The Soul of a Child Part 31

"I really should have liked to have you," Murray answered, and it made Keith feel as if he had been more than compensated for his previous sufferings.

After that their friendship continued outwardly as before, but there was a difference. A tendency to nag and find fault appeared on both sides, and on several occasions they broke into actual quarrels. These always ended in reconcilations, but the old serenity had gone from their companionship, and each new misunderstanding left Keith a little more unhappy.

III

As a result of the changed relationship between himself and the friend he idealized, Keith began once more to look up Johan. He did it rather furtively, as if he had known that he was engaged in something unworthy of himself. There was an additional reason for this return to an a.s.sociation long spurned, and it had something to do with his manner of going about it.

What his mother had told him during the summer was still fermenting in his mind, but no amount of brooding over it would produce any results.

It was like trying to raise oneself by pulling at one's own bootstraps.

He must turn to some one else for the information that alone could solve the mystery. Murray was out of the question. Keith had never exchanged a word with him about the subject that was taking more and more of his attention. He knew what Murray would say if such a matter were broached:

"I don't think my papa would like me to talk of it, and it's rather nasty anyhow."

No, Johan was the person to seek for knowledge of this kind. He was now smoking all the time when not under the eye of his mother. While Keith almost had stood still physically, Johan had forged ahead. There was no denying that he was coa.r.s.e and dull and awkward, but there was a shrewd gleam in his somewhat bleary eyes, and from time to time he threw out dark hints about enjoyments and experiences that little boys clinging to their mother's skirts could never master.

It became a sort of game between them--a game that pleased Johan and drove Keith to exasperation. It was a game of hide-and-seek. And the most remarkable feature of it was that, although Keith was dying to know, he found it impossible to ask any direct questions. His pose was that he didn't care, and Johan's counter-pose was that he didn't know what Keith was driving at.

Little by little, however, Keith extracted various stories about those new friends of Johan's, who lived in one of the neighbouring lanes and who had a big vacant attic at their disposal. There quite a number of boys gathered daily, and Johan did his best to impress Keith with the desperate character of their doings. Girls came to that meeting-place, too. It was the princ.i.p.al thing, according to Johan--the fact that made those exploits so deliriously reprehensible. One day Johan was in an unusually communicative mood.

"Yesterday," he related with great gusto, "Nils got hold of Ellen and kissed her. And then they crawled into a big empty box when they thought we didn't see them. And there they stayed ever so long. But Gustaf crawled up behind the box and peeped. And he saw what they did, and then he told us."

"What did they do," asked Keith tensely, forgetting his usual reserve.

"Oh, you know," replied Johan teasingly.

"I don't," said Keith stoutly, realizing that it was a dreadful admission of inferiority. "And I want you to tell me."

For a moment Johan hesitated. Then he shot at Keith a single word--a verb--that Keith had heard in the lane and among the longsh.o.r.emen on the Quay. He knew that it was bad--the worst one of its kind. He knew also in a vague sort of way that it touched the very heart of the mystery he was trying to solve. And yet it left him just as ignorant as before.

The bald use of that word by Johan stunned him for a moment. Then his hot thirst for light brushed all other considerations aside, and he said almost pleadingly: "Can't you tell me all about it?"

"Oh, everybody knows," said Johan, and his eyes began to wander shiftily as they always did when he found himself cornered.

"You don't know yourself," Keith taunted him, suddenly grown wise beyond his ordinary measure.

"Yes, I do," insisted Johan.

"Then tell--or I won't believe you."

"They did what your papa and mamma do nights," Johan shot back.

There was a long pause.

"They don't do anything," Keith said at last almost in a whisper, "except talk."

"You bet they do," a.s.serted Johan, sure now of having triumphed.

And Keith went home without asking any more questions.

IV

A queer restlessness seized him and left him no peace. He swung abruptly from one extreme mood to another--from mad elation to paralyzing depression. He had a baffling sense of things happening within himself that were equally beyond control and explanation. He grew tired of sitting on those plain benches at school, with no support for the back, and still more tired of the Rector's incessant "sit up straight, boy."

Sometimes when he read at home, he could not keep his eyes fixed on the book because his thoughts insisted on straying into all sorts of irrelevant fields. But no matter in what direction they started, circuitously they always found their way into the field of main preoccupation.

Although shocked at the time by what Johan had told him, it did not remain actively in his memory. On a few occasions he woke up during the night with an impression of having heard his mother call his father's name. When he raised his head from the pillow to listen, a breathless stillness prevailed in the room. Soon he went back to sleep, and afterwards he thought no more about it. Yet the very act of listening seemed to inflame his mind in some way.

The game learned back of the big rock had never become quite forgotten.

Yet it had never meant very much to him, and during his a.s.sociation with Murray he had thought less and less of it. Now it took new hold of him, in a much more imperative way, as if it had got a new meaning and a new lure. And it seemed to have some elusive but highly significant connection with the mystery that always puzzled and fretted his curiosity.

Once more he pressed Johan for an explanation of that reference to Keith's parents.

"That's the way children are made," Johan finally announced with a mien of having transmitted the ultimate wisdom of the ages.

Keith merely stared at him. That answer did not interest him at all. Of course, he had long guessed that the arrival of children was a part of the mystery, but it was a part that had ceased to concern him. What he wished to know, must know, related to himself exclusively. But in this respect there was nothing more to be had out of Johan.

At school he began to join a group of boys who always gathered in a corner of the a.s.sembly hall during the pauses instead of mixing with the mob in the schoolyard. The centre of that group was Swensson, a handsome young chap of more advanced age than the others who had spent two years in most of the grades. He was always behind in his studies, but he seemed to know more of life than all the rest put together. A large part of the time he was telling stories--always about girls--or relating adventures--always with girls. Keith found the stories amusing, but as a rule he failed to grasp their point. And yet they added fuel to the flame that was burning more and more hotly within him.

His mother had been watching him intently for some time, and after a while she began to ask questions. These were guarded almost to unintelligibility, and yet Keith guessed that they referred to his own secret--the game learned back of the big rock. And so that game grew still more enticing. Even then, however, it did not seem to matter very much except in so far as it was the one thing that brought him a slight relief from the consuming restlessness of body and mind.

His mother's questions were followed by long talks, sometimes taking the form of warnings, but more often turning into pa.s.sionate pleas. And gradually he gathered that the game he had been playing so innocently must be both sinful and dangerous. He tried as hard as he could to get to the root of his mother's hints, and he wanted to ask all sorts of questions. But in the end the meaning of her words seemed to dissolve into mist, and when he tried to question her directly, it was as if a solid wall had suddenly risen between them, so that neither one could hear what the other one said.

His father, too, began to ask questions, evidently urged on by the mother. He spoke sternly, but not unkindly, when he asked if Keith had been doing anything he ought not to do. And naturally enough Keith answered emphatically no.

In this way the mystery came closer and closer to him, and became more and more urgent. His mother's futile efforts at communicating what apparently rested heavily on her heart made him ill at ease, but he remained unconscious of any guilt or fear. A conflict of serious aspect and proportions was undoubtedly taking shape within him, but so far it was mainly concerned with the school and his friendship for Murray and a general sense of dissatisfaction with the life he was leading. It was above all a sense of things missed.

Then he happened one afternoon, when his mother was out, to be delving with more than customary audacity among the books in his father's book case, which become more accessible through the death of their gentle-looking tenant a short while before.

V

The cough of Herr Stangenberg had been growing worse and worse all through the winter. He had to take to the bed more and more frequently.

There had been a terrible change in his appearance. Only the eyes and his temper remained the same. He was always cheerful and hopeful. So he remained when he had to stay in bed entirely and a doctor began to pay him daily visits. Keith's mother did everything in her power to be of help, and it seemed to put her own troubles and worries more in the background.

"Consumption" was a word the parents often used in discussing the case of poor Herr Stangenberg, and Keith gathered that it was something dreadful and merciless, from which escape was impossible. His att.i.tude toward the whole matter was peculiar. He listened to what his parents talked, but always in a spirit of utter indifference, as if what they said could have no possible bearing on his own life.

One evening the servant girl--her name was Hilda at the time--brought word that Herr Stangenberg wanted very badly to see Fru Wellander for a few minutes.

"I think he knows at last that the end is near," Keith's mother said as she rose to go into the parlour. "What am I going to say if he asks me?"

"Nothing," replied the father quietly. "Leave that to the doctor."

On her return, the mother sank down in her chair and began to grope for a handkerchief. Keith saw that her eyes were l.u.s.trous with tears.