The Soul of a Child Part 9

Nothing was more familiar to Keith than his mother's open worries about money and his father's occasional stern reference to the need of saving.

To the boy those complaints and warnings meant merely that the parents were in a depressed and unfaourable mood, tending to draw the usual constraint a little tighter about him. He was intensely sensitive to atmosphere, and too often that of his home had the same effect on his young soul as the low-hanging, leaden skies of a Swedish December day before the first snow has fallen. It made him long for sunlight, and the parties brought it to some extent. Then care and caution were forgotten, although his father might grumble before and after. Then the daily routine was broken, and Granny became cynically but actively interested, bent above all on seeing that "the house would not be shamed."

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

From his own experiences with food as well as from his parents' att.i.tude toward it, both on special and on ordinary occasions, Keith distilled a sort of philosophy that it took him several decades to outlive. To him eating became a good thing in itself, rather than a means to an end. His parents were neither gluttons nor gourmets, but they liked good food, and, what was of still greater importance, good eating represented the princ.i.p.al source of enjoyment open to them. The same seemed true of their friends, and when company arrived no topic was more in favour than a comparison of past culinary enjoyments. Keith's father, for instance, never grew tired of telling about the time when he was still the chief clerk in a fashionable grocery and the owner gave him permission to dispose freely of a keg of Holland oysters that threatened to "go bad"

before they could be sold. Four or five friends were drummed together.

The feast took place at night in the store itself. Bread, b.u.t.ter, salt, pepper, liquor, beer and cards were the only things added to the oysters.

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

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

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

XVII

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I can't."

"Why?"

"I have eaten all I can."

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

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

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

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

"Are you a boy or a girl?"

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

His mother was trying to coax him with kind words, and he actually raised the filled spoon to his lips once more, but the sensation within him was such that he let it drop again with a splash. That was the crowning offence, and the feeding process began at once. His father took him by the neck with one hand and administered the spoon with the other.

It was done firmly and perhaps harshly, but in such a manner that the boy was not hurt.

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

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

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

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

XVIII

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

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

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

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

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

Nothing was left but the eyes that looked him through and through until it was impossible for him to stand still any longer.

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

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