It would have been hard on Keith at any time. Coming as it did, the family disgrace, which he guessed rather than grasped, and the disappointment, which was a depressingly tangible thing, brought his natural sensitiveness to a morbid pitch.
There was one idea that haunted him day and night--the idea that he belonged to a race doomed in advance to decay and destruction.
Uncle Wilhelm's case was not an isolated one. There was Uncle Henrik, the youngest brother of Keith's father, who had gone to the dogs while still a youth, and in a more ignominious fashion, if possible. What was he now but a besotted tramp, begging shamelessly of friend or stranger for a few öre with which to buy a brief moment of coarse happiness?
There was Uncle Marcus, the husband of Keith's paternal aunt, who had hurt his leg in a storm and lost his splendid position as chief engineer of the swiftest steamer plying on the Northern route. Now he was disabled for ever, and proud Aunt Brita was at her wit's end to keep the home and the family together.
There were the two half-brothers of Uncle Wilhelm's silly wife--popular and dashing young fellows reading blithely the purple path to destruction. Even Keith's naïve mind had discovered which way they were headed, although his thoughts of them were not free from admiration.
And there were still others. Wherever he turned within the narrowing family circle, he met similar instances of progress in the wrong direction. Some were sinners and some were victims of fate--or seemed so--but it came to the same thing in the end.
"The Wellanders are going," Keith's mother said one day to Aunt Brita when she was too depressed and worried to mind the boy's presence.
"Yes," replied Aunt Brita grimly, "and so is everybody else who ever had anything to do with them. Keith will have to start it all over again from the beginning."
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.
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 class 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 öre, 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 class 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 classmates 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.
The class 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 embarrassment. "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!"
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."
Then he turned to Keith and said more kindly: "I ask you to go for my sake."
"I will," the boy blurted out with a little catch in his voice.
His pride was broken, and once more those everlasting tears were dimming his eyes.
He felt weak and helpless, but through his dejection broke now and then a sense of pleasant warmth. His father had asked him to go "for his sake."
Such a thing had never happened before.
The class was discreetly preoccupied when Keith showed up as usual next morning. Only Young Bauer evinced a slight inclination to taunt him, but was curtly hushed up.
During one of the afternoon hours the door of the classroom opened unexpectedly and Keith's father appeared on the threshold.
"Will you pardon me for just one moment, Sir," he said to the astonished teacher. Then, without coming further into the room, he addressed himself to Keith: "I have had a talk with the Rector and with Lector Booklund. I have heard all about your behaviour in school, and I warn you now that unless you do better, I shall give you the treatment you deserve. Bear that in mind."
Then he vanished as abruptly as he had appeared.
A couple of the boys snickered. The teacher rapped sharply on the table with the book he held in his hand.
Keith sat absolutely still with bowed head. He couldn't think. He didn't dare to think of ever facing one of those other boys again. And suddenly it occurred to him that his father had looked quite common, like a workman almost, while he stood there at the door, talking across the room to Keith.
But a tiny voice somewhere within himself denied it.
The term dragged to an end.
Commencement Day was no longer a cause of joyful anticipation. It had to be borne like many other things. But it did mark the end.
Keith learned without much heartbreaking that he had got a "C" not merely in Latin, which he expected, but in behaviour as well--he who all through his school period had never had less than "A" on his personal conduct.
Well, it merely clinched the decision he already had formed. One could not pass any examination in behaviour. And after what had happened, the thought of going back to the same classroom in the fall gave him a sensation of outright physical discomfort. Anything was better than school.
Not even his mother had put in an attendance that day. He had to walk home by himself, all the other boys being accompanied by pleased or resigned parents. But it was in keeping with the rest of what he had to go through.
Out of the midst of the shapeless throng of dark thoughts filling his head, a quite irrelevant memory pushed to the front as if in answer to an unspoken question. It consisted of the words spoken by Aunt Brita:
"Keith will have to start it all over again from the beginning."
The first few days after the closing of the school were wonderfully restful. The parents proved remarkably forbearing. Neither one spoke a word of reproach. Nothing was said about the future. It was as if some sort of fear had checked them.
The home seemed unusually quiet and pleasant. There was any amount of time for reading, and no suggestions were forthcoming as to what should or should not be read. Yet Keith remained satisfied only a few days.
No one knows what might have happened if they had gone into the country for the summer as they used to do. But again the whole family had to stay in town for some reason not divulged to Keith. And with the heat and the sunshine came the usual restlessness.
Keith had made up his mind not to go back to school. He was equally determined not to let himself be forced into any sort of manual work. Besides having no knack for it, he had come to look upon it as a social disgrace. Some other work must be found, for well enough he knew that his father would not let him stay home indefinitely doing nothing.
It was easy, however, to make up one's mind about what not to do, but mighty hard to discover the right kind of thing to do. Keith had no clue to start with at all, and to begin with all his efforts led him into the blindest of blind alleys.
He plagued his mother with inquiries to which she had few or no answers to give. He even deigned to consult Johan and found that he already had found a place as errandboy in a store. A few questions convinced Keith that such a life might be good enough for Johan but not for a boy who, after all, had reached Lower Sixth in a public school.
The situation was becoming desperate and Keith was watching his father with steadily increasing concern, when at last a helpful hint reached him from the most unexpected quarter.
"Why don't you look in the paper," Granny asked him one day.
"What for," was Keith's surprised counter-question.
"For work, of course. Look at the advertisements on the back page."
"Do you think, Granny...." Keith hesitated.
"I don't think," retorted Granny. "I know."
Three weeks had gone. It was still early morning, and he was studying a newspaper very carefully.
"What is it you find so interesting," his mother asked at last.
"The advertisements," he explained without taking his eyes off the paper.
"What advertisements?"
"Help wanted."
"Nonsense," she cried, putting down her sewing. "Are you still thinking of leaving school?"
"Here is one about a volunteer wanted in a wholesale office," was his indirect reply. "It is on West Long street--in the same house where Aunt Gertrude has her jewelry store. Do volunteers get paid?"
"I don't know," his mother said absent-mindedly, her hands resting on her lap in unwonted idleness. Then she woke up as from a dream: "You should ask papa first."
"What's the use until I know whether I can get," Keith parried.
Ten minutes later he bustled into Aunt Gertrude's store, where she sat in a corner near the big show-window working at a strip of embroidery that never got finished. She was a spinster with large black hungry eyes in a very white face. She and Keith's mother had been girl friends. Now she was running one of the two jewelry stores owned by her brother.
She had heard of the position. It was in the office of Herr Brockhaus on the second floor--a dealer in tailor's supplies. And she had heard that he was a very nice man.
"Do you think I can get it," Keith demanded eagerly.
"Why don't you run up this minute and ask," she suggested.
Keith looked as if he had been to jump off a church steeple. But in another minute he was climbing the stairs. His legs seemed rather shaky and his tongue felt like a piece of wood. The moment he opened the door, however, all his fears and hesitations were gone. Once more he was the old Keith who had made a play of studies and examinations.
Herr Brockhaus was a tall, youngish, good-looking man, a little haughty of mien, but with a tendency to smile in quite friendly fashion.
"I have as good as hired another boy who got here earlier than you," he said in reply to Keith's inquiry. On seeing Keith's dejected look, he laughed good-humouredly.
"There are plenty of other jobs," he suggested.
"But you look as if you would be kind to me and give to a chance to learn," Keith heard himself saying to his own intense astonishment.
"I can see that when you want a thing you want it real hard," Herr Brockhaus rejoined with another peasant laugh. "Well, I like that. What kind of a hand do you write?"
"Awful," Keith confessed, "but I am going to learn better."
For a good long while Keith felt himself studied from top to toe, and under that searching scrutiny he blushed as usual.
"I am willing to do anything that is required," he ventured to ease the suspense.
"All right--what did you say your name was? Keith--I'll take you, and tell the other boy that I changed my mind. When can you begin?"
"Tod ... tomorrow," Keith corrected himself with a sudden remembrance of his father.
"Good," said Herr Brockhaus. "Show up at eight. And I'll pay you ten crowns a month the first year, although as a rule volunteers don't get anything."
Keith walked home on air. The sun never shone more brightly than that day. The tall old stone houses along West Long street looked imposing and mysterious, as if they had been magic mansions full of golden opportunities for bright little boys. School seemed years away already. Lector Booklund was a dream.
His mother listened in silence to his wonderful tale. Then she kissed him.
"When you have made a lot of money, will you present me with a new black silk dress," she asked with a suspicious lustre in her eyes.
"Anything you want, mamma," he promised solemnly. "When I begin to make money, you'll never have to worry any more about anything."
Again she had to kiss him.
He was then a little more than halfway through his fifteenth year.
When his father came home that night, Keith hurried across the room to meet him. "Papa," he cried full of subdued excitement and a swelling of self-importance such as he had not experienced for ever so long. "I have got a job."
"What kind of a job," asked the father quietly.
"In an office." And Keith sputtered out the details.
When the whole story was told, the father stood looking at him enigmatically for a long while.
"Perhaps it is just as well," he said at last. "It certainly will make things easier for me. But bear in mind what I now tell you, boy: you will live to regret the chance you are throwing away--a chance for which I would have given one of my hands when I was of your age."
"Did you want me to go on," Keith asked uncertainly.
"I did--I always hoped that you should pass your university examinations and wear the white cap."
"And what did you want me to become?"
"A civil engineer--that's the only real profession today."
The idea was too novel to be grasped quickly by the boy. His own thoughts had never strayed in that direction, and his conception of an engineer's duties and position was extremely vague.
"An engineer," he repeated. "But then I should not have studied Latin."
"Of course not, but you chose it without asking my opinion first."
Keith's surprise increased.
"Why didn't you tell me," he insisted.
"Because I wanted you to begin to shape your own life," the father replied, "and I thought you knew what you wanted."
Keith could hardly believe his own ears.
"What do you want me to do now," he pleaded at last.
"What you feel you must," rejoined the father. "This concerns your life, and not mine. And you must make up your own mind. Whatever you decided, you have my good wishes, boy, and I shall try to help you as far as I can."
For a moment Keith had a sense of never having known his father before. Then a thought flashed through his head: why did he not speak before?
He went into the parlour and stood at the window staring at the gloomy facade of the distillers across the lane. A motley throng of thoughts chased each other through his brain.
It was not yet too late. Nothing was settled. He could still drop the job and go back to school if he wanted. But did he want it?
The thought of school sent a slight shiver down his spine.
No, he was sick of it, of the teachers, of the tedious books, of the boys who looked down upon him and kept him at arm's length all the time, of everything that had made up his life for the last few years.
He wanted change. He must have it.
Above all else, he wanted to be free, he wanted to do as he pleased, and now he had found a way to it, he believed.
At that moment it seemed to him that his childhood suddenly had come to an end, that his manhood had begun, and that all life lay open before him.