"_If_ you had a boy," Keith took her up. "But you knew I was here?"

"Of course, I knew," said his mother in the tone that always warned him that a change of occupation would be in order. "Run along and play in your own corner now. I must get some work done."

At other times, when the talk didn't drift off into dangerous by-paths, his mother would tell little anecdotes in English learned from her former mistress, and generally end up by singing a little song about a ball--probably one that had something to do with cricket. And Keith would exultantly repeat the last line, which was the only one he could remember:

"And then she _popped_, and then she died."

It was the word _popped_ that caught his fancy, partly because it was so funny in itself, and partly because it had to be uttered with a sort of explosion on a very high note. As far as his rendering of the rest was concerned--well, it was early discovered and reluctantly admitted that, like his father, he could not even sing "Old Man Noah," which is the simplest melody imaginable to a musical mind in Sweden.

His failure in this respect gave his mother a slight pang every time it was brought home to her, although she made fun of it and pretended she didn't care. Music had been her young heart's dream. It was the only art for which she showed a genuine regard. And two of her pet grievances were that she didn't have a piano, and that, if she had one, she could not play on it.

But his father used to say that the only instrument he cared to hear was a drum.

V

His mother's chief grievance was her health. She was rarely quite well, and they had a family physician who would appear from time to time without being sent for. Yet her illness seemed, as a rule, not to prevent her from being about and attending to her household duties.

Once, however, while Keith was still too small to receive clear impressions, she had to keep in bed for a long time and during much of that time she seemed to have forgotten him entirely. The father was more taciturn and reserved than usual, and even the boy could see that he was worried. Friends and relatives came and went with a quite uncommon frequency, and all of them spoke to Keith in a strange manner that, although not unpleasant, had a tendency to make him choke. A hundred times a day he was told that he must keep quiet for his mother's sake, and that it was no time for boisterous playing--if he really must play at all. Most of the time he was in the kitchen, and on a few occasions he was even permitted to stay all by himself in the parlour, where there were all sorts of big books with any number of pictures on the fine oval table standing in front of an old sofa so huge that to crawl up on its seat was almost like going off into another room.

Finally he was taken to the home of Aunt Brita, his father's married sister, in another part of the town and kept there, a bewildered prisoner in a strange land, until one day his aunt told him that his mother was well and wanted him to come home, but that he would have to be a more than usually good boy for a long time yet, unless he wanted to lose his mother forever.

When, at last, he was home again, his mother pulled him up to herself in the bed, embraced him pa.s.sionately and sobbed as if it had been a farewell instead of a greeting. He wept, too, and clung to his mother as if in fright, while she told him that he must always do just what she told him and, above all, not scare her by going off so that she did not know where he was.

The father stood beside the bed watching them. And as Keith happened to look up once, he saw that his father's eyes were moist with tears. The boy could hardly believe it, and a little later he wondered whether he had been mistaken, for his father spoke just then in his sternest tone, and all he said was:

"Yes, I hope you will behave a little better after this than you have done before."

Many more weeks went before his mother was herself again. Even then a difference remained. She was more given to worry than before and clung to husband and child with a concern that frequently became oppressive.

Then, one fine day, she was all gay and smiling again, and bustled about the home with new eagerness, and told Keith a lot of things about England, and once actually danced across the floor while he was vainly trying to keep step with her. And the father tried hard to look his grouchiest when he returned home that night, but failed. And Keith was allowed to stay up quite late, and when he was in bed at last, and almost asleep, he thought he saw his father in the big easy chair by the window, with the mother seated on his lap kissing him. And just as he was dropping off, he heard, as if in a dream, his father's voice saying:

"Look out! I think the Crown Prince is still awake!"

VI

Some persons said that Keith looked like his father, others that he was the very image of his mother.

"He has my light hair and Carl's brown eyes," said his mother often when that topic was under discussion, and saying it seemed to make her happy.

"As a baby he was so pretty that people would stop us on the street to ask whose child he was," Granny might put in, if she happened to be within hearing. Then she would add with a glance at Keith: "But that is all gone now."

Keith himself never gave much thought to his looks, but any comparison with his mother struck him as quite foolish.

He liked to look at her, especially at her hair, which was very plentiful and in colour like beaten copper with glints of gold in it.

Her skin was very fair and soft as the softest velvet. Her eyes were blue, and in bright moments they had the softness of the sky of a Swedish summer night. But when the clouds of depression closed in upon her, they grew pale and light less and disturbingly furtive, so that Keith's glance found it hard to meet them.

Her gaiety sparkled when she was herself, and she had a pa.s.sionate love of everything that was bright and pleasant. Once she had always been that way and at times she would tell Keith what a wonderful time she had as a girl, and how she used to be the centre and inspiration of every social gathering in which she took part. She had a quick mind, too, and a heart full of impulsive generosity. But from one extreme she would go to another, so that, when the dark moments came, she would even regret kindnesses conferred while the sun was still shining. In such moments she would sometimes speak to the boy of her ailment as if he were in some mysterious way responsible for it.

Yet she loved the boy to distraction and became filled with unreasoning anxiety the moment he was out of sight. Her att.i.tude toward her husband was the same. He could never leave the home or return to it without being kissed. The moment he was outside the kitchen door, she hastened to the window and leaned out of it so that she might watch him until he vanished about the corner at the head of the lane. And there she generally lay waiting for him when he came home. If he was late, which happened almost every day, she would be the victim of a thousand fears as she made more and more frequent trips between the kitchen and the living-room window. When he finally came, she acted as if she had not seen him for months while he pretended to be more or less bored by her attentions.

But there were moments, too, when her tenderness flared into startling outbursts of bleak, cutting anger, giving way in the end to floods of hysterical tears. A couple of such tempests formed part of Keith's earliest reliable memories.

VII

As a rule Keith slept far too soundly to be aroused by anything. One night, however, there was so much loud talking in the room that he woke up completely. For a while he lay quite still, but with wide-open eyes and ears.

The big lamp had been placed on the washstand back of the chaiselongue on which he was lying, evidently in order to prevent its light from falling on his face.

His mother was seated, fully dressed, on the edge of the bed across the room. Her face was white as snow. Her eyes blazed with a sort of cold fire. Her whole body seemed to tremble with a feeling so tense that he could not find words for it.

The father was leaning far backwards on an ordinary chair, with his outstretched right arm resting on the dining table. His face was flushed and the thick fringe of black hair about the bald top of his head was slightly disordered. He tried to smile, but the smile turned into a grin. When he spoke, his voice was a little thick.

"I can't keep entirely away from my comrades." he said. "They think already that I am too stuck up to a.s.sociate with them. I haven't been out for two weeks. I haven't had a drop more tonight than I can stand.

And it isn't twelve o'clock yet."

All of a sudden Keith saw the cold, angry light go out of his mother's eyes. Her face twisted convulsively. She sank into a heap on the bed, sobbing as if her heart would break then and there.

"Carl," she screamed between two sobs. "You'll kill me if you talk like that to me!"

"Like that," he repeated in a stunned toneless voice. Then his face flushed almost purple. A hard look came into his eyes, and he rose so abruptly that the chair upset behind him. At the same time he brought down his fist with such violence that the table nearly toppled over.

"I'll be d.a.m.ned if I stand this kind of thing one moment longer," he shouted hoa.r.s.ely.

But even as he spoke, his eyes fell on the boy. As if by magic, his self-control returned.

"The boy is awake," he said in his usual tone of stern reserve.

There was a moment's silence. A few more sobs came from the mother. Then she sat up, wiped her eyes, and spoke in a tone that was almost calm:

"Go to sleep again, Keith. Your father and I were merely talking about some things that you don't understand yet."

When she saw that the boy was crying, she came over to him, kneeled down beside him and put her arms about him. Soon her kisses and her soothing words had their wonted effect, and he dropped off once more into the deep, deathlike slumber of childhood.

The air remained tense in the household for several days, but nothing further happened until one night when the father arrived a little later than usual from his work, looking just as he did the night of the quarrel. Again his speech was a little thick, and the mother's face a.s.sumed an ominous look. She said nothing about what was nearest her heart, however, she started instead to complain of some petty disobedience on the part of Keith.

"If you spanked him a little more and humoured him la little less, he would obey more readily," said the father.

His words carried no particular menace, and there seemed no reason why the boy should be scared. But perhaps there was something else in the atmosphere that affected his sensitive nerves and sent him unexpectedly into a paroxysm of weeping.

"Stop it," cried his father dark with sudden anger. "Stop it, I tell you."

"You leave the boy alone," cried the mother, her face as white as the father's was red.