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!"