The Soul of a Child Part 11

His tone changed slightly during the last part of his remark. Something of an appeal came into it and went straight to Keith's heart, filling it with a glow of righteous determination. It was always that way with him.

A word spoken kindly made him eager to comply, and that was particularly the case if it came from some person not given to sentimentality.

In the lane they turned and saw the mother lying in the window to watch them. As usual, kisses were thrown back and forth as they pa.s.sed up the lane, but Keith felt rather impatient about it, and it was with a marked sense of relief he turned the corner into East Long Street. He was eager to push ahead into unknown regions and did not care to look back.

Although he spoke little enough, the father proved a more genial companion than Keith had dared to expect. In fact, he had been a little oppressed at the thought of being entirely alone with the father, which was quite a new experience to him. But now he found it a pleasure, and their communion seemed more easy than when the mother was with them. He walked sedately enough, clinging to one of his father's soft, white hands, but every so often he ventured a skip and a jump without being rebuked, and on the whole he felt the kind of happiness that used to come on Christmas Eve, after the father had started to distribute the presents.

Keith had frequently accompanied his mother as far as the little square at the end of the street, and he pointed proudly to the grocery store where he had helped to buy things.

"Yes," responded the father, and again his tone seemed strangely unfamiliar to the boy. "I might have had such a store myself, if luck had been with me."

The idea was more than Keith could digest at once. It was too overwhelming, and once more he looked at his father with the feeling of wonder and awe that sometimes took hold of him almost against his will--a feeling that clashed hopelessly with the nervous shyness commonly inspired by the father's stern manners.

"Why didn't you get it," the boy ventured at last.

"Because I was born under the Monkey Star," replied the father grimly.

The boy wondered what kind of star that was, but still more he wondered at the father's mood which appeared to indicate a displeasure not directed at the questioner. Before Keith could ask anything more, they had started across one of the open market places that line the fresh-water side of the old City.

The place was empty except for a few closed and abandoned booths. But at the foot of it lay rows of one-masted sailing vessels loaded halfway up their masts with piles of fire-wood. In the background, beyond a small sheet of water crossed by a low iron bridge, rose abruptly the rocky walls of the South End, with funny old houses perched precariously along their edges. Keith stared so hard at all the new things that not a single question had a chance to escape him before they entered another street and stopped in front of a stone house that to him looked like a castle.

It had a real portal instead of an ordinary doorway, and the inside was still more impressive. Keith had been to church once or twice, and for a moment he thought himself in one. But he saw no seats, and his father did not look solemn at all. The walls were of stone curiously streaked and coloured. The ceiling was so far up that Keith had to bend far backwards to see it. It was full of ornaments and supported by two rows of tall round stone pillars so thick that Keith could not get his arms halfway around one of them. In the background rose a very broad and seemingly endless stairway of white stone. While they climbed it step by step, Keith wondered if the king in his palace had anything like it.

Arrived at the top at last, they turned into a sort of lobby--a rather bare room with several plain desks by the windows and many hooks along the inner wall. There the father took off both his coats and armed himself with a huge feather duster and a rag.

"Remember, Keith," he said in his ordinary tone, "that you may look as much as you please, but that you must not touch anything. If you do, you can never come here again."

Having pa.s.sed through several smaller rooms, they emerged finally into a hall so bright and s.p.a.cious that Keith stopped with a gasp and for a moment thought himself in the open air again. It was as wide as the building itself and three sides were full of large windows A counter of mahogany that looked miles long ran from one end to the other. The place behind it contained many desks so tall that Keith could not have reached the tops of them with his raised hand. But from a distance he could see that they were full of tempting things--paper and pens and pencils, red bars of sealing wax, glue-pots and rulers and glistening shears.

Two men, also in their s.h.i.+rt-sleeves, were busy at the desks, dusting them and arranging the things on top of them. And the father quickly went to work in the same way.

It seemed interesting to Keith, who would have liked to try his hand at it. But it also disconcerting for some reason he could not explain and for a while he watched the father as if unwilling to believe his own eyes. Somehow it did not tally with certain notions formed in Keith's head on the night when the church was burning. At last he up to his father and asked:

"Is this where you always work?"

"No," was the answer given with a peculiar grimness. "This is for the officials."

"What are they?"

"Oh, tellers and cas.h.i.+ers and bookkeepers."

Keith noted the words for future inquiries. For the moment they meant nothing to him.

"Why are you not here too," he persisted.

"Because I am only an attendant--a mere _vaktmastare_. That is a fact you had better fix in your mind once for all, my boy."

"Is that your little boy, Wellander," one of the other men called out at that moment. "Let us have a look at him."

Hand-shakings and head-pattings followed as Keith was presented to "Uncle" This and "Uncle" That. He didn't object and he didn't care. They looked nice enough, and their talk was friendly, but somehow he felt that his parents did not care for them. Some of the glamour had left the place. In spite of its magnificence, he did not like it, although he was glad to have seen it.

Discovering a wastepaper basket full of envelopes with brightly coloured marks on them, he regained his interest a little. He knew those marks for stamps and they had pictures on them which attracted him very much.

So he made a bee-line for the basket and proceeded to pick out what he liked best.

"Have you forgotten what I told you," he heard his father shout to him.

"They have been thrown away," he said going toward the father.

"That is neither here nor there," was the sharp answer he got. "You know they are not yours, and so you must not touch them. Put them back at once."

Keith did as he was told, wondering if he really had done anything wrong or if his father merely objected for some reason of his own.

Then he walked around uninterested and forlorn until they were ready to go home again. The stairway seemed shorter as they descended, but the pillars were tall and thick as before. And on the way home his father found a little shop open and bought him a few _ore's_ worth of hard candy.

It was the only time Keith could ever remember his having done such a thing.

XX

The lodger happened to be away when they got home, and the mother had opened the door to the parlour in order to get a little more air and light into the living-room. After dinner the father went into the parlour to take a nap on the big sofa, while the mother settled down comfortably in her easy chair, a piece of handiwork on her lap as usual.

Keith took up his customary position on the footstool to tell her what he had seen and done during his morning excursion.

She was eager to hear everything and helped him along with questions, and yet there ran through her very eagerness a subtle inner resistance which the boy felt vaguely. It as if she never really cared for anything concerning him in which she herself had not taken part.

The original glamour had returned to every aspect of his new experience, and he tried excitedly to describe the wonders of the vestibule, the stairway and the big hall. In the midst of it he paused suddenly and fell to staring into vacancy.

"Was that all," she asked, puzzled by his silence.

"Lena dusts our rooms, doesn't she," was his rather startling counter-question.

"Mostly," the mother replied with a searching glance at his puckered brows. "Although I sometimes ..."

"You don't have to," the boy broke in.

"No" she admitted, "but then I am sure it is properly done."

"Is that why papa dusts the tables in the bank?"

A pause followed during which it was the mother's turn to stand the boy's intense scrutiny.

"No," she said at last. "He does it because it is a part of his work, and a shame it is that he has to. Scrub-women come in and do the rest of the cleaning, but they are not trusted with the desks, and so the attendants have to take turns doing that part of it. That's why your father has to leave so very early in the morning."

Mother and son lapsed into silence once more. It was broken by another question from the boy.

"Why couldn't I take some stamps that had been thrown away?"

"Had your father said anything about it before you took them?"