The Soul of a Child Part 35

That seemed to settle it for the moment. Of what avail could his own feeble struggles be in the face of an adverse destiny?

He brooded over it, and out of his brooding came resentment, and more and more this resentment turned against his relatives in a fury of disgust. He had a feeling of their having betrayed him....

Now and then, however, one of the expressions used by Aunt Brita would recur to him with a suggestion of quite different possibilities.

"Keith will have to start it all over again from the beginning," she had said.

XVIII

If he only had some one to talk to.... But he was more lonely than ever.

Murray had moved to another part of the city, more in keeping with his father's increasing prosperity, and was now attending a North End school. They had parted with no more ado than if they had expected to meet the next day again. Now and then Keith thought of Murray with a touch of sentimental regret, but it was wearing off.

Johan was still found at the foot of the lane, smoking and bragging and leering as before. To Keith he had become positively loathsome.

There was no one else in sight--not one boy in the cla.s.s out of whom Keith might hope to make a friend. Leaving other factors aside, his lack of pocket money was sufficient to keep him apart from the rest. They all had some sort of allowance, however scant, and they took turns treating each other to pastry or candy bought from a couple of old women who brought basketfuls, to the school doors during every pause. He had to beg especially for every _ore_, he couldn't get much at that.

He wore a suit made over by his mother from clothes given to her by a woman of some means with whom she had a slight acquaintance. They had been outgrown by that woman's son, and they had been offered to Keith's mother because they were too good to be thrown away. There was nothing about it to be ashamed of, and the made-over suit was neat enough, though a little awkwardly cut. A couple of years earlier, Keith would have hailed it with delight. Now the wearing of it seemed worse than going about naked. He thought that every one noticed the suit and knew that it was not really meant for him.

He read contempt in every glance, and by degrees he developed a temper that was checked only by the humiliating consciousness of his physical inferiority. After nearly five years in school, he was still one of the smallest boys in height and bodily development, and neither gymnastics nor the military drill that became compulsory in the sixth grade had the slightest effect on him. And, of course, he suffered the more from it because he ascribed his lack of stature and muscle to what he had now begun to think of as his own moral weakness.

A petty quarrel one day brought on another fight with Bauer, and this time right in the cla.s.s room. They rolled around on the floor between the desks and separated only when some one cried out that Booklund was coming. Keith was thoroughly aware of the fact that his cla.s.smates regarded their behaviour as inexcusably undignified in pupils of the Lower Sixth, but contrary to custom, he didn't care very much. What almost made him cry was that the thought that at the moment of separation Bauer once more was on top of him--just as when their first fight came to an end five years earlier. And then Keith was brought still nearer to tears by his disgusted realization of that infantile tendency to cry in every moment of unusual strain.

But, of course, how could he expect anything else?

His whole bearing changed gradually. The gay forwardness that had caused Dally to make fun of him--and like him, perhaps--was quite gone, but gone, too, was the shyness that always had run side by side with it. His most frequent mood was one of irritable rebellion, and in between he would have spells of sulkiness that estranged the teachers and surprised himself in his more wholesome moods. He snarled to his mother, and he would have done so to his father if he had only dared.

The school seemed sheer torture much of the time, and all its objectionable features seemed to centre in the Latin. His hatred of that subject approached an obsession. There was no doubt that Lector Booklund could feel it, and every day he watched Keith with more undisguised hostility. At last he could not speak to the boy without losing his temper, and so for days at a time he would not speak to him at all. At such times Keith's state of mind presented a riddle hard to solve. He posed to himself and others as tremendously gratified at being left alone and not having to answer any bothersome questions. Inwardly, however, he was more hurt and offended by that neglect than by any other rebuke the teacher could have devised.

Such a period of suspended communication had lasted more than a week, when, at the wane of the term, the inevitable explosion finally occurred.

XIX

The cla.s.s had just turned in their copybooks with a Latin exercise prepared at home. Lector Booklund was standing at his desk with the whole pile in front of him. Keith's book happened to be on top. The teacher opened it. He sent a glance at Keith that made the boy squirm.

Then, as his eyes ran down the page, his face turned almost purple.

Suddenly he raised the book over his head and threw it on the floor with such force that the cover was torn off.

A moment of ominous silence followed. Keith was red up to the roots of his hair.

"Wellander," the teacher roared.

Keith rose none too quickly from his seat without looking up.

"Pick up that thing," Lector Booklund shouted at him with the full force of his powerful lungs. "I don't want to touch it again."

Keith remained like a statue, feeling now as if he didn't have a drop of blood left in his whole body.

"Pick it up, I tell you!"

"No," Keith retorted in a strangely self-possessed voice, "you had better pick it up yourself. I didn't throw it on the floor."

In another moment the teacher was beside Keith, burying his hand in the boy's hair. Then he pulled and shook, shook and pulled, until the hand came away with big tufts of hair showing between the fingers.

Again absolute silence reigned for a moment.

"Ugh," blew the teacher, his anger changed to a look of embarra.s.sment.

"I am not going to speak another word to you, Wellander, during the rest of the term. Sit down!"

Instead of sitting down, Keith walked over to the torn copy book, picked it up and turned toward Lector Booklund.

"I am going home," he announced almost triumphantly. "You have no right to hit me or pull my hair out by the roots."

Before the teacher had recovered from his surprise Keith was outside the door and on his way home.

He didn't know afterwards how he got there, but he could remember saying to himself over and over again:

"I didn't cry and I didn't want to cry!"

XX

He told his mother truthfully what had happened and declared in conclusion that he would never go back to school again.

She was furious with the teacher and thought that on the whole, it would be safer for Keith to stay away during the few weeks remaining of the term.

"That man should be punished," she cried repeatedly. "You did just right."

But the father spoke in another tone when he, in his turn, had heard the tale of that eventful day.

"You will go to school tomorrow as usual," he said in his sternest voice. "You had no right to refuse to pick up the book, and you had no right to leave the school without permission."

"I can't go back after being treated like that, papa," Keith remonstrated, trying vainly to make his tone sound firm.

"You will," the father reiterated, "or I'll...."

He stopped and thought for a minute.

"Or you'll begin to learn a trade tomorrow. Take your choice."

Father and son looked long at each other.

"Carl ..." the mother began pleadingly.

"Please, Anna," the father checked her. "This is too serious. The boy's future is at stake."