The Soul of a Child Part 22

"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 pa.s.sing 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 pa.s.sing 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 ap.r.o.n 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 s.p.a.ce, 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 compa.s.s.

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 rea.s.suring about her pa.s.sionate 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 inst.i.tution 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 cla.s.ses" and good enough for all but the most select who must needs turn to certain private inst.i.tutions of still greater exclusiveness for instruction.

Its official t.i.tle was St. Mary's Elementary School and it had only five grades or cla.s.ses, as they were called, being supplemented by a "gymnasium," from which the pupils pa.s.sed 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 a.s.sembly 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 pa.s.s 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 embarra.s.sed. 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 pa.s.sed.

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 pa.s.s," 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 cla.s.s 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 inst.i.tution with a jealously preserved and deeply revered history to which each new pupil was expected to add more l.u.s.tre. 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 inst.i.tutions, 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 princ.i.p.al 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 cla.s.s 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 p.r.o.ne 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 cla.s.sroom 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 t.i.tle of Cla.s.s Princ.i.p.al 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 Dahlstrom, 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 a.s.sert 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 cla.s.s, 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 rea.s.suring 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 surpa.s.s those of Keith.