enumerated the other four. Only one of them besides Brockert
belonged to their own class.

Little as Keith knew about most of the boys in school, he realized that
all the prospective guests had three things in common: they were good
scholars, poor, and yet of good families. One had a _von_ in front of
his name. Brockert, too, had some sort of claim to nobility, although it
was said that his mother earned a living for herself and him by working
as a seamstress and the boy was known to pay for his own tuition by
tutoring backward sons of rich families in the lower grades.

Keith tried to look unconcerned. Fortunately they were near home, and
soon he could get away by himself. It has to be admitted that he cried.
And in the end he told his mother, who tried to make him promise never
to speak to Murray again.

"But we're side partners in the class," said Keith, still sobbing.

There was a certain stiffness between him and Murray during the next few
days, but they kept company to and from school as usual. Not until the
morning after the party did it occur to Keith that his pride demanded
some kind of demonstration.

That morning he meant to keep away from his friend. He stayed at home
longer than usual on purpose. Finally he grew afraid of being late and
tumbled pell-mell downstairs, intent on turning to his old route by way
of East Long Street. But no sooner had he reached the lane than his legs
seemed to be moving regardless of his will, and they took the familiar
turn toward the Quay. At that moment he caught sight of Murray crossing
the mouth of the lane without looking either right or left. Something
like a shiver passed through Keith's body, but his legs were still in
command, and they began to run. A minute later he was walking beside
Murray as he had done day after day for the better part of three terms.

At first they did not speak. Then Murray began to tell about the party
of the night before as if it had been the most natural thing in the
world to do so. He told what they had eaten and what they had played and
what impression the boys had made on his mother. Keith listened
without a word.

The worst fight he had ever fought with himself was raging within him,
and while he heard every word that Murray uttered, they seemed to pass
him by as if spoken to some other person. His heart was beating very
hard, and he breathed uneasily. An unfamiliar, impersonal voice within
himself was telling him that he must either give Murray a good licking
then and there or run away. Nasty, ugly, hateful words seemed to crowd
to his lips with an all but irresistible demand for utterance.

Yet he walked on as before, listening to Murray without a word of
comment. At last, when they were near the school entrance, he stopped
suddenly and said:

"Did you ever speak to your mother of me?"

"I did," replied Murray calmly. "And she said that while she had no
objection to our keeping company, she did not think your father's
position was such that we could ask you home."

A strange thing happened to Keith at that moment. It seemed to him that
everything had been satisfactorily explained, and that there was no
reason why he should be angry with Murray or offended at his friend's
parents. He had simply been made to suffer for something that had
nothing to do with his own person.

"Hey, twins," a classmate yelled at them just then.

"I suppose you couldn't help it," Keith said weakly to Murray.

"I really should have liked to have you," Murray answered, and it made
Keith feel as if he had been more than compensated for his previous
sufferings.

After that their friendship continued outwardly as before, but there was
a difference. A tendency to nag and find fault appeared on both sides,
and on several occasions they broke into actual quarrels. These always
ended in reconcilations, but the old serenity had gone from their
companionship, and each new misunderstanding left Keith a little
more unhappy.



III

As a result of the changed relationship between himself and the friend
he idealized, Keith began once more to look up Johan. He did it rather
furtively, as if he had known that he was engaged in something unworthy
of himself. There was an additional reason for this return to an
association long spurned, and it had something to do with his manner of
going about it.

What his mother had told him during the summer was still fermenting in
his mind, but no amount of brooding over it would produce any results.
It was like trying to raise oneself by pulling at one's own bootstraps.
He must turn to some one else for the information that alone could solve
the mystery. Murray was out of the question. Keith had never exchanged a
word with him about the subject that was taking more and more of his
attention. He knew what Murray would say if such a matter were broached:

"I don't think my papa would like me to talk of it, and it's rather
nasty anyhow."

No, Johan was the person to seek for knowledge of this kind. He was now
smoking all the time when not under the eye of his mother. While Keith
almost had stood still physically, Johan had forged ahead. There was no
denying that he was coarse and dull and awkward, but there was a shrewd
gleam in his somewhat bleary eyes, and from time to time he threw out
dark hints about enjoyments and experiences that little boys clinging to
their mother's skirts could never master.

It became a sort of game between them--a game that pleased Johan and
drove Keith to exasperation. It was a game of hide-and-seek. And the
most remarkable feature of it was that, although Keith was dying to
know, he found it impossible to ask any direct questions. His pose was
that he didn't care, and Johan's counter-pose was that he didn't know
what Keith was driving at.

Little by little, however, Keith extracted various stories about those
new friends of Johan's, who lived in one of the neighbouring lanes and
who had a big vacant attic at their disposal. There quite a number of
boys gathered daily, and Johan did his best to impress Keith with the
desperate character of their doings. Girls came to that meeting-place,
too. It was the principal thing, according to Johan--the fact that made
those exploits so deliriously reprehensible. One day Johan was in an
unusually communicative mood.

"Yesterday," he related with great gusto, "Nils got hold of Ellen and
kissed her. And then they crawled into a big empty box when they thought
we didn't see them. And there they stayed ever so long. But Gustaf
crawled up behind the box and peeped. And he saw what they did, and then
he told us."

"What did they do," asked Keith tensely, forgetting his usual reserve.

"Oh, you know," replied Johan teasingly.

"I don't," said Keith stoutly, realizing that it was a dreadful
admission of inferiority. "And I want you to tell me."

For a moment Johan hesitated. Then he shot at Keith a single word--a
verb--that Keith had heard in the lane and among the longshoremen on the
Quay. He knew that it was bad--the worst one of its kind. He knew also
in a vague sort of way that it touched the very heart of the mystery he
was trying to solve. And yet it left him just as ignorant as before.

The bald use of that word by Johan stunned him for a moment. Then his
hot thirst for light brushed all other considerations aside, and he said
almost pleadingly: "Can't you tell me all about it?"

"Oh, everybody knows," said Johan, and his eyes began to wander shiftily
as they always did when he found himself cornered.

"You don't know yourself," Keith taunted him, suddenly grown wise beyond
his ordinary measure.

"Yes, I do," insisted Johan.

"Then tell--or I won't believe you."

"They did what your papa and mamma do nights," Johan shot back.

There was a long pause.

"They don't do anything," Keith said at last almost in a whisper,
"except talk."

"You bet they do," asserted Johan, sure now of having triumphed.

And Keith went home without asking any more questions.



IV

A queer restlessness seized him and left him no peace. He swung abruptly
from one extreme mood to another--from mad elation to paralyzing
depression. He had a baffling sense of things happening within himself
that were equally beyond control and explanation. He grew tired of
sitting on those plain benches at school, with no support for the back,
and still more tired of the Rector's incessant "sit up straight, boy."
Sometimes when he read at home, he could not keep his eyes fixed on the
book because his thoughts insisted on straying into all sorts of
irrelevant fields. But no matter in what direction they started,
circuitously they always found their way into the field of main
preoccupation.

Although shocked at the time by what Johan had told him, it did not
remain actively in his memory. On a few occasions he woke up during the
night with an impression of having heard his mother call his father's
name. When he raised his head from the pillow to listen, a breathless
stillness prevailed in the room. Soon he went back to sleep, and
afterwards he thought no more about it. Yet the very act of listening
seemed to inflame his mind in some way.

The game learned back of the big rock had never become quite forgotten.
Yet it had never meant very much to him, and during his association with
Murray he had thought less and less of it. Now it took new hold of him,
in a much more imperative way, as if it had got a new meaning and a new
lure. And it seemed to have some elusive but highly significant
connection with the mystery that always puzzled and fretted his
curiosity.

Once more he pressed Johan for an explanation of that reference to
Keith's parents.

"That's the way children are made," Johan finally announced with a mien
of having transmitted the ultimate wisdom of the ages.

Keith merely stared at him. That answer did not interest him at all. Of
course, he had long guessed that the arrival of children was a part of
the mystery, but it was a part that had ceased to concern him. What he
wished to know, must know, related to himself exclusively. But in this
respect there was nothing more to be had out of Johan.

At school he began to join a group of boys who always gathered in a
corner of the assembly hall during the pauses instead of mixing with the
mob in the schoolyard. The centre of that group was Swensson, a handsome
young chap of more advanced age than the others who had spent two years
in most of the grades. He was always behind in his studies, but he
seemed to know more of life than all the rest put together. A large part
of the time he was telling stories--always about girls--or relating
adventures--always with girls. Keith found the stories amusing, but as a
rule he failed to grasp their point. And yet they added fuel to the
flame that was burning more and more hotly within him.

His mother had been watching him intently for some time, and after a
while she began to ask questions. These were guarded almost to
unintelligibility, and yet Keith guessed that they referred to his own
secret--the game learned back of the big rock. And so that game grew
still more enticing. Even then, however, it did not seem to matter very
much except in so far as it was the one thing that brought him a slight
relief from the consuming restlessness of body and mind.

His mother's questions were followed by long talks, sometimes taking the
form of warnings, but more often turning into passionate pleas. And
gradually he gathered that the game he had been playing so innocently
must be both sinful and dangerous. He tried as hard as he could to get
to the root of his mother's hints, and he wanted to ask all sorts of
questions. But in the end the meaning of her words seemed to dissolve
into mist, and when he tried to question her directly, it was as if a
solid wall had suddenly risen between them, so that neither one could
hear what the other one said.

His father, too, began to ask questions, evidently urged on by the
mother. He spoke sternly, but not unkindly, when he asked if Keith had
been doing anything he ought not to do. And naturally enough Keith
answered emphatically no.

In this way the mystery came closer and closer to him, and became more
and more urgent. His mother's futile efforts at communicating what
apparently rested heavily on her heart made him ill at ease, but he
remained unconscious of any guilt or fear. A conflict of serious aspect
and proportions was undoubtedly taking shape within him, but so far it
was mainly concerned with the school and his friendship for Murray and
a general sense of dissatisfaction with the life he was leading. It was
above all a sense of things missed.

Then he happened one afternoon, when his mother was out, to be delving
with more than customary audacity among the books in his father's book
case, which become more accessible through the death of their
gentle-looking tenant a short while before.



V

The cough of Herr Stangenberg had been growing worse and worse all
through the winter. He had to take to the bed more and more frequently.
There had been a terrible change in his appearance. Only the eyes and
his temper remained the same. He was always cheerful and hopeful. So he
remained when he had to stay in bed entirely and a doctor began to pay
him daily visits. Keith's mother did everything in her power to be of
help, and it seemed to put her own troubles and worries more in the
background.

"Consumption" was a word the parents often used in discussing the case
of poor Herr Stangenberg, and Keith gathered that it was something
dreadful and merciless, from which escape was impossible. His attitude
toward the whole matter was peculiar. He listened to what his parents
talked, but always in a spirit of utter indifference, as if what they
said could have no possible bearing on his own life.

One evening the servant girl--her name was Hilda at the time--brought
word that Herr Stangenberg wanted very badly to see Fru Wellander for a
few minutes.

"I think he knows at last that the end is near," Keith's mother said as
she rose to go into the parlour. "What am I going to say if he asks me?"

"Nothing," replied the father quietly. "Leave that to the doctor."

On her return, the mother sank down in her chair and began to grope for
a handkerchief. Keith saw that her eyes were lustrous with tears.

"What did he want?" asked the father with unusual anxiety.

"Well, if you tried for a month, you couldn't guess it," the mother
said, and as she spoke, a smile broke through her tears. "It is so sad
and so funny that.... He wants me to send for his tailor to measure him
for a new spring suit."

"Has he no idea ...?" The father checked himself with a glance at Keith.

"I know what you mean," said Keith calmly. Both parents looked at him in
surprise, but neither comment nor rebuke ensued.

"No," the mother went on after a while, "he says that he knows he will
be well and back at his office in two weeks. He actually laughed when I
tried to say something about his being very ill. It brought on his cough
again, and for a moment I thought he would die then and there. But when
the attack was over, he asked me if I couldn't hear that the cough was
much better. What do you think I ought to do?"

"Nothing," the father replied once more.

Keith was ready to start for school next morning when he heard Hilda
utter a startled cry in the parlour.

"Fru Wellander! Fru Wellander!" she called.

Before the mother had a chance to move, the frightened face of the girl
appeared in the parlour door, and she whispered as if afraid of waking
some one out of sleep:

"He is dead."

Both women hurried into the parlour. Keith stood irresolute for a
moment. Then he made for the kitchen door and ran downstairs at top
speed. He was afraid of missing Murray.

All during that day a thought would bother his brain like a buzzing fly:
how peculiar that a man could want to order a new suit of clothes a few
hours before he died. There was something irrational about it that
stumped him. For a moment he thought of speaking to Murray about it, but
it was as if some one had put a hand firmly over his mouth every time he
tried to do so.

The funeral took place in a couple of days. A distant relative had
turned up, very apologetic and eager to explain that his dead cousin had
failed to let any one know that he was sick even. This young man, the
minister, and Keith's parents were the only mourners. A single
carriage sufficed.

Keith never went into the parlour during those days. When everything was
nearly ready, the mother asked him if he cared to go in and have a last
look at poor Herr Stangenberg before the lid was put on the coffin.
Keith merely shook his head.

"You had better go," Granny called from the kitchen. "I never saw him
better-looking while he was alive."

"I won't," Keith yelled back with an amount of irritation that seemed
quite out of proportion to its cause. The mother gave him an uneasy
glance but left the room without saying anything at the time.

As far as the boy was concerned, the incident was closed. He had never
permitted it to take a real hold of his mind, and he resented anybody's
attempt to bring it closer to him. Death had stopped within his own
threshold, and he simply looked in the opposite direction. This attitude
sprang mainly from some inner resistance so stubborn that it would not
even permit itself to be discussed. In addition, his mind was engrossed
with other things, and the principal significance it attached to the
passing of a human life at such close quarters was the hope it held out
that the parlour might remain vacant.

"Were you afraid to look," the mother asked Keith on her return with the
father from the cemetery.

"No, I just didn't want to," the boy replied emphatically.

"Why," the mother asked, studying his face with the peculiar searching
glance that sometimes provoked him and sometimes filled him with a
desire to bury his head in her lap and weep.

"Why should I," Keith rejoined. "He was dead!"



VI

No sooner had the apologetic young man removed the effects of his
departed relative than Keith wanted to take full possession of the
parlour. His mother checked his eagerness with the explanation that they
might still want to rent it. In the meantime he could use it freely, but
he must remove all his playthings when he was through for the day.

"Why can't I sleep on the big sofa in there," he asked in a tone that he
vainly tried to make ingratiating.

"Not yet," said his mother evasively. "You had better stay in here, I
think."

Once more the sense of being watched took hold of him unpleasantly,
filling him with a mixture of fear and resentment. And his wonder why
they seemed to suspect him added to the mystery with which his mind was
wrestling so hopelessly.

The constant access to the parlour was a great change for the better,
however, and one of the first uses he made of it was to investigate his
father's little library with a thoroughness that until then had been out
of the question. It was a queer collection, embracing every form of
literature from philosophy to fiction. This catholicity did not mirror
the father's taste but resulted from his manner of acquiring the books.
Before obtaining the position he now held in the bank, he worked for a
while in the office of one of the principal book printing establishments
at Stockholm. There he formed acquaintances which later enabled him to
get one unbound set of sheets of every book issued from that press.
These he sent to a binder who put them into simple paper covers for a
few _öre_ per volume. They always arrived in a large package just before
Christmas, and one of the thorns in Keith's flesh was the care with
which his father kept all those new treasures hidden until the holiday
season was past. Then the books that had not been handed on to friends
or relations as Christmas presents were given a permanent place on the
shelves of the book case. All of them, however, lacked printed covers
and illustrations.

The young man whom every one spoke of as "poor dear Herr Stangenberg"
had not been dead a week, when Keith one afternoon on his return from
school found himself alone in the house with Granny. His mother had gone
to call on some friends, and the father would not come home from the
bank for several hours. Even the servant girl was away, which was a fact
that not immaterially contributed to Keith's sense of security. Granny
need not be taken into account.

A long cherished opportunity had arrived at last, and he made straight
for the book case. It was locked, but he knew where to find the key. Its
hiding-place had constituted one of those little domestic problems that
add zest to an uneventful existence. There was also an injunction of
long standing against any meddling with the case without permission, but
that had been a dead letter for some time. When books were concerned,
Keith's customary respect for authority ceased to be an obstacle to
his desires.

He explored with no special object in mind. He wanted new reading
matter, and his curiosity was piqued by a number of books with blank
backs that gave no clue to their contents. Two huge, fat volumes on
the bottom shelf had already attracted his attention, and they
were the first he pulled out. Their title brought instantaneous
disappointment--"The Philosophy of the Unconscious," by Edouard von
Hartmann. He prepared scornfully to put them back, when, through the big
gap left by their withdrawal, he became aware that the space back of the
front row was packed with smaller books and pamphlets. This discovery
surprised him for a moment, but what he saw in there looked rather
uninteresting. Nevertheless he reached in and pulled out a small green
pamphlet that happened to be nearest at hand. Idly he glanced at the
legend printed on the front cover:

"Amor and Hymen. A guide for married and unmarried persons of both
sexes."

The words carried no special meaning to his mind, and in the same
indifferent manner he turned a few pages until his eyes fell on a
full-page illustration.

After that he read no other book for days.



VII

He read as he had never read before in his brief span of life--as,
perhaps, he would never read again, no matter how wide a stretch of life
that span might ultimately encompass.

He read of the anatomical differences between men and women. He read
about the mechanism of love. He read about the mysteries of procreation.
All of it was startlingly new to him, and yet he read with a sense of
always having known it. He read with absolute acceptance, without a
possibility of doubt.

It seemed a genuine revelation that must render all future questioning
futile. And yet he seemed to know no more when he had finished than he
knew before he started. It remained outside of himself, a structure of
air, a series of shadowgraphs, and the craving within him burned as
passionately as ever.

From now on he could grasp the points of the stories told by the boys at
school, and he would know what Johan was hinting at in his boast about
the secret doings of that attic. But of the reality of the thing he knew
as little as before. In fact, the principal lesson brought home by his
reading was that here he found himself in the presence of something that
could not be learned out of books.

To begin with he did not go beyond the first part of the book. This he
read over and over again. When at last he was sated with what that part
had to give, a subtle chemical change had taken place in his mental
make-up, one might say. It was not caused by any facts conveyed by the
book. These seemed quite natural to him, and in themselves they would
have had no more power over him than the information about flowers of
various kinds imparted by the teacher of botany. It was the tone used
that affected him in a manner reminding him of the Swedish Punch of
which he had tested a few drops now and then. In every line there was a
mixture of shamefaced apology and veiled desire that sent all the blood
in his body rushing toward his head until the walls of the room about
him reeled. Every inch of him was on fire, and in that flame body and
soul were consumed together.

The sum and substance of it was that he had become conscious of that
multitudinous impulse we call sex, and that from a vague, restless
yearning this impulse suddenly had developed into an appetite as
imperative as any hunger for food.



VIII

Finally he went on to the remaining chapters of the book, always with
that double sense of knowing it all before and of not quite grasping
what he read.

Pages were consumed before he realized with a shock more intense than
any one previously experienced, that the book was speaking of the game
he learned to play back of the big rock.

Again it was not what the book told that seemed to matter, but the tone
in which it spoke. And while before that tone had sent the blood to his
head, it now drew every drop of it back to his heart until he shivered
and shook with a misery so acute that another moment's endurance of it
seemed unthinkable.

At that instant fear was born within him. Until then it had been no more
real to him than were now the experiences described in the first part of
the book. He had instinctively shrunk from things that he knew or
believed to be painful, from the shock of a blow to the sting of a harsh
word. He had suffered discomforting anticipation of rebukes and
restrictions. But he had never before stood face to face with that stark
unreasoning terror which gathers its chief power from the intangible
character of the danger it heralds.

He learned that physically and spiritually he had courted death, and
what is worse than death. And suddenly the thought of that gentle-faced,
sweet-tempered young man in the parlour leaped into his memory. But the
image it brought him was not that of a human form stretched stiffly
within the black boards of a coffin. What he saw and what froze him with
horror was the hollow temples and sallow cheeks and drooping jaws and
bent back and trembling limbs of the human wreck that was still counted
a living man.

Worse than that image, however, and worse than any thought of punishment
by powers not within his actual ken, was the book's damning imputation
of shame incurred, of unworthiness proved, of inferiority so deep that
no words could adequately picture it.

All that was most himself wanted to rise in wild rebellion against
conclusions that found no support in anything he had actually
experienced so far. He wanted to refuse belief. He sought for escapes as
if the fulfilment of the doom pronounced by the book had been a matter
of minutes. But there was the book, and to back it suddenly appeared a
line of experiences out of his own life.

Perhaps those who would not let him visit their homes had only too good
cause for refusal. Perhaps, after all, it was not his father's position
but something about himself that had caused the parents of Harald, of
Loth, and now of Murray, to act in exactly the same way. Perhaps Dally
had reasons for not letting him become _primus_ which, out of his soul's
kindness, he never told even to Keith himself. Perhaps the reason he
always felt isolated and out of touch with his schoolmates lay in their
instinctive recognition of his nature....

In the end he replaced the book with a firm determination never to look
at it again. But the poison was in his mind, and the book no
longer mattered.



IX

The game learned behind the big rock must never be played again--that
much was certain!

But all resolves proved vain. Fight as he may, the end was inevitably
the same.

Previously he had been the player, and had thought no more of it. Now
he was being played with, and this new form of the game kept him
see-sawing incessantly between ecstasy and agony, between the relief of
yielding and the remorse at having yielded.

His life was an unending conflict, and in the presence of that ever
renewed struggle within, by forces that seemed alien to his own self,
all else lost significance.

And there was not a thing or a person within reach that could offer an
antidote to the self-contempt corroding his soul's integrity.



X

Going to school grew very hard for a while. He could barely look his
schoolmates in the face for fear that they might read in his eyes what
sort of a chap he was. At times, on his walks to or from school with
Murray, a faintness would seize him at the mere thought that his friend
somehow might have guessed the truth. And he sent timidly envious
side-glances at one lucky enough to be raised above all temptation. For
neither his recollections of the gang gathered about the big rock nor
the more recent light shed on such things by Johan had the slightest
influence on his conception of himself as the sole black sheep in a
flock of perhaps soiled but nevertheless washable white ones.

After a while the poignancy of his emotions became blunted by
familiarity, and mere weariness forced him to accept himself on a
reduced level. A sort of new equilibrium was established within him, but
it was primarily based on indifference. Nothing really mattered. Effort
was useless. Things merely happened. No one could help what happened.
And in this fatalism, so utterly foreign to his ardent, supersensitive
nature, he found a certain momentary sense of peace.

He went about his daily classroom tasks as in a dream, doing
mechanically what he was asked, and dropping his effort as soon as the
demand for it ceased. Nothing happened during the lessons to indicate
that the teachers noticed any change in him or were in any manner
dissatisfied with him. Perhaps he was saved by an occasional flaring up
of interest that drew from him flashes of that brightness of mind that
had won Dally and given him the reputation of an exceptional pupil.

But as the spring term drew nearer its close, he found it more and more
difficult to keep up a pretence at attention. More and more he sank into
mere drifting, and he whose pride had been really to know, now trusted
to luck like any dullard with a head unfit for studying. Worse still and
more significant, he began to find excuses for staying home from school.
He who had never known what it was to be sick, now developed disturbing
symptom after another--headaches and colds and digestive troubles in
endless succession. Most of the time these symptoms yielded quickly at
the mere sight of the castor oil which was his mother's favourite remedy
and the taste of which Keith hated more than anything else in the world.
It was the one thing that stood inexorably between his growing indolence
and the luxury of being ill.

With commencement almost in sight, all sorts of written examinations
were demanded. These he disliked additionally because his handwriting
never had developed in proportion to his mental capacity. No matter how
he strove, the letters remained childishly awkward. No two of them
seemed to point in the same direction. Not even his futile efforts at
singing could fill him with a more humiliating sense of inferiority.

All his various resistances were brought into concerted action when at
last the teacher in Swedish ordered him to prepare two brief original
compositions on quite simple themes. In the days of Dally he would have
revelled in such a task. Now it appalled him. His head was empty. The
mere idea of trying to write about such things as the discovery of
America and the beauties of nature seemed silly. There was any number of
books, besides, that said anything you could ever hope to say on
either subject.

The end of it was that he produced an indisposition real enough not only
to convince his mother but to make himself willing to face the ordeal of
castor oil. Thanks to the oil he was able to stay in bed the better part
of two days. Those were the last two days before his Swedish
compositions were to be delivered. He knew that if they were not
delivered, he would get no mark in that subject, and this would prevent
his graduation to a higher grade.

In that dilemma he conceived the brilliant idea of making his mother
write the compositions for him, and he actually succeeded in persuading
her to do so. He prompted her a little, but she did the main part of the
work, and the handwriting was hers. Finally he got her to bring them up
to school with the explanation that he was too sick to sit up and write,
but that she had taken down what he dictated. He did not even look at
what she wrote, and it never occurred to him to doubt her ability of
doing it far better than he could. When it was all over, he experienced
a tremendous sense of relief, and this was much enhanced by his mother's
willingness to let the father remain in complete ignorance of what
had happened.

Nothing was said to him when he showed up at school again. His first
inkling of trouble came with the return of his copy book. It was full of
marks and corrections in red ink. As he looked at these in a stunned
fashion, he realized for the first time that his mother's spelling and
punctuation would have been deemed unsatisfactory in a second grade
pupil. At first he did not even consider the bearing of this discovery
on his own fate. He could think of only one thing, namely that another
blow had been dealt to his conception of his mother as a superior being.
He actually felt ashamed on her behalf. Then came the thought of what
the teacher must have thought....

Commencement Day brought the answer. He got only C in Swedish, which
meant that he had failed to pass. It gave him the choice between
spending another year in the same grade or facing special examinations
in the fall.

At first he was too dazed to think. Then his former indifference changed
into blazing indignation and resentment. He felt himself a victim of
unpardonable injustice. In that mood he returned home and reported to
his father.

"You talk nonsense, my boy," said his father in a tone that was new to
Keith. "From some things I have heard, I gather that your escape from
the same kind of mark in every subject was little short of miraculous."

Keith stared open-eyed at his father, puzzled by his manner of speaking
and stung to the quick by what he said.

"What are you going to do now," his father demanded after a while.

A long pause followed during which Keith's brain worked at lightning
speed. It was as if he had never known until then what really had
happened during the weeks preceding commencement.

"I'll pass the examinations in the fall," he said at last.

"Will you give me your word of honour to read hard during the summer,"
his father asked, and his voice set the boy's heart throbbing like
an engine.

"I will," replied Keith. "But I could pass those examinations without
looking at the book."

"The more shame for you, then, to let yourself be plucked," was his
father's concluding remark, but even that was uttered without a
suggestion of bitterness.



XI

The summer was spent on the mainland opposite the island where they used
to live. He had practically no companionship except that of his mother.
It was very dull, but for the first time he seemed to need solitude. He
had brought out all his schoolbooks, and he really did a good deal of
studying, especially of Latin, which he knew was his weakest point.

At first he felt a slight grudge against the mother. She had
disappointed him for one thing, and there was an inclination besides to
hold her responsible for his misfortune. By degrees, however, he began
to see his own part in its true light, and he wondered how he could have
been such a blind fool. It was this understanding that brought him
comparative peace and enabled him to work. He had been so harassed by
the question of guilt in regard to actions which his own mind would
never have classed as wrong that the sense of facing punishment clearly
deserved came as a genuine relief.

The monotony of the season was only broken by a visit to the summer home
of Aunt Agda at Laurel Grove, where he stayed a whole week and made a
lot of friends. She had served with the Wellanders as a nurse girl when
Keith was only a baby. Then she was plain Agda, and Keith's mother often
spoke of how crazy she had been about him. Then she disappeared, and
when the Wellanders next heard of her, she was the wife of a well-to-do
retired merchant, to whom she had borne three children while she was
merely a servant and his first wife still lived. Keith had often
overheard his parents speak of Agda's phenomenal rise with ironic
smiles, but he didn't care for anything except her continued inclination
to spoil him.

There was a lot of children at Laurel Grove, boys and girls, and most
of them matched Keith in age. They took him in, and in that one week he
had a glimpse of the kind of life he would have liked to live. There was
in particular one boy, Arnold Kruse, for whom Keith formed a warm
attachment. This feeling was additionally cemented by Arnold's choice of
Keith as a confidant. Arnold was in love with the prettiest girl in the
place, Gurlie Norlin, and so was every other boy within reach of Laurel
Grove. But Arnold was the favourite, and he told Keith that he and
Gurlie had agreed to wait for each other and to marry as soon as they
were of age.

It was like a fairy tale to Keith--a wonderful tale like no one he had
ever read. And the most wonderful thing about it was that it was real,
and that he was permitted to play a sort of part in it. His thoughts
went back to Oscar and what he had told Keith about the love between
Oscar's father and mother. Here was love again, mystically beautiful, so
that it brought a new light into the faces of those it touched. And
Keith's heart grew lonely and wistful within him. But strangely enough,
he never thought of connecting Arnold's love for Gurlie with what he had
read in the book found in his father's book case. That was quite a
different thing, he felt.



XII

The presiding genius of the examinations was Lector Booklund, teacher of
Latin in Lower and Upper Sixth. He was short and stocky and gnarled by
gout. Instead of speaking, he emitted a series of verbal explosives, and
the boy whose answers didn't come quick enough became the object of
withering scorn. Most of his life seemed concentrated in his eyes where
twinkling merriment and blazing anger alternated with bewildering
rapidity. He posed as a tyrant, but the boys who knew him well said that
at heart he was as kind as he was just, and that his nervous impatience
and bursts of rage were merely the results of severe physical
sufferings.

The moment he caught sight of Keith among the boys up for examination,
most of whom hailed from other schools, he became interested and began
to draw him out. And Keith was able to respond with some of his old-time
quickwittedness. His ambition had been stirred into a semblance of life
through the shock of his failure, while the summer's rest and peace had
brought back some of his natural vivacity. The inner conflict was still
a source of trouble, but it did not seem quite so much a matter of life
and death. He had not yet passed the crisis, but he had reached a point
where a little tactful nursing might put him on the right path again
for good. What he needed above all was encouragement, and that was what
he got for a while from the new class principal.

He passed the examinations with ease. Then the sense of being a favoured
pupil once more made him throw himself into the studies with
considerable zest. Little by little, however, his zest slacked off. More
and more frequently he became the object of blame or ridicule instead of
praise. By and by Lector Booklund found it hard to ask him a question or
give him a direction without open display of irritation. It was evident
that he felt disappointed in Keith, and he did not hesitate to show it.

Many causes combined to produce the slump in Keith's aspirations that in
its turn produced the changed attitude of the teacher. The latter's
impatience had probably as much to do with it as anything else, while
his splenetic manners and speech intimidated the boy's already
overwrought sensitiveness. The subjects taught and the form of the
teachings did their share, too. Grammar and rules and dry data seemed to
play a greater part than ever. In Latin, for instance, they were reading
Ovid's "_Metamorphoses_" and the colourful old legends might easily have
been used to arouse the boy's interest, if attention had merely been
concentrated on the stories told and the life revealed by them. But the
teacher was first and last a grammarian, and he would wax frantically
enthusiastic over some subtle syntactic distinction which left Keith
peevishly indifferent. And Lector Booklund was positively jealous on
behalf of his own subject, so that once he flung a bitingly sarcastic
remark at the boy because his attention had flared up at the quoting of
a phrase in English.

Keith's progress in English showed that he was still capable of both
interest and effort. This language was quite new to him, and the class
had it only one hour a week. But the man who taught it had advanced
ideas for his day, and instead of boring the boys with a lot of abstract
rules relating to a wholly unknown tongue, he let them start right in on
one of the English prose classics. They were told to pick out the
meaning of the principal words in advance, and the pronunciation was
explained as they took turns at reading aloud. All the time the teacher
kept the principal part of their attention focused on the story
gradually revealed. During that one hour a week Keith's mind never
wandered. But it was the only rift in the scholastic fog that kept him
in a state of constant boredom.

In the meantime things were happening at home that did not help the
situation.



XIII

He had moved into the parlour at last. It was almost his own room. An
old piece of furniture, half wardrobe and half dresser, standing in the
vestibule outside the parlour, had been turned over to him for good. His
library and his playthings were installed on the shelves in the upper
part. His personal things occupied a whole drawer below. At night he
slept on the big sofa, and the door to his parents' room was closed.

One night he lay awake unusually long. The old struggle was going on
within him, and there was no peace in sight. His parents had gone to bed
a good while ago, and as far as he was concerned just then, they had
practically ceased to exist.

Then his attention was attracted by a slight noise from their room. The
stillness of the night made it audible to him in spite of the closed
door. At first he listened out of idle curiosity, and to get away from
his own feverish thoughts. Finally he got up without any clear idea of
what he was doing, or why he did it. He began to tremble even as he
moved on tip-toe across the room. At the door he had to kneel down to
steady himself.

He could not tell whether an hour or a minute had passed when he crawled
into bed again. His whole body was on fire. He could feel the pulses at
his temples hammering. At that moment he knew what passion was. The man
in him had been let loose, and he wanted to cry aloud with the
bitter-sweet agony of it.

There was no thought of father or mother in his mind. The people back of
the door were just a man and a woman. The feelings that surged through
his heart, shaking his body volcanically, would have been the same if
those two had been perfect strangers.

No jealousy stirred him. No sense of shame shocked him. His dominant
emotion was envy.

The visit of death had left him unmoved. Now he had been as close to
life in its most intense form, and the effect of it was maddening--a
call that seemed to make further waiting worse than death.

He fell asleep at last with a part of the pillow stuffed into his mouth
to keep his sobs from being heard in the next room....



XIV

The thing had him by the throat. It was stronger than any power he could
bring to bear against it. Fighting it was useless. Resistance meant
merely prolonged torture. Surrender meant sleep--and torture of a
different kind the next day.

Once more he managed to get hold of the book that had wrought such
disastrous change in his entire existence. He read again the chapters
bearing directly on his own case. They seemed more convincing than ever.
There could be no doubt of his degradation or his doom.



XV

He came running home from some errand one evening not long before
Christmas. His mind was more at ease than it had been for a long time.
That season of the year rarely failed to bring him a little happiness.

The moment he flung open the kitchen door, he knew that something was
wrong, and his heart sank within him.

The mother stood in the middle of the floor wringing her hands. Granny
sat on the sofa, stolid-faced as usual, and rolled one of her endless
bandages. On the chair by the window sat the father, his shoulder
against the wall, his left elbow on the table, and his head resting in
his left hand.

Keith could hardly believe what he saw.

His father's face was contorted with pain or grief. Big tears rolled
down his cheeks and dropped on the table before him. Every little while
he was shaken by a sob that almost choked him.

"Is he sick," the boy gasped.

"Something dreadful has happened," the mother stammered, unable to take
her eyes off her husband.

"You had better go into the parlour, Keith," whispered Granny as she
started on a new roll.

Keith turned his glance once more to the father. He had never seen a man
cry before, and until that moment such a lack of control on the part of
his father had seemed quite unimaginable. The strangeness of it
frightened him.

"I fear it will kill him," he heard his mother mutter.

"I wish it would," the father broke out, raising his head for a moment.
"But it won't, Anna.... I'll be over it in a minute."

His words were forced out between sobs. Keith saw that he was struggling
terribly to get himself in hand.

Then he caught sight of Keith, whose entrance he evidently had not
noticed, and as usual the presence of the boy brought back the
self-restraint for which he had been striving vainly until then.

"Keith," he said, speaking much more quietly, "your Uncle Wilhelm has
been arrested for using money that didn't belong to him. I can't believe
it, but I am sure they will send him to jail.... You must always
remember what I have told you about money...."

His own words seemed to bring back to him the full horror of the
situation, and he threw himself face downward over the table in another
convulsive outburst of grief.

Granny on the sofa was signalling frantically to Keith to leave the
room. Mechanically he obeyed her. Anything was better than to watch his
father....



XVI

Little by little he learned the whole sad story. At the same time he
realized that Christmas would probably be spoiled--the one thing he had
banked on for momentary relief.

Once upon a time Uncle Wilhelm had been the most prosperous member of
the family, owning a big, fine grocery store in the fashionable North
End district. He made a lot of money, but his wife was vain and foolish
and pleasure-loving. She always managed to spend more than he could ever
earn, and he was idiotically in love with her. It ended in bankruptcy.
Uncle Wilhelm got a position as superintendent of a small factory in
the South End. There he might have done very well in a more modest way,
had not his wife proceeded to turn his life into a perfect hell. This
was her way of punishing him for his failure to support her in the style
she demanded. He was weak in more ways than one, and soon he drank not
merely for the sake of a good time, as everybody else did, but to find
consolation and forgetfulness. His private affairs went from bad to
worse. Gradually he lost the habit of distinguishing between his own
meagre funds and those entrusted to him. It was a clear case, and his
employer proved merciless when it was found out.

What Keith's father had feared came true. And that Christmas was more
sad than any other part of any other year had ever been.



XVII

It would have been hard on Keith at any time. Coming as it did, the
family disgrace, which he guessed rather than grasped, and the
disappointment, which was a depressingly tangible thing, brought his
natural sensitiveness to a morbid pitch.

There was one idea that haunted him day and night--the idea that he
belonged to a race doomed in advance to decay and destruction.

Uncle Wilhelm's case was not an isolated one. There was Uncle Henrik,
the youngest brother of Keith's father, who had gone to the dogs while
still a youth, and in a more ignominious fashion, if possible. What was
he now but a besotted tramp, begging shamelessly of friend or stranger
for a few _öre_ with which to buy a brief moment of coarse happiness?

There was Uncle Marcus, the husband of Keith's paternal aunt, who had
hurt his leg in a storm and lost his splendid position as chief engineer
of the swiftest steamer plying on the Northern route. Now he was
disabled for ever, and proud Aunt Brita was at her wit's end to keep the
home and the family together.

There were the two half-brothers of Uncle Wilhelm's silly wife--popular
and dashing young fellows reading blithely the purple path to
destruction. Even Keith's naïve mind had discovered which way they were
headed, although his thoughts of them were not free from admiration.

And there were still others. Wherever he turned within the narrowing
family circle, he met similar instances of progress in the wrong
direction. Some were sinners and some were victims of fate--or seemed
so--but it came to the same thing in the end.

"The Wellanders are going," Keith's mother said one day to Aunt Brita
when she was too depressed and worried to mind the boy's presence.

"Yes," replied Aunt Brita grimly, "and so is everybody else who ever had
anything to do with them. Keith will have to start it all over again
from the beginning."

That seemed to settle it for the moment. Of what avail could his own
feeble struggles be in the face of an adverse destiny?

He brooded over it, and out of his brooding came resentment, and more
and more this resentment turned against his relatives in a fury of
disgust. He had a feeling of their having betrayed him....

Now and then, however, one of the expressions used by Aunt Brita would
recur to him with a suggestion of quite different possibilities.

"Keith will have to start it all over again from the beginning," she had
said.



XVIII

If he only had some one to talk to.... But he was more lonely than ever.
Murray had moved to another part of the city, more in keeping with his
father's increasing prosperity, and was now attending a North End
school. They had parted with no more ado than if they had expected to
meet the next day again. Now and then Keith thought of Murray with a
touch of sentimental regret, but it was wearing off.

Johan was still found at the foot of the lane, smoking and bragging and
leering as before. To Keith he had become positively loathsome.

There was no one else in sight--not one boy in the class out of whom
Keith might hope to make a friend. Leaving other factors aside, his lack
of pocket money was sufficient to keep him apart from the rest. They all
had some sort of allowance, however scant, and they took turns treating
each other to pastry or candy bought from a couple of old women who
brought basketfuls, to the school doors during every pause. He had to
beg especially for every _öre_, he couldn't get much at that.

He wore a suit made over by his mother from clothes given to her by a
woman of some means with whom she had a slight acquaintance. They had
been outgrown by that woman's son, and they had been offered to Keith's
mother because they were too good to be thrown away. There was nothing
about it to be ashamed of, and the made-over suit was neat enough,
though a little awkwardly cut. A couple of years earlier, Keith would
have hailed it with delight. Now the wearing of it seemed worse than
going about naked. He thought that every one noticed the suit and knew
that it was not really meant for him.

He read contempt in every glance, and by degrees he developed a temper
that was checked only by the humiliating consciousness of his physical
inferiority. After nearly five years in school, he was still one of the
smallest boys in height and bodily development, and neither gymnastics
nor the military drill that became compulsory in the sixth grade had the
slightest effect on him. And, of course, he suffered the more from it
because he ascribed his lack of stature and muscle to what he had now
begun to think of as his own moral weakness.

A petty quarrel one day brought on another fight with Bauer, and this
time right in the class room. They rolled around on the floor between
the desks and separated only when some one cried out that Booklund was
coming. Keith was thoroughly aware of the fact that his classmates
regarded their behaviour as inexcusably undignified in pupils of the
Lower Sixth, but contrary to custom, he didn't care very much. What
almost made him cry was that the thought that at the moment of
separation Bauer once more was on top of him--just as when their first
fight came to an end five years earlier. And then Keith was brought
still nearer to tears by his disgusted realization of that infantile
tendency to cry in every moment of unusual strain.

But, of course, how could he expect anything else?

His whole bearing changed gradually. The gay forwardness that had caused
Dally to make fun of him--and like him, perhaps--was quite gone, but
gone, too, was the shyness that always had run side by side with it. His
most frequent mood was one of irritable rebellion, and in between he
would have spells of sulkiness that estranged the teachers and surprised
himself in his more wholesome moods. He snarled to his mother, and he
would have done so to his father if he had only dared.

The school seemed sheer torture much of the time, and all its
objectionable features seemed to centre in the Latin. His hatred of that
subject approached an obsession. There was no doubt that Lector Booklund
could feel it, and every day he watched Keith with more undisguised
hostility. At last he could not speak to the boy without losing his
temper, and so for days at a time he would not speak to him at all. At
such times Keith's state of mind presented a riddle hard to solve. He
posed to himself and others as tremendously gratified at being left
alone and not having to answer any bothersome questions. Inwardly,
however, he was more hurt and offended by that neglect than by any other
rebuke the teacher could have devised.

Such a period of suspended communication had lasted more than a week,
when, at the wane of the term, the inevitable explosion
finally occurred.



XIX

The class had just turned in their copybooks with a Latin exercise
prepared at home. Lector Booklund was standing at his desk with the
whole pile in front of him. Keith's book happened to be on top. The
teacher opened it. He sent a glance at Keith that made the boy squirm.
Then, as his eyes ran down the page, his face turned almost purple.
Suddenly he raised the book over his head and threw it on the floor with
such force that the cover was torn off.

A moment of ominous silence followed. Keith was red up to the roots of
his hair.

"Wellander," the teacher roared.

Keith rose none too quickly from his seat without looking up.

"Pick up that thing," Lector Booklund shouted at him with the full force
of his powerful lungs. "I don't want to touch it again."

Keith remained like a statue, feeling now as if he didn't have a drop of
blood left in his whole body.

"Pick it up, I tell you!"

"No," Keith retorted in a strangely self-possessed voice, "you had
better pick it up yourself. I didn't throw it on the floor."

In another moment the teacher was beside Keith, burying his hand in the
boy's hair. Then he pulled and shook, shook and pulled, until the hand
came away with big tufts of hair showing between the fingers.

Again absolute silence reigned for a moment.

"Ugh," blew the teacher, his anger changed to a look of embarrassment.
"I am not going to speak another word to you, Wellander, during the rest
of the term. Sit down!"

Instead of sitting down, Keith walked over to the torn copy book, picked
it up and turned toward Lector Booklund.

"I am going home," he announced almost triumphantly. "You have no right
to hit me or pull my hair out by the roots."

Before the teacher had recovered from his surprise Keith was outside the
door and on his way home.

He didn't know afterwards how he got there, but he could remember saying
to himself over and over again:

"I didn't cry and I didn't want to cry!"



XX

He told his mother truthfully what had happened and declared in
conclusion that he would never go back to school again.

She was furious with the teacher and thought that on the whole, it
would be safer for Keith to stay away during the few weeks remaining
of the term.

"That man should be punished," she cried repeatedly. "You did just
right."

But the father spoke in another tone when he, in his turn, had heard the
tale of that eventful day.

"You will go to school tomorrow as usual," he said in his sternest
voice. "You had no right to refuse to pick up the book, and you had no
right to leave the school without permission."

"I can't go back after being treated like that, papa," Keith
remonstrated, trying vainly to make his tone sound firm.

"You will," the father reiterated, "or I'll...."

He stopped and thought for a minute.

"Or you'll begin to learn a trade tomorrow. Take your choice."

Father and son looked long at each other.

"Carl ..." the mother began pleadingly.

"Please, Anna," the father checked her. "This is too serious. The boy's
future is at stake."

Then he turned to Keith and said more kindly: "I ask you to go for my
sake."

"I will," the boy blurted out with a little catch in his voice.

His pride was broken, and once more those everlasting tears were dimming
his eyes.

He felt weak and helpless, but through his dejection broke now and then
a sense of pleasant warmth. His father had asked him to go "for
his sake."

Such a thing had never happened before.



XXI

The class was discreetly preoccupied when Keith showed up as usual next
morning. Only Young Bauer evinced a slight inclination to taunt him, but
was curtly hushed up.

During one of the afternoon hours the door of the classroom opened
unexpectedly and Keith's father appeared on the threshold.

"Will you pardon me for just one moment, Sir," he said to the astonished
teacher. Then, without coming further into the room, he addressed
himself to Keith: "I have had a talk with the Rector and with Lector
Booklund. I have heard all about your behaviour in school, and I warn
you now that unless you do better, I shall give you the treatment you
deserve. Bear that in mind."

Then he vanished as abruptly as he had appeared.

A couple of the boys snickered. The teacher rapped sharply on the table
with the book he held in his hand.

Keith sat absolutely still with bowed head. He couldn't think. He didn't
dare to think of ever facing one of those other boys again. And suddenly
it occurred to him that his father had looked quite common, like a
workman almost, while he stood there at the door, talking across the
room to Keith.

But a tiny voice somewhere within himself denied it.



XXII

The term dragged to an end.

Commencement Day was no longer a cause of joyful anticipation. It had to
be borne like many other things. But it did mark the end.

Keith learned without much heartbreaking that he had got a "C" not
merely in Latin, which he expected, but in behaviour as well--he who all
through his school period had never had less than "A" on his
personal conduct.

Well, it merely clinched the decision he already had formed. One could
not pass any examination in behaviour. And after what had happened, the
thought of going back to the same classroom in the fall gave him a
sensation of outright physical discomfort. Anything was better
than school.

Not even his mother had put in an attendance that day. He had to walk
home by himself, all the other boys being accompanied by pleased or
resigned parents. But it was in keeping with the rest of what he had to
go through.

Out of the midst of the shapeless throng of dark thoughts filling his
head, a quite irrelevant memory pushed to the front as if in answer to
an unspoken question. It consisted of the words spoken by Aunt Brita:

"Keith will have to start it all over again from the beginning."



XXIII

The first few days after the closing of the school were wonderfully
restful. The parents proved remarkably forbearing. Neither one spoke a
word of reproach. Nothing was said about the future. It was as if some
sort of fear had checked them.

The home seemed unusually quiet and pleasant. There was any amount of
time for reading, and no suggestions were forthcoming as to what should
or should not be read. Yet Keith remained satisfied only a few days.

No one knows what might have happened if they had gone into the country
for the summer as they used to do. But again the whole family had to
stay in town for some reason not divulged to Keith. And with the heat
and the sunshine came the usual restlessness.

Keith had made up his mind not to go back to school. He was equally
determined not to let himself be forced into any sort of manual work.
Besides having no knack for it, he had come to look upon it as a social
disgrace. Some other work must be found, for well enough he knew that
his father would not let him stay home indefinitely doing nothing.

It was easy, however, to make up one's mind about what not to do, but
mighty hard to discover the right kind of thing to do. Keith had no clue
to start with at all, and to begin with all his efforts led him into the
blindest of blind alleys.

He plagued his mother with inquiries to which she had few or no answers
to give. He even deigned to consult Johan and found that he already had
found a place as errandboy in a store. A few questions convinced Keith
that such a life might be good enough for Johan but not for a boy who,
after all, had reached Lower Sixth in a public school.

The situation was becoming desperate and Keith was watching his father
with steadily increasing concern, when at last a helpful hint reached
him from the most unexpected quarter.

"Why don't you look in the paper," Granny asked him one day.

"What for," was Keith's surprised counter-question.

"For work, of course. Look at the advertisements on the back page."

"Do you think, Granny...." Keith hesitated.

"I don't think," retorted Granny. "I know."



XXIV

Three weeks had gone. It was still early morning, and he was studying a
newspaper very carefully.

"What is it you find so interesting," his mother asked at last.

"The advertisements," he explained without taking his eyes off the
paper.

"What advertisements?"

"Help wanted."

"Nonsense," she cried, putting down her sewing. "Are you still thinking
of leaving school?"

"Here is one about a volunteer wanted in a wholesale office," was his
indirect reply. "It is on West Long street--in the same house where Aunt
Gertrude has her jewelry store. Do volunteers get paid?"

"I don't know," his mother said absent-mindedly, her hands resting on
her lap in unwonted idleness. Then she woke up as from a dream: "You
should ask papa first."

"What's the use until I know whether I can get," Keith parried.

Ten minutes later he bustled into Aunt Gertrude's store, where she sat
in a corner near the big show-window working at a strip of embroidery
that never got finished. She was a spinster with large black hungry eyes
in a very white face. She and Keith's mother had been girl friends. Now
she was running one of the two jewelry stores owned by her brother.

She had heard of the position. It was in the office of Herr Brockhaus on
the second floor--a dealer in tailor's supplies. And she had heard that
he was a very nice man.

"Do you think I can get it," Keith demanded eagerly.

"Why don't you run up this minute and ask," she suggested.

Keith looked as if he had been to jump off a church steeple. But in
another minute he was climbing the stairs. His legs seemed rather shaky
and his tongue felt like a piece of wood. The moment he opened the door,
however, all his fears and hesitations were gone. Once more he was the
old Keith who had made a play of studies and examinations.

Herr Brockhaus was a tall, youngish, good-looking man, a little haughty
of mien, but with a tendency to smile in quite friendly fashion.

"I have as good as hired another boy who got here earlier than you," he
said in reply to Keith's inquiry. On seeing Keith's dejected look, he
laughed good-humouredly.

"There are plenty of other jobs," he suggested.

"But you look as if you would be kind to me and give to a chance to
learn," Keith heard himself saying to his own intense astonishment.

"I can see that when you want a thing you want it real hard," Herr
Brockhaus rejoined with another peasant laugh. "Well, I like that. What
kind of a hand do you write?"

"Awful," Keith confessed, "but I am going to learn better."

For a good long while Keith felt himself studied from top to toe, and
under that searching scrutiny he blushed as usual.

"I am willing to do anything that is required," he ventured to ease the
suspense.

"All right--what did you say your name was? Keith--I'll take you, and
tell the other boy that I changed my mind. When can you begin?"

"Tod ... tomorrow," Keith corrected himself with a sudden remembrance
of his father.

"Good," said Herr Brockhaus. "Show up at eight. And I'll pay you ten
crowns a month the first year, although as a rule volunteers don't get
anything."

Keith walked home on air. The sun never shone more brightly than that
day. The tall old stone houses along West Long street looked imposing
and mysterious, as if they had been magic mansions full of golden
opportunities for bright little boys. School seemed years away already.
Lector Booklund was a dream.

His mother listened in silence to his wonderful tale. Then she kissed
him.

"When you have made a lot of money, will you present me with a new black
silk dress," she asked with a suspicious lustre in her eyes.

"Anything you want, mamma," he promised solemnly. "When I begin to make
money, you'll never have to worry any more about anything."

Again she had to kiss him.

He was then a little more than halfway through his fifteenth year.



XXV

When his father came home that night, Keith hurried across the room to
meet him. "Papa," he cried full of subdued excitement and a swelling of
self-importance such as he had not experienced for ever so long. "I have
got a job."

"What kind of a job," asked the father quietly.

"In an office." And Keith sputtered out the details.

When the whole story was told, the father stood looking at him
enigmatically for a long while.

"Perhaps it is just as well," he said at last. "It certainly will make
things easier for me. But bear in mind what I now tell you, boy: you
will live to regret the chance you are throwing away--a chance for which
I would have given one of my hands when I was of your age."

"Did you want me to go on," Keith asked uncertainly.

"I did--I always hoped that you should pass your university examinations
and wear the white cap."

"And what did you want me to become?"

"A civil engineer--that's the only real profession today."

The idea was too novel to be grasped quickly by the boy. His own
thoughts had never strayed in that direction, and his conception of an
engineer's duties and position was extremely vague.

"An engineer," he repeated. "But then I should not have studied Latin."

"Of course not, but you chose it without asking my opinion first."

Keith's surprise increased.

"Why didn't you tell me," he insisted.

"Because I wanted you to begin to shape your own life," the father
replied, "and I thought you knew what you wanted."

Keith could hardly believe his own ears.

"What do you want me to do now," he pleaded at last.

"What you feel you must," rejoined the father. "This concerns your
life, and not mine. And you must make up your own mind. Whatever you
decided, you have my good wishes, boy, and I shall try to help you as
far as I can."

For a moment Keith had a sense of never having known his father before.
Then a thought flashed through his head: why did he not speak before?

He went into the parlour and stood at the window staring at the gloomy
facade of the distillers across the lane. A motley throng of thoughts
chased each other through his brain.

It was not yet too late. Nothing was settled. He could still drop the
job and go back to school if he wanted. But did he want it?

The thought of school sent a slight shiver down his spine.

No, he was sick of it, of the teachers, of the tedious books, of the
boys who looked down upon him and kept him at arm's length all the time,
of everything that had made up his life for the last few years.

He wanted change. He must have it.

Above all else, he wanted to be free, he wanted to do as he pleased, and
now he had found a way to it, he believed.

At that moment it seemed to him that his childhood suddenly had come to
an end, that his manhood had begun, and that all life lay open
before him.

THE END.