Chapter II: Part I: I (2)

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

"Yes, Keith had better look out," grinned the servant girl, "for the chimney sweep takes all bad little boys."

"I'll take you, if you talk like that," the black figure in the fire-place shot back at her.

The tone of his voice made Keith steal another glance at him. The white eyes shone right at him in a rather friendly fashion, and further down a huge red slit in the black face framed two rows of teeth no less white than the eyes. Keith guessed that the dark visitor from the chimney was smiling at him in a fashion that seemed to bode no harm.

In another minute the man was gone, and Keith hurried back to the living-room to ask a question of his mother:

"Could he really take me?"

"Not unless we gave him leave," she replied. "But sometimes, when little boys are very, _very_ bad, their parents turn them over to the sweep as apprentices, because they are not good for anything else."

Keith thought long and hard.

"I ain't bad," he declared at last.

"Not exactly," his mother remarked diplomatically "But you could be a great deal better. What were you doing in the kitchen just now? I have told you not to run out there all the time. Lena does not like you to get in her way, you know."

"But Granny is there," Keith protested.

"Yes, of course, and you must be nice to her, but...."

As his mother did not go on, Keith asked: "Why does Granny always stay in the kitchen?"

"Because she wants to," his mother answered.

"But why does she want to?"

"It is her way--a sort of pride she has. And I have long ago given up trying to persuade her."

Her tone indicated clearly that further discussion of the subject was not desirable.

X

Keith was playing in his own corner that very evening, trying to keep as quiet as possible while his father had an unusually late dinner. His mother had gone out into the kitchen a few moments earlier. Thence she returned suddenly with a half empty bottle in her hand and a look of extreme annoyance on her face.

"Carl," she said, "look what I just found in a corner of the cupboard."

"Humph," the father grunted with a sideglance at the bottle. "Ours is locked up, is it not?"

"Yes, but that is neither here nor there. She would rather die, she says, than touch a drop of ours."

"Where does she get it?"

"I can't make it out. Somebody must bring it in, of course. I fear it is Mrs. Karlgren, and I am simply going to tell her to keep away hereafter. The idea of her coming here practically begging, and then doing such a thing, after all I have done for her!"

"But you are not sure," the father objected earnestly, and Keith paid special notice to his objection because he had already learned, or divined, that his father could not bear the sight of the poor woman in question.

"No, it is impossible to be sure," the mother admitted. Then she added after a pause: "What puzzles me more than anything else is where she gets the money."

Though no name was mentioned, Keith knew perfectly well that they were speaking of Granny. And he recalled having laughed at her in the kitchen earlier in the evening before the father came home. Her eyes had a funny look and seemed a little inflamed. Her still thick braids were loosened and about to come entirely undone. She was talking more than usual and in a tone that suggested defiance.

As he recalled all this, Keith forgot to listen to his parents, who went on discussing so intently that he was able to leave his corner and reach the door to the kitchen unnoticed. An irresistible desire to see Granny at once had seized him. Back of it lay a vaguely sensed mixture of curiosity and sympathy.

Granny was in her favourite place beside the kitchen sofa, seated on a footstool almost as large as an ordinary chair, but somewhat lower. That stool was the one bone of contention between her and Keith, because he was carrying it off as often as he could get at it. Turned upside down, with Keith seated snugly between its four legs, it became a sleigh drawn across icy plains by a team of swift reindeer, or a ship rocking mightily on the high seas.

The kitchen was full of a peculiar sweetish smell, by which Keith knew without looking that Granny was dressing the old wound on her left leg that had developed "the rose" and would not heal. She was leaning far over, busy with a bandage which she wound tightly about her leg, from the ankle to the knee. The boy sniffed the familiar smell with a vague sense of discomfort, which, however, did not prevent him from going up to the grandmother and putting one arm about her neck.

"Old hurt is hard to mend," she muttered quoting one of the old saws always on her lips. Then without raising her head, she added in the peevish, truculent tone of a thwarted child: "You had better go back in there before they come and get you. I am nothing but a servant, and as such I know my place and keep it. I am less than a servant, for they wouldn't dare do to Lena what they do to me."

"Oh, yes, they would," Lena put in from across the room. "And they would have a right, too."

As if she had not heard at all, Granny sat up straight and looked hard at the boy.

"Whatever you do, Keith," she said, and he noticed that her voice sounded a little strange, "see that you make a lot of money when you grow up. To be poor is to have no rights, and the worst thing of all is to be dependent on others, no matter how near they are to you."

"I think Mrs. Carlsson is very ungrateful," said Lena. "There are thousands of old people who would give anything to have a nice home and nothing to worry over."

"Anybody can talk, but it takes a head to keep silent," said Granny impersonally, quoting another old saw. Then her manner changed abruptly and she turned to Keith effusively.

"Give me a kiss! You love your old Granny, don't you? You don't despise her, do you, because she has nothing and is nothing? And can be sure she loves you more than anybody else."

The boy's feelings were so mixed that he really could not feel anything at all. His arm was still about the grandmother's neck, mechanically he gave her the kiss she asked for, but it was with real relief he saw his mother open the door to the living-room and responded to her demand that he go to bed at once.

XI

Hardly any memory left behind by Keith's childhood was more acute than the image of Granny seated in the centre of the kitchen, her stolid, yet pleasant old face bent over some household task, and her whole figure instinct with a passive protest against her enforced dependency or, maybe against life's arbitrariness in general. One moment she seemed to be brooding deeply, and the next she looked as if there was not a thought in her head. For one reason or another, her anomalous position and peculiar attitude occupied Keith's mind a great deal, and many of the questions with which he plied his mother were concerned with Granny. They were fairly discreet as a rule, but on the morning after the scene just described, some impulse of which he had no clear understanding made him perplex his mother with the abrupt question:

"Why does Granny drink?"

They were alone in the living-room at the time, she seated in her big easy chair by the window and he, as usual, kneeling on the hassock at her feet.

She looked up at him with as much surprise as if he had hit her viciously. A deeper red flowed into her cheeks that kept their soft pinkness even when she was thought at death's door and lost it only under the pressure of extreme anger.

At the same time a look came into her eyes that gave Keith a momentary scare. It was only a flash, however, and changed quickly into something like the helplessness that used to characterize her glance in moments of heavy depression. Her voice trembled a little as she spoke:

"Because Granny's life has been very hard, and not very happy."

"Tell me about it," urged the boy.

There was a long pause during which he watched his mother's face closely. Gradually its expression changed into one of resignation, and then into determination, as if she had made up her mind to be done once for all with a task that could not be avoided indefinitely. It was a long story she told, at first hesitatingly, then with an eagerness that betrayed an awakening purpose. Everything she said stuck deeply in the boy's mind, and whenever he thought of Granny's life afterwards, he had the impression of having learned all about it at that one time, although the likelihood is that many details were picked up by degrees and dovetailed into the memory of that first narrative as integral parts of it.

"Your grandmother was not born to be a servant," his mother began. "She was a rich man's daughter, and there was not a thing her father didn't want to do for her. Yet he left her in the hands of strangers who cheated her of her rights and treated her as if she had been a beggar...."

"Why did they do it," the boy asked, quite unable to grasp the idea of such a thing.

"Because they could make a little more money that way, and because they cared for nothing but money. Promise me, Keith, that whatever happens to you, and whatever the temptation be, you will never put money above everything else."

Keith shook his head earnestly, meaning it to be sign of assent. He was a highly impressible child, and when his mother spoke to him like that, he used literally to choke with a feeling that he could never, never do anything but what she asked, but when another rush of feeling swept over him, the old promises were also likely to be swept out of his mind.

"Those people did the worst thing any one can do to anybody else. They twisted Granny's life so that it could never be set right again. And so she became what you see her now...."

"You mean she just couldn't help herself," Keith put in.

"Yes, that's what I mean," she agreed. Then she stopped as if struck by another thought, and said very slowly:

"Although, if she had been really strong...."

Once more she stopped and returned abruptly to her story:

"Your great-grandfather made and sold hats, and he earned a lot of money, and they made him a City Councillor...."

"Where," Keith broke in again.

"In Skara," his mother explained, "which is a city that lies a long way from here, and when you begin to learn geography, you will know where it is.... Everybody liked your great-grandfather...."

"What was his name," Keith couldn't help asking.

"Lack," she said, "and now you mustn't interrupt me any more if you want me to go on."

"Please," Keith pleaded. "I won't!"

"The reason they liked him," she resumed, "was that he was so good-hearted that he couldn't say no to anybody or anything. He didn't seem to care for money at all, and he used to say: 'What's money between friends?' Everybody wanted to be friends with him in those days, and everybody borrowed from him, until he didn't have enough left for his business, and then they laughed at him. He tried in his turn to borrow, but no one could spare a penny, and when things went entirely wrong with him, one of those who had got most from him made a funny saying about him: 'Now Lack lacks everything because everybody has what Lack lacks.' So, you see, you mustn't think too little of money either, but learn to be careful and keep what you have."

Keith nodded dutifully, but where the right road lay, he could not see.

"The worst thing was," the mother went on, "that your great-grandmother died when Granny was only nine. There were brothers and sisters, too, and she was the youngest. And it was then that her father got the idea to send her to some farmer people he knew, quite some distance from where he lived. He did it partly for the sake of Granny's health, and partly because he was too worried about other things to look after her properly himself. And he paid a lot of money for her board, and sent her fine clothes, and arranged that she was to be taught by the pastor of the parish, and he sent friends to ask about her, but he never came himself. The people who were to take care of Granny kept the money and the clothes, and put her to work as if she had been a servant, and didn't let her get the least bit of schooling. And when her father's friends came and asked about her, they told all sorts of tales about how well she was doing, but she was so shy, they said, that she always ran away when any visitor came to the place."

"Did she," asked Keith.

"Yes, she really did," the mother admitted. "She was ashamed of the way she looked and was dressed, and yet she was quite pretty, and she had the most wonderful hair that reached to her feet when she let it down."

"But, why didn't she tell somebody?" Keith insisted, his blood running hot with wrath at the injustice to which Granny had been submitted.

"Oh, because ..." said his mother wearily, "because your grandmother has always been peculiar in that way when she knew she was being wronged. 'What is the use?' she says. And then word came that her father had gone bankrupt and had died soon after. No one seemed to pay the least attention to her. She stayed where she was, and she couldn't work any harder than she had done all the time. But when she was to be confirmed, and had to go to church every week with all the other children of her own age, she was the poorest of them all, both in fact and in appearance, she didn't have one person in the world to whom she could turn. She has told me that she used to lie awake nights crying and thinking of running away, but she couldn't make up her mind to that either."

She stopped, and Keith waited in vain for the rest of the story.

"And then," he urged.

"Oh, then she came to Stockholm and married your grandfather--my papa, you know. And now Lena is waiting for me to tell her what we are to have for dinner."

Keith went back to his own corner for a while. Then he made a dash for the kitchen, where he found Granny seated in her usual place peeling potatoes. Having placed a smaller foot-stool beside the large one in which she was seated, he got up on it so that he could put both arms about her neck. Pressing his own soft cheek against hers, he asked brokenly:

"Are you very unhappy, Granny?"

"No," she answered placidly, "not when you are willing to give me a kiss."

"All right," he said without enthusiasm as he complied with her request. At the same time he recalled suddenly that he had not played a single game with his tin soldiers that whole morning.

XII

The boy had a logical mind. He knew that Granny's story had not been finished, and he wanted all of it. At the first opportune moment he asked his mother:

"Was Granny a little girl when she came to Stockholm?"

"No," said his mother unsuspectingly, "she was already a young woman."

"What did she do before?"

"I told you," the mother replied, now on her guard.

"You told me what she did as a little girl, but not afterwards. I want to know."

"Oh, she worked, I suppose."

There was evidently nothing more to be had in that direction.

"And what did she do in Stockholm," Keith pushed on.

"She married your grandfather, as I told you, and then I was born."

"What was he?"

The mother remained silent for a good long while, and Keith repeated his question, not yet having learned that unanswered questions generally are unwelcome questions.

"He was a _vaktmästare_," she said finally, and Keith knew that, for some reason, she found the word unpleasant.

The boy reflected a while before he observed:

"That's what papa is."

"Your father's position is quite different," his mother rejoined sharply. "It's a shame that he and his comrades in the bank have no other title--although some of them deserve nothing better."

"What should they be called?"

"I don't know exactly--collectors, I think, because they go around and collect the money that is due to the bank."

"And what are real _vaktmästare_ doing?"

"The real ones work in government departments--not as officials, but just as attendants--it's something you can't understand yet."

Keith nodded. He didn't understand, but the words stuck and the understanding came later.

"And those that are not real," he persisted.

His mother laughed and patted him on the head.

"There is a lot of them," she said. "They look after coats and hats in theatres and restaurants, and wait at dinners, and do all sorts of things."

"Was that what grandfather was doing?"

A queer look came into his mother's eyes and sent a glow of self-satisfaction through his whole being. The look was familiar to him and meant that his mother was annoyed by the question but pleased with his cleverness in thinking of it.

"No," she answered, "not exactly...."

"What did he do," asked Keith, and as he spoke he sent a look of anticipation toward his own corner.

"He was an attendant in the big club where all the rich business-men go to spend their evenings, and he died when I was a little girl ... have you nothing else to ask about?"

"What was papa's father," Keith ventured after a pause.

"He worked in the royal palace." Again the mother's tone served as a warning, but also as a goad to the boy's curiosity.

"What did he do there," he demanded eagerly.

The lines about his mother's mouth grew tighter and harder, and she spoke as if the words hurt her--but she did not refuse to answer, and she did not send him away:

"He was a lackey."

From the moment he began to speak, Keith had showed an unusual sense for the value and peculiarities of words. They interested him for their own sake, one might say. He treasured them, and he gave more thought to them than to people. The word lackey he had heard before, and he had formed a distinct opinion about it as not desirable.

"Then he was a servant," he blurted out.

"In a way," his mother admitted. "And we are all servants, for that matter. But working in the king's palace is not like--working as Lena does here, for instance."

The last part of her remark went by unheeded by Keith. His thoughts leapt instead to his paternal grandmother--a strict and unapproachable little lady who visited them at rare intervals dressed in a quaint old shawl and a lace-trimmed cap. A great wonder, not unmixed with pleasure, rose in his mind at the thought that her husband had been a sort of servant after all. For some reason utterly beyond him, there was solace as well as humiliation in the consciousness of a stigma, if such it be, that attached equally to both his grandfathers, and not only to his mother's parent. Then a new idea prompted a new question.

"Was Granny a servant when she came to Stockholm?"

"She was obliged to take service in order to live," his mother replied very gently. "There is nothing about that to be ashamed of.... I have known fine ladies who started in the kitchen. But, of course, one doesn't like to talk of it to everybody."

Keith recognized the hint in her final words, but thought it needless. He was already on his way back to his own corner, tired for the time of asking questions, when he suddenly turned and said:

"We are just as good as anybody else, are we not?"

It was a phrase he had overheard sometime. Now it seemed to fit the occasion, and it sounded good to him.

"There is the royal family," his mother rejoined enigmatically. "But one of Granny's cousins was a lieutenant-colonel in the army."

"Where is he now," Keith demanded, agog with interest.

"He is dead, and--and we have never had anything to do with his family."

XIII

The inquisitiveness of Keith with regard to his ancestors and the past life of his parents continued for quite a while. Other family connections seemed unreal and did not interest him. Having no sister or brother of his own, relationships of that kind were meaningless to him. Parents, on the other hand, constituted a tangible personal experience, and the presence of Granny taught that this experience was common to grown-up people as well as children.

The curiosity he evinced was queerly impersonal, however, and might well be called intellectual. The information he received had no power over his own life. He could have been told anything, and he would have accepted it calmly as something not affecting himself. The only thing that influenced him was the manner of the person answering his questions. To that manner he was almost morbidly sensitive, and from it he concluded whether the various details related should please or disturb him.

Instinctively he pressed his inquiries at points eliciting marked resistance. And it was not what he actually learned, but the evasions encountered, that produced the sensitiveness about his own backgrounds which later often influenced his attitude harmfully at moments when he most needed complete self-assurance. It was the reluctance with which certain parts of the family history were told, and the total withholding of others, that taught him to be ashamed of things for which he could not be held personally responsible. The effect of this lesson on his character was the more fatal because it remained unconscious so long. Having become doubtful as to the worth of the roots of the tree, it was only natural that he should also feel doubts about the fruit.

Concerning the real character of his forbears he learned next to nothing. All that he heard related to external circumstances that were, or were not, judged respectable and presentable. One fact in particular was subject to the most rigid exclusion from all family conversations, and yet it leaked down to Keith at a time when he was utterly incapable of appreciating its significance. It piqued him mightily without disturbing him.

One day they were visited by his father's married sister, who was lacking in sentimentality and had a disturbing way of calling a spade a spade. The inevitable testing of the boy's cleverness by making him tell his own name led to a discussion of family names in general, Keith's mother expressing a great admiration for that of Wellander.

"Oh, yes, it's good enough," remarked her sister-in-law, "but it is not the right one, you know, and the old one was much finer."

"I know," said the mother, "but I don't know what the name used to be."

"Cederskjöld, and I think it was recognized as noble. I never knew the inside of it, but it looks peculiar. Carl's and my father and his brother and two sisters took common action to get the family name changed to Wellander. I am sure my grandfather must have been up to some rather striking deviltry, and for all I know he might have been hanged."

"Hush," cried Keith's mother with a quick glance at the boy who was taking in everything with wide-open eyes and ears.

Keith did not wait for anything more, but sneaked off by himself to think. The change of the name seemed nothing at the time, but the suggestion that his great-grandfather had been hanged was startling enough to give food for many meditations. Fortunately, or unfortunately, his aunt's manner had been too nonchalant to give him any clues. And from the manner of his mother he gathered merely that the asking of questions would be useless. So it came about that Keith for the first time in his life regretted the premature death of his paternal grandfather, from whom, otherwise, he might have elicited some more satisfactory information.

Both grandfathers were dead long before Keith was born. He never saw a portrait of either of them, or had an idea of how they looked. He could not even recall having heard their Christian names. The personality of his paternal grandfather always remained a total blank to him. Of the other one he knew a little more. The fashionable club where his mother's father served was notorious for its conviviality and reckless gambling, and the men were like the masters to some extent. This one of his grandfathers used to love wine, women, cards and everything else that helped to modify life's general drabness. He must have been something of a wit, too, in his own circles, having any number of boon companions. Keith never heard what kind of a man he was at home. He made good money while he lived and spent it as carelessly as he earned it. At forty-two he died, leaving a penniless widow to look after a daughter still in her early teens. Keith's paternal grandfather died in the same way, but his widow, who was a hard-headed little woman of old peasant stock--the best in Sweden--did better with four children than the other grandmother with one.

There were gaps in the stories of his mother and Granny concerning which he never got a direct reply from them, but by degrees he picked up many missing details from other sources. What he learned in this way indicated merely that they had been very poor at times, and poverty had forced them to earn a living by work that was quite honest and decent, but not "socially respectable." At one time, before her daughter was old enough to assume a share of the burden, Granny had actually had to fall back on the coarsest and humblest menial work--scrubbing and washing by the day in strange houses. Yet she and her daughter appeared throughout that ordeal to have remained on terms of pleasant intimacy with friends of the class to which they regarded themselves as properly belonging.

Another problem never solved for Keith was what kind of schooling his mother had had. Her own failure to tell suggested that it must have been of the slightest. Yet Keith never thought of her as ignorant. She had a bright, eager mind that, when not clouded, acted as a goad on his own. It was she who taught him to read and filled him with an awe for books and book-learning that was, perhaps, not entirely wholesome. She herself read eagerly, though fitfully, her interest in all such matters varying greatly with her mood and condition. Her day-dreaming was to a large extent directed toward matters literary and artistic. Sometimes, when she had read some novel with a markedly sentimental appeal, she talked vaguely of old ambitions to write, but as a rule it was her ignorance of music that she deplored. In the meantime her lace-making and her embroidery proved an artistic sense not wholly confined to dreams. She was always busy with some work of that kind, but her longings went far beyond it, and it happened more than once that she let her work drop in her lap while she looked at Keith with an expression he could not understand.

"If only I had had your chance in life," she exclaimed on one occasion of that kind.

"What do you mean," asked the boy, snuggling close to her.

"I mean that you will study and be able to do things," she answered, bending down to kiss him.

At that very moment the father entered and heard what she said.

"Nonsense," he broke in. "The boy is going to learn a trade, and I think we'll ask Uncle Granstedt to make a carpenter of him."

To Keith it was all meaningless, and his mother said nothing at the time, but a slight stiffening of her face warned him that his father's remark pointed in a direction not held desirable by her. And from that sign the boy took his cue.

XIV

The outside door stood open and no one was in the kitchen but Granny. The temptation to explore was irresistible.

"When the cat's away, the rats dance on the tray," the old grandmother muttered as if to herself.

"I'll just have a peep," Keith explained, turning to her for a moment. Then he made for the open door again.

The landing with its bare stone floor was familiar to him and quite barren of interest. What drew him magnetically was the tall archway leading to the mysterious upper regions known as the garret, where strange old women lived in hermit cells, and whence disturbing noises issued day and night. Even as he looked up there, he could hear a spookish grating that seemed to symbolize the spirit of the place. He shuddered a little, but not unpleasantly, for he knew what caused it.

In the brick wall ending the upward vista, he could see a square open hole with an iron shutter held open at right angles by an iron rod. As the wind shook the shutter, the rod scraped against the socket that held its hooked end. That was all--but on dark winter afternoons the effect was most disturbing.

"I'm not afraid," Keith announced, sensing his own bravery rather keenly.

"Why should you be," asked Granny.

Then he noticed the tall iron door fastened to one side of the arch in front of it. Now it was doubled up length-wise and folded back so as to leave the passage free.

"What's that for," he asked, pointing to the door.

"In case of fire," said Granny. "If it should begin to burn up there, they would close that door to keep the flames from the rest of the house."

"Would it burn much," Keith wondered.

"Your father has five cords of good birch wood stored in the top attic, so I think the whole city would see the blaze."

"And the people up there?"

"They would have to come before we closed the doors, but God have mercy on us if it ever gets that far. Remember, boy, there is nothing worse than fire so you must always be careful never play with matches."

"I know," said Keith, nodding sagely.

But he really did not know what fire meant until a few nights later. The whole family was sound asleep, Keith on the chaiselongue, his father and mother in the big bed on the other side of the room. While still half asleep he could hear his mother crying his father's name in a strangely agitated voice.

Then he woke fully and looked up. Every object in the room was clearly visible, but the light coming through the windows was not daylight. It was reddish and glaring, and the very reflection of it within the room filled the boy with vague uneasiness.

The father jumped out of bed and ran to the window.

"It is fire," he said. "Something terrible. My Lord, half the town must be burning. The whole sky is a mass of flames. And it's in the direction of the bank."

Suddenly he turned back and began to dress in wordless haste.

"Must we get out," asked the mother.

"No, it is not very close yet, but you had better get up and dress--and get everybody dressed."

By that time he was putting on his overcoat.

"Where are you going, Carl," demanded the mother, evidently more scared by his going out than by the fire.

"To the bank," answered the father, grimly.

"You mustn't, Carl! I won't let you go out! Think if anything should happen to you!"

"Nonsense," he said. "I am in no danger--but I must see what's happening to the bank, and help if things have to be taken out."

"Carl, Carl...." was all the mother could get over her lips.

"Don't worry, Ann," he pleaded, bending over her for a minute, and his voice took on a tenderness Keith seemed never to have heard before. "I shall be careful, but I must go. If the fire should come this way, I'll be back in time to help you all out."

She tried to cling to him, but he freed himself with gentle firmness. In a minute more he was gone, and in the next second Keith's mother was at the window looking out, though she had only her night-linen on and it was late autumn. Unobserved and unrebuked, Keith joined her, and when he looked up at the sky, his heart almost stopped beating.

A ghastly stillness reigned outside--except when it was merely accentuated by the occasional sound of hurried steps along the street at the top of the lane. Finally some one was heard passing through the lane itself.

"Please," Keith's mother cried at the top of her voice. "What is it?"

"It's the German Church," a voice responded from below. "The whole spire is flaming like a torch."

"Are we in danger down here?"

"Hard to tell. It depends on which way the spire falls. If it falls outward, I fear the whole city will go."

Then he walked off.

By that time the servant girl had come in weeping as if she had just heard her death-doom announced, and from the Granny was calling to them:

"You'll freeze to death, all of you, if you don't put on some clothes."

So they dressed, though difficulty, and then there was nothing to do but to wait. The mother was at the window all the time, every few minutes she said to the boy:

"Oh, I hope nothing happens to your father!"

At first it scared him more than did the light. But after a while it began to have an opposite effect. He seemed to grow stiff and hard. The excitement of the fire was still there, but it was overlaid and almost neutralized by a vast impatience that seemed to take possession of his whole being. He felt that if his mother made the same remark once more, he should yell with rage and agony, and to save himself, he joined Granny in the kitchen, where the girl had started a fire in order to make some coffee.

The sky in that quarter was just as bright as in front, and no light was needed in the room.

Suddenly he heard his mother cry out:

"Oh."

At the same time the brightness seemed to increase to something more than daylight.

A quick change took place in the boy's heart. He ran into the living-room and put his arm about his mother who was still lying in the window.

"Don't worry, mamma," he whispered to her. "I'll take care of you."

There was something in his voice that brought the mother to herself. She closed the window and took him in her arms and kissed him as she had never kissed him before, he thought.

"It was the spire that fell just now," she said, "and if there is any danger, your father will be here in a minute."

Almost as she spoke, the glare outside began to die down, though the sky remained red and threatening until daybreak.

Then they had coffee, Keith being allowed an extra dose in his milk. And soon afterwards the father returned to tell the story of the fire and inform them that all danger was over as far as they were concerned.

For days afterwards the experiences of that night occupied Keith's mind. The joy of excitement was probably uppermost in spite of all other considerations, Beneath it was a vivid conception of the horrors of fire that remained a live thing in his mind until he was well on in years, sometimes waking him out of his sleep at night and setting his heart palpitating wildly at the mere idea of danger. Lastly, however, there was left from that momentous night a new attitude toward the mother that implied a direct criticism--the first one that had ever broken into clear consciousness. It did not make him love her less, but it changed the character of his love in some subtle way. The father, on the other hand, had gained by that night. There was something heroic about the quiet way in which he walked off to take care of the bank, pushing all other considerations aside until that duty had been filled.

XV

Gradually Keith learned to know the old house from top to bottom. The garret and the cellar remained of excitement for a long time. The rest of it offered little to hold the attention or feed the imagination.

It covered three sides of a rectangle, with the courtyard in the centre. The wall of the adjoining house; formed the fourth side--a sheer cliff of plastered brick that towered two whole stories higher, its dreary expanse unbroken by a single window. Along the foot of it ran a long low structure with innumerable doors opening on the courtyard. Thither men, women and children had to descend regardless of weather or hour or season, and every visitor could be watched from the windows opening on the yard.

The rear part of the house constituted practically a building by itself, with a stairway of its own, and the people living there seemed to form a world apart, with which Keith never became very well acquainted. But on the ground-floor of that part was the laundry, used in turn by every household in the entire house and regarded by the boy as a far-off, adventurous place until he had been allowed to visit it a couple of times.

The building facing the lane and that running along the courtyard had a stairway in common at the corner where they joined. Its stairs and landings were of stone, uncarpeted, and lighted in the day by a window on each floor and at night by a single gas jet on each landing. At the foot of the lowermost flight of stairs was a long and dark passage that turned at a right angle and finally reached the lane after what seemed a long walk. Branching to the right, at the foot of the stairs, was another passage from which the cellar was reached after you had used all your strength to push open a huge iron door that squeaked uncannily on its stiff hinges.

The flats on the second and third floors ran straight through from the lane to the rear building, but on the fourth floor, where Keith lived, another family occupied the rooms looking upon the courtyard. And there lived Jonas, the only other child in the house during Keith's earliest years.

Jonas' father was a compositor--a tall, lank, hollow-eyed man with a bad cough. His mother was a woman of the people, angular and taciturn. Jonas himself was pale and gawky and shy.

Those two families, living within a few feet of each other and meeting daily on the common landing, had little more intercourse than if they had been parted by miles of desert. The reserved and slightly eccentric character of the neighbours had something to do with this separation, but social distinctions counted for more. A compositor was, after all, a mere workman, and Keith felt instinctively that his mother looked with kindly contempt at the more primitive ways of the adjoining household. Now and then he was permitted to go and play for a little while with Jonas, who was a year older, but the other boy hardly ever entered Keith's home. Nor was their playing much of a success. Jonas was slow-witted and reserved, while alertness and frankness were among Keith's most characteristic traits. But differences of temperament accounted only in part for their failure to come together. Keith felt as if a wall of some kind stood between them, and as if the eyes watching from the other side of that wall were distinctly hostile at times. It exasperated him as if it had implied terrible injustice, but it was only in moments of extreme boredom he really cared. At such moments he would also develop a passionate desire for a brother or sister. He might have wished for a dog or a cat even, but the idea of such a disturbing element in his parental home seemed too preposterous for serious contemplation. In fact, so foreign was that idea to the home atmosphere, that Keith went through the rest of his life envying other people's pets without ever giving earnest thought to the acquisition of one for himself.

Just as the parental attitude toward the nearest neighbours suggested a kindly but unsentimental tolerance of inferiors, so it became unmistakably tinged with a slightly jealous but unprotesting submission to superiors whenever the lower floors were reached. A bachelor official of some kind lived on the floor immediately below, with no one but his housekeeper to share his spacious apartment. As deputy landlord, Keith's father had to see this tenant like all the rest, but of social intercourse there was none, while on the other hand, Keith's mother kept up a gossiping acquaintance with the housekeeper. As far as Keith himself was concerned, there was nothing more awe-inspiring than a chance meeting on the stairs with the monocle, side-whiskers, precise manners and doled-out civility of Mr. Bureau-Chief Broström. The distance was so immense that even aspirations were precluded on the part of the boy. He could imagine being king, but not a duly appointed government official with a salary enabling him to occupy half a dozen rooms practically by himself.

Of course, there were rumours afloat about a more intimate relationship between the bureau chief and his fairly good-looking housekeeper, who nominally had for her own that part of the flat which faced the courtyard, and these rumours did not escape the boy's keen ears. While their true inwardness was incomprehensible to him, they made him look wonderingly at the housekeeper whenever he met her, and when he accepted her gingersnaps and other tempting delicacies, he did so with a sense of wickedness that limited his gratefulness.

A retired dry goods dealer and his good-hearted old wife lived on the second floor. The Fernbloms were the aristocracy of the house in the lane, having the best rooms, paying the highest rent and giving the biggest parties, but even Keith guessed quite early that they were simple souls, risen by thrift from very humble origins. They had a single daughter, a girl of delicate health and looks with whom Keith probably would have fallen in love hopelessly if she had stayed in the house. But she married early, moved to some other city and was rarely seen in her old home. Reports of her progress were received, of course, and passed on in the hearing of Keith, but like so many other things not touching his own life closely, it carried no real meaning to his mind. The parties continued, and Keith's parents were often invited, partly because the old couple was too simple-minded to think of social distinctions, and partly because they both came from the same district as Keith's Granny. Keith would be allowed to come along at times, and he liked the idea of going and the good food, but otherwise he found it dull business watching a lot of grown-up people seated solemnly about square tables playing cards. Then, one day, the old lady died, and Keith attended a part of the funeral, and from the window he saw the coffin taken away in a hearse buried in flowers. It made him ask many questions of his mother, but none of her answers brought death any closer to his mind. After all, the old lady had been nothing to him, and if the parties should cease as he heard was likely, the loss did not seem great to him. The only thing that made a real difference to him was his discovery that there would be no more of those ball-shaped gingersnaps that the old lady used to bake herself and keep in an earthen jar almost as tall as Keith.

The front part of the ground floor was used as an office of some kind in those early days, but the middle part facing the long row of outhouses was a human habitation. The rooms were so dark that a lamp had to be used most of the day, and the principal entrance was direct from the courtyard. An old workman and his wife lived there until the office in front was changed into a coffee-house and those rooms toward the courtyard became the kitchen. When it happened, some one told Keith's mother a story which she in her turn conveyed to the boy.

History repeated itself, she said, and Keith already knew that history was something that had happened before he was born. One hundred years ago, when Gustavus III was king of Sweden and things were more exciting than in these later days of outward and inward peace, there used also to be a coffee-house on the ground floor, and a widely known one at that. It occupied the floor above too, but this floor was in reality used as a club, and the club was political and the men who frequented it were conspiring against the government. This the police knew, and every so often a lot of armed and uniformed men would surround the house and make prisoners of those caught in the clubrooms on the second floor. But as a rule no one was found there but a couple of sleepy and grouchy attendants who cursed their luck at having to spend their lives in such a dull place.

"But," Keith interrupted when the story got that far "you just told me that the rooms had a lot of conspirators in them."

"So they had."

"And yet they were empty when the police came there? Do you really mean that the people could make themselves invisible?"

"That's where the real story comes in," his mother explained. "You know there is a long passageway between the front rooms of the Fernbloms and their kitchen in the rear. It runs back of the stairs. The next time you go through it, stamp your foot very hard, and you will hear that it sounds hollow in one place. At that spot there used to be a trap door in the floor. Now it is nailed down hard, but in the old days it could be opened any time, and then you found a stairway below. It led into our part of the cellar, where you still can find a couple of stone steps at one end. Then the conspirators went down into the main cellar, and at the back of it there was a tunnel leading under the rear part of the house and the lane beyond to a house on the other side. That's the way they escaped, and that's why the police never found anybody in the club."

"What did the conspirators want," asked Keith after he had pondered the matter for a while.

"I don't know exactly," his mother admitted, "but the king was killed by one of them at last."

"I wish I had been there to defend the king," said Keith. Then a new thought seized him suddenly: "I want to go down and see those steps."

"All right," his mother answered to his astonishment and joy. "Lena will soon go down to get potatoes for dinner, and then you can go along, if you only promise to come right up again."

Shortly afterwards the momentous expedition actually took place. Keith had been as far as the outer cellar door before, but he had never cared to go further. When you opened that door, you were met by an air so cold and damp that it struck your face like a wet sheet, and the stairs fell away into a black abyss that seemed bottomless.

The door was of iron, rounded at the top to fit the arch, and covered with rust. It looked as if it had been in its place since the house was built, and Keith had heard that the house could not be less than two hundred years old. The key, which Keith had been permitted to carry going down, was of iron too, and nearly twice as long as Keith's hand. The lock was in keeping with the key, enormous in size and so stiff that Lena had to use both hands to turn the key.

Having laid a firm hold of Lena's skirt, Keith followed her several steps down until they reached a place in the opposite wall where a single very tall step led up to another iron door, square-cut and narrow, back of which lay the cellar used by the Wellanders. Lena lighted a candle that burned with difficulty in the clammy air.

Inside nothing could be seen at first but a number of boxes and barrels full of supplies, and back of them walls built out of enormous stone blocks and dripping with moisture. As his eyes became accustomed to the dim light, however, Keith perceived that the end toward the lane was closed by a wall which even his inexperienced glance recognized as brick and comparatively new. Squeezing between two large barrels of potatoes he saw two stone steps at the foot of that wall and managed actually to put his foot on one of them.

"I wish I knew what's back of that wall," he remarked at last.

"Oh, nothing," said Lena indifferently.

"There might be skeletons," he ventured after a pause.

"Jesus Christ, child," Lena almost screamed, looking as if she had caught sight of a ghost. "Where in the world does he get such notions from? Come out of here now. I think the master will have to go down for potatoes himself hereafter."

"There was a skeleton in the story you told me the other night," Keith protested with dignity, but not unaffected by the girl's unmistakable fright.

"This is no place for stories of that kind," she declared pulling him away from the barrels and almost forgetting to close the cellar door behind her.

That evening Keith kept thinking of the story and the steps in the cellar. He was sorry not to be able to walk up those stairs. And there must be some old things left lying about on them. Then he imagined himself a conspirator, hearing the police beating at the doors and making his way through the stairway and the tunnel to some quiet, unobserved doorway in another lane, much narrower and darker than their own. It was exciting, the passage through the tunnel, which he could see with his mind's eye--but the part of conspirator did not appeal to him. He had seen policemen on the street several times. They were very tall and carried sabres. Some time when he was conspiring they might be too quick for him and get him before he could reach the secret stairway. It would be much better, he decided finally, to be able to look them in the face and say truthfully:

"I have done nothing at all!"

XVI

The regular meals of the day were four, not counting "afternoon coffee" which was regarded as a special treat and always subject to negotiations, though forthcoming as unfailingly as dinner or supper. It was the natural and nominal counterpart of the "morning coffee," which served to initiate the day's feeding. This first meal was consumed separately, as each person was ready for work, and on the whole its name was appropriate, although plenty of bread went with the coffee. Keith's turn came generally a little after seven, when he sat down to a large cup or bowl of half coffee and half milk into which had been broken a good sized piece of hard Swedish rye-bread. A little sugar was allowed, but no butter. This regimen began when Keith was less than three years old, and he enjoyed it immensely, provided the bread had steeped long enough to become soft, When, at last, he turned to rolls and butter dipped into the coffee, it did not mean that his taste had changed, but merely that his increasing sense of manhood found the earlier dish too childish.