The Soul of a Child Part 3

"We'll see whether he'll obey or not!"

As he spoke, the father sat down on the nearest chair, picked up the boy and put him face down across his knees.

Keith's heart seemed to stop. He even ceased weeping. Then he heard his mother cry out:

"If you touch the boy, I'll throw myself out of the window!"

"Oh, h.e.l.l!" came back from the father. With that he half dropped and half flung the boy to the floor, so that the latter rolled across the room and landed under the chaiselongue.

There Keith lay, still as a mouse, until he was pulled out by his mother. He didn't begin to cry again, and he was no longer scared or upset. A few moments later he was undressing and going to bed as if nothing had happened.

Another week had hardly pa.s.sed, when Keith was waked up again at night, but this time by a noise as if the house was falling. As he sat up in bed, staring wildly about him, his nostrils became filled with a smell that was quite new to him. It was like smoke, but more pungent.

The living-room was dark, but the door to the parlour stood open, and light came through it. Not a sound could be heard for a few moments.

Then his mother came running into the room and flung herself on her knees beside the chaiselongue.

"Oh, my boy, my boy, my boy!" she cried over and over again as she pressed Keith to her breast, rocking him back and forth.

A few seconds later the father also came in carrying the lamp in one hand. Having put it on the dining table, he dropped down on a chair as if too exhausted to stand up.

His face showed a pallor quite strange to it and for the first and only time in his life Keith thought that his father looked scared.

"Don't, Anna," the father said after a while, sitting up straight on the chair. "It's all right now--"

Then a thought or a memory seemed to recur to him, and he said in a voice that nearly broke:

"G.o.d, but it was a close call for both of us! And if it had happened to you, I would have followed you on the spot!"

"Carl, Carl!" cried the mother, letting Keith go and throwing her arms about her husband instead. "What would have become of Keith?"

It was the first time the boy was taken into his parents' confidence to some extent. He was still too young to grasp all the implications, but the main facts were plain enough even to him.

The parlour was rented as usual, but the man occupying it was not at home. The parents had gone in there together on some errand. Seeing a small pistol hanging on the wall above the big sofa, the father took it down and began to play with it, never for a moment suspecting it of being loaded.

First he pointed it at himself, then at Keith's mother. Each time he was about to pull the trigger, and each time something seemed to hold him back. Finally he turned the weapon toward the wall and pressed down with his finger. As he did so, the shot rang out that waked the boy.

The next day Keith was permitted to examine the mark made by the bullet in the wall. It was all very exciting. But the final result of that incident was as unforeseen as the shot itself.

The whole affair evidently made a deep impression on Keith's father. He ceased almost completely to go out by himself at night. In fact he became so averse to leaving his home that it was hard to get him out when the mother wanted him to go. And never again did Keith hear his parents quarrel openly.

But now and then when his father came home from work, Keith would notice that same slight thickness of speech which had forced itself on his attention on two extraordinary occasions.

He was a man himself before he realized what that thickness signified in his father's life.

VIII

"Oh, mamma, you mustn't!" cried Keith's mother one day when she came out into the kitchen and found the boy munching a slice of white bread with b.u.t.ter on it.

"He likes it so much," replied Granny easily.

"But you know what Carl has said," the mother rejoined rather impatiently. "He'll find out sooner or later if you disregard it, and then he'll be furious."

"So he will anyhow," muttered Granny.

"Mamma!" protested the mother. "It's for the boy's own good. He should only eat hard bread except on Sundays and when we have company. It is much better for his teeth. And it makes him stronger too. You want to be big and strong, don't you Keith?"

"It's a wonder his father lets him have anything at all to eat," Granny put in before Keith had a chance to answer.

"You must not talk like that, mamma," said the mother sharply. "Least of all when the boy hears it." Then she turned to Keith again: "Don't you believe what Granny says. Your father is merely thinking of what is good for you. He loves you just as much as I do--or your grandmother.

But he thinks we are spoiling you. And he wants you to grow up and be a real man. That's why he hates to see you cry."

There was a pause while Keith pondered the matter--not seriously concerned on the whole, as long as the tidbit was not taken away from him.

"Don't you love your father," his mother asked suddenly.

"Ye-es," Keith answered mechanically.

Then he began to ponder again. His feelings toward his father were far too complicated for utterance. They seemed to have nothing whatsoever to do with love, if that was what he felt for his mother. There was undoubtedly a great deal of fear in his att.i.tude toward the father, and also resentment that at times would flare into something bordering on hatred. But this att.i.tude was combined with a lot of respect, not to say admiration. At times it would also be tinged with a longing that he could not explain or express. And if ever the father gave him the slightest evidence of friendliness, he would be thrown into a rapture of happiness that nothing done by his mother could equal.

He adored his mother, and clung to her, and relied on her and wheedled her, but it was an open question whether, at heart, he felt any particular respect for her--although he was quite proud of certain things about her. And as for Granny, whom, in a way, he loved more than anybody else, because she petted him and indulged his slightest whims, there could simply be no talk about respecting her. Even Keith realized that she was not in the respected cla.s.s.

His father was, on the other hand. There could be no doubt about that.

If he had only been willing to unbend a little now and then....

IX

The kitchen had other attractions than Granny, though she ranked foremost.

As Keith came out from the living-room, he had on his right the huge, old-fas.h.i.+oned fire-place--a regular fortress of brick, with a modern cook stove of iron set into one corner of it. It was entirely covered by a smoke-hood of painted metal sheeting, with a f.l.a.n.g.e on its outside edge along which were placed a number of lids.

On his left was a set of shelves filled from top to bottom with pots and pans and kettles of every possible size and shape, including a cauldron so huge and heavy that it took two people to get it out with ease from its place on the bottom shelf. An overwhelming majority of these utensils were of copper and so highly polished that they shone like suns setting through a fog bank. Some of them made good toys, but "things for use and not for play" was an old maxim often quoted by both parents and grudgingly repeated by Granny herself.

A big sofa, in which the grandmother slept at night stood along the centre of the wall on the left. The corner beyond held a wall-fast cupboard so large that it looked like a closet built into the room. It serves both as pantry and buffet, and was full of things tempting to a young palate.

In the opposite corner, beyond the window and right by the outside door, stood an open water barrel holding about twenty gallons. There was no running water above the ground floor. Every drop had to be carried three flights of stairs from the courtyard. What was needed for drinking and cooking was kept in a copper can, two feet high, with a lid on top and a spout in front that made it look like a badly overgrown tea kettle.

Water for all other uses had to come out of the barrel. To keep both vessels filled was a heavy task, and waste of water was regarded as little short of a crime. The sacredness of the barrel and its contents was a mystery to Keith until he grew old enough to do some of the carrying. Then he began to understand.

Most of the water went to the stove, where operations of one kind or another were carried on from morning till night, tempting the boy with their mysteries or their promises. In the uppermost corner of the hood was a square opening covered by an iron lid. When the lid was down and you crawled right up into the fire-place, you could see the sky through the chimney.

One day, when Keith had sneaked into the kitchen uninvited, he noticed something unusual going on in the fire-place. All the paraphernalia had been cleared away. The lid was open, and from the chimney issued strange noises. Then soot began to fall in ma.s.ses, and finally appeared a pair of human feet, quite bare and all black.

It was very funny and very disconcerting. Keith watched with bulging eyes and trembling heart, until at last a whole big man came out of the chimney. As he crouched for a moment on the fire-place before getting down on the floor, he turned on Keith a pair of eyes that seemed to be all white and big as moons.

At that moment fear got the better of curiosity, and Keith made haste to bury his face in Granny's lap.