Читать книгу The Soul of a Child - Edwin Björkman - Страница 10

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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 associate 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 damned if I stand this kind of thing one moment longer," he shouted hoarsely.

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 assumed 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.

"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, hell!" 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 passed, 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:

"God, 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.