Читать книгу In Search of Myself - Frederick Philip Grove - Страница 3

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IF, in a state of prenatal existence, human beings-to-be could deliberately choose those to whom they wished to be born, taking into account, of course, what they intended to do with their earthly lives, then a future writer like myself could hardly, according to outward appearance, have chosen better than the determining destiny did choose for me in the matter of parents. To what extent reality bore out this appearance is the subject of the first part of this book.

As a matter of fact, however, the first few hours of my life on this planet seemed to mark me for a life of adventure rather than for a life of discipline. I was born prematurely, in a Russian manor-house, while my parents were trying to reach their Swedish home before that event which, at least to me, was to prove of considerable importance. In that effort to reach home my parents failed for no other reason than that I insisted on arriving too soon; even then I already showed my constitutional disinclination to conform. Incredibly, within an hour or so of the event, the hospitable house, belonging to friends of my parents, was struck by lightning and burned to the ground. This was about 9 p.m. after I had seen the first flicker of candle-light, for electric bulbs had not yet been invented. I was later told that I promptly protested against having such an iniquity as life thrust upon me by bawling at the top of my voice. I do not actually remember, of course, the precipitate flight as my mother and I were borne out of the welter of flames; nor can I be positively sure that I remember anything that befell during the next few weeks or even months. Yet I was, later, so often and so graphically told about the dramatic occurrence that I find it hard to sift out what I actually saw and felt from what I merely heard in years to come.

The fact was that, during those years to come, I was in charge of a woman who, at the time, was my mother’s maid and who had lived through it all; in contradistinction to my own future experience, the exciting circumstances of my entry into this world had formed the only extraordinary thing that had ever happened to her. She remained more or less closely associated with me for nearly seventeen years, up to the time of my mother’s death. This young woman, of mixed Scotch and French descent, but more French than Scotch, became my nurse; and since, by reason of my mother’s peculiar mode of life, she was doomed to remain single, she adopted me into her affections as if I had been her, not her mistress’s, child. What she told me, vividly and in ever-repeated detail, dominated my inner life throughout my early years: it always started with the words, “Once upon a time there was a little boy.” It dominated my life so completely that to this day I cannot distinguish my actual memories from the reflected ones.

Thus, whenever I think of those first weeks of my life, I seem to see myself suddenly inside a private railway carriage which, coupled to a train, is crossing a long, spider-web steel bridge thrown across a river; I seem to see the struts and girders gliding past the windows; and, what is more, when I close my eyes, I seem to feel the bridge swaying in a blizzard sweeping over the no-man’s-land which was once the border country between Russia and Germany, underlain by a shadowy Poland; for my birth took place east of the Vistula.

The next memory is that of a train on a huge ferry crossing the Baltic from Stralsund in Germany to Malmoe in Sweden; and there, too, I seem to see all sorts of things in great detail: the arrogant German train guards who prevented passengers from alighting to stretch their legs, and the scared faces of a few travellers who were not in the train, but stood huddled against the railing of the ferry.

I myself, on the lap of Annette, the young nurse, was dressed in a long, embroidered, belaced, and beribboned dress, such as was used, at the time, and in Europe, indiscriminately for boys and girls. As I grew up into boyhood, shorter dresses were carried along, for me, throughout Europe and over not inconsiderable portions of Northern Africa and Western Asia as well; even after I had outgrown them, my nurse took them out and showed them to me whenever we left one place or arrived at another. To me, they were a sort of pedigree. Nobody, it seemed, not even myself, ever thought of discarding so useless a burden; not even when the exhibition had become embarrassing to my masculinity because I did not want to be reminded of the humiliating fact that, not so long ago, as geologic ages went, I, too, had been a baby.

At this time I can hardly have been more than a month old; and within a few hours of our arrival on Swedish soil, I, being only inappreciably older, but having performed my first comparatively long journey, arrived, with all my appurtenances: father, mother, nurse, et al, for there were other servants as well, on my father’s place on the “Sound” between Sweden and Denmark. My geographical ideas of the place are somewhat hazy; but I do remember a few points: we were within about twenty miles of the ancient city of Lund; we were within a few hundred yards of the sea; and on very clear days we could make out the coast of Denmark and even the city of Copenhagen across the water.

But I have still to justify my first sentence.

My father, of English-Swedish descent—it was my grandfather on that side who had immigrated into Sweden and naturalized and married there—was a land-owner on a fairly large scale, growing sand-pines for two or three Baltic governments desirous of anchoring their shorelines and sand-islands by afforestation. This business had been thoroughly established by my grandfather; and, as far as I could make out in after years, it ran itself in my father’s time, requiring a minimum of exertion on his part; so that he was very largely a man of leisure, enjoying what for anyone else would have been a comfortable, even a large income from the labour of others. In addition to the land and the business, he had, at his father’s death, come into a not inconsiderable fortune; and, at the end of his early manhood, at the age, I think, of forty or a little over, he had married a Scotswoman, daughter of a judge, my mother, who was not only an heiress but, her mother being dead, had brought him immediately a second fortune at least equal to his own.

It is, of course, a well-known fact that writers who do not write what the public wants, but what they think the public should be told, do not make an income of their own. To all appearances, then, there were here four fortunes—the land; the money inherited by my father; the money which my mother had; and the money which she expected on her father’s death—all opportunely converging upon—myself? No, on myself and seven older sisters, the youngest of whom, at the time of my birth, was seven or eight years old.

My mother, on the other hand... But I do not, at present, need to say more about her; some of her characteristics will appear as I speak of my father; and others will have to be reserved for my next chapter. But she was twenty years my father’s junior.

My sisters had all been born during the first pleasant years of their marriage; I, the unwanted one, came nine months before that marriage was to break up. It did not break up with any éclat; there was, so far, no quarrel; there was nothing of the kind. My mother simply told three of the servants to pack up for a round of travel and left, taking me along. Among the three servants, two were concerned with myself: the wet-nurse and Annette, the “bonne” as she was now called; the third was my mother’s new maid. In all small things, Annette was destined to become a sort of impresaria to my mother as well; in fact, she “managed” or ruled the whole party. When, one day, in a grand scene, somewhere in France, my mother broke her own thraldom to Annette, everyone trembled. I was about eight at the time; and my mother’s ultimatum, restricting Annette to the management of the boy, really resulted in my henceforth managing her.

However, it is time for me to give some idea of my parents as individuals.

My father was six feet seven inches tall, a personable man, the very devil with women. He rode hard, ate hard, and drank hard. Me he despised. Even at that early age I gave no promise of ever exceeding my present height which is of a mere six feet two and a half inches; at best, when I stretch my old bones a little, six feet three; and I showed a regrettable lack of the power to resist infantile diseases: measles, scarlet fever, whooping cough, I caught them all; and I was thin, had a poor appetite, readily caught colds. I cannot give a portrait of my father as I came to know him without saying a word of myself. To be weak or ill was, in his eyes, the unpardonable sin. But I have, in recent years, tried to imagine to myself how my father would have lived and acted had the chance of birth thrown him into the Ontario of my time; that is, into a Canada where pioneer conditions are just yielding to the urbanization of the countryside: thus I created Ralph Patterson and gave him, among others, one son whom I attached to myself by giving him my middle name. I will admit that I, the dreamer, as his only son, must have been a sore disappointment to a man who, first of all, was a spender. Up to the time of my birth, he had had the land, a few thousand acres of it, and two fortunes to support him. By the time I began consciously to know him, he had run through those two fortunes; and when, after my mother’s death, I became more closely and almost intimately acquainted with him, he was engaged in running through the third, namely, the land which he was mortgaging more and more heavily; the fourth, my mother’s inheritance from her father, he considered himself as having been cheated out of; but, of course, I knew nothing of that till he, too, was near the end of his life. I have already said that the business of supplying the Baltic states with nursery stock, of which many millions were shipped every spring, whole shiploads of them, ran itself under the direction of a competent man called the “inspector”. In addition to the nursery, there were some three hundred hectares of ordinary farm land on which pedigreed cattle and fine saddle horses were raised, as well as the ordinary farm-crops of wheat and vegetables for the market at Lund. On this branch of the rural economy enormous sums were spent, for my father was an innovator. Every sort of agricultural machinery invented in any part of the world promptly appeared on this farm and was, if not used, at least tried out. Often, after a few weeks, it was found that what was adequate for the North American prairies was ill adapted for Sweden. One or two large barns soon resembled a sort of international exhibition of farming implements. On the comparatively rare occasions when I was at home, I lived through a sort of abrégé of the history of agricultural invention. Thus, the large lawns which swept down from the house to the edge of the beach were, in my early years, cut by gangs of kneeling or squatting women wielding sickles which were kept razor-sharp. As I grew up into adolescence, huge horse-drawn lawn-mowers had taken their places, at a vastly increased expense, and to the dissatisfaction of the women who were thus deprived of a modicum of income. The horses, carefully selected for their light weight and their quiet step, had their feet encased in enormous, padded shoes made of felt and sacking.

A few words about the house and the grounds.

To my memory, the house looks enormous; and it was pretentiously called “Castle Thurow”. If Annette can be trusted, there were twenty-nine rooms; I never counted them myself. Its front faced the sea; and a wide flight of steps, built of some basaltic rock, led up to an open sort of terrace, used as a driveway and a veranda, and paved with slabs of the same sort of stone, unhewn; in the middle, there was the main entrance. To the right, the cliff-like structure was flanked by a tower which reached to twice the height of the main building. The lower three stories of this tower were an integral part of the house; its upper three stories, above the main roof, had contained the children’s quarters. At the time which I remember clearly, my sisters were gone; and the fourth and fifth floors of the tower were reserved for myself and Annette and locked up when we were abroad. It is half a century ago that I saw it last; but my impression of it is, today, one of quiet dignity and straightlined power, most impressive when approached from the sea. The lawns in front must have comprised twenty-five or thirty acres; and they were dotted with fine old elms and oaks. What a place for a novelist to live in!

As for the inside, one entered, via the main entrance, a huge hall reaching up through two stories, with, at its far end, an enormous fireplace in which at almost all times, summer as well as winter, there burned a log fire, more or less bright, of sticks probably four feet long, though they seem closer to eight to me. This hall was the scene of the everyday life of the household which never consisted of less than twenty people, exclusive of servants. It was comfortably furnished with a number of chesterfields and an abundance of arm-chairs. There, more than when we were abroad, so it seems to me now, my own indoor life was lived at the knees of my mother. The moment we started on our travels, she receded into a brilliant world of uniforms and bestarred evening clothes; except at home, I hardly ever saw her in daytime. We shall hear more of that anon.

To the left of the hall lay the dining-room, oak-panelled, where it was nothing uncommon for thirty guests to sit down, in addition to the twenty members of the household. In front of it was the library; opposite, the two or three drawing-rooms, one of which was called the music room. There, my mother often stormed through the more emotional passages of great symphonic music, playing a fine grand piano, sola, or accompanied by violin or cello.

On the second floor, all rooms opened from the gallery surrounding the hall; the gallery as such was reached by a grand stairway on the right. The rooms were the two masters’ suites and a few others used for the more eminent guests. Less pretentious guest-rooms were on the third floor, the rest of which was given over to the servants and other permanent members of the household. In the early years, of course, some of my sisters still lived in the house; but, since they were even then young ladies rather than girls, they form a dim memory only; before I grew into conscious boyhood they had disappeared into the outer world, one going to Cambridge in England, two to the United States, one to Vienna, and the remaining God only knows where. They were my father’s daughters; I was my mother’s son. Even the youngest never became really intimate with me; and it was only a mild shock to the boy of twelve or thirteen when she died in childbirth in distant Chicago.

Strange to say, what today remains most vivid in my memory picture of the interior of the house is the windows in wintertime. They were thickly curtained and, in their lower parts, hung with fur robes to keep the draughts out. Apart from the hall, every room had its stove: a large fayence structure which remained warm in the coldest winter from October until April.

Behind the house were the orchards and kitchen gardens, separated from it by a sort of flag-stone court which lay six or eight feet lower than the terrace in front. Behind the orchards and gardens stood a building which was called by a German name, the “Leutehaus”; it contained the dining-room and the bedrooms of the general run of the servants, indoor and out. This Leutehaus was perhaps the gayest place on the estate. Never a week went by without a dance taking place there, for which three or four musically-gifted men played accordions.

The whole place was a world in itself, with stores of linen, bedding, etc., sufficient for a good-sized hotel; and most of it was made by servants in their leisure hours. All servants wore homespun, men as well as women. The household as such was run by an elderly lady of aristocratic appearance and manners who treated “the family” as her guests. My father, of course, was often absent in Paris or London, less frequently in Berlin, though he made it a point to be at home when my mother and I came for a visit.

Altogether, there must have been a hundred men and women who looked after house and grounds; and several hundred, employed in nursery and farm, lived as tenants in the village belonging to the place.

Every morning, at about six o’clock, and earlier in summer, one of a bevy of maids entered every bedroom, whether occupied by man or woman, and deposited a tall, brilliantly-scoured pewter pitcher of hot water for shaving and sitz-bath. Of the latter, one was placed at night for every occupant in every room, some of which harboured as many as four young men. This water, having been used or not used, as the case might be—and there were occasions when I, for one, merely pretended having used it—had to be carried down again in buckets later on in the forenoon.

Most of the inmates of the house took the appearance of the maid as a signal to rise and descend for a frugal French breakfast—consisting traditionally of coffee, and fresh rolls baked every morning. Whoever had any business to attend to, did so after that.

Meanwhile men made the rounds looking, in winter, after the twenty-odd stoves and the huge fire in the fireplace of the hall.

A second breakfast followed at ten o’clock; and this was the first occasion at which a majority of the people in the house met in the dining-room. It was always a noisy gathering; for, in contrast to the later meals, everybody helped himself, and people ate and drank sitting or standing in groups. Huge sideboards were loaded with cold viands. Where carving was needed a girl or a lackey stood ready to do it. Roast beef was carved by a man; fowl, by a maid. It was an informal but extraordinarily plentiful meal at which my mother never appeared, though her maid did, to gather on a tray what her mistress had ordered.

Lunch, properly speaking, was taken at one-thirty; and this was the first formal meal at which my mother presided when she was at home; and it was the only one at which I, too, was present. The fact that my mother sat in her chair at the head of the table gave the affair a decorous air. Everybody was served individually by maids under the direction of the butler. My father, too, was always present, occupying the place opposite my mother. At this meal wine was served to all but myself; and the conversation was general and often animated. I—looked about. It was, of course, the time, in the seventies and early eighties, when children were still only seen, not heard. I remember one occasion when, having heard and probably understood a remark addressed by a smart young man, in very faulty English, to a very young lady, I burst out laughing. Almost immediately I felt my mother’s eye resting on myself; having caught mine, it moved to the door. I rose and left the room.

Dinner was at eight; and everybody dressed for it. It was only once, towards the end, that I, having meanwhile been supplied with a formal suit, was permitted to sit in at this function; and even then, sitting as I did near my father, separated from him only by a magnificent woman, I did not dare to take part in the conversation.

Since I had never seen the place without them, I naturally did not show any surprise at the number of young men who lived there. Individually, they changed; as a group they exhibited a singular uniformity. They were the sons of large land-owners, mostly aristocrats, who were there in order to learn something of the management of an estate, paying handsomely for the privilege of doing such of the administrative work as would otherwise have required expensive clerical and executive help. They were, in fact, the only people belonging to the household properly speaking who did any work.

In the afternoon, there were as a rule some twenty people or so gathered in the music room: they might be guests staying in the house or neighbours who had driven or ridden over. My mother was a drawing card, for she was a graduate of the conservatory of music at Vienna; and she had often been urged, even by virtuosi and composers, to go on the concert stage. Whenever she played, there was a peculiar, highly impressive atmosphere: as of the presence of something divine. I remember one occasion when a white-haired, extraordinarily handsome old man, as my mother left the piano, rose impulsively out of his arm-chair and kissed her hand with an air of veneration. I was tremendously touched and never stirred in my corner while she swept out of the room. On another, later occasion, she had repeatedly run through the opening of the first movement of the Eroica and shaken her head, smiling. Suddenly she broke off with a few vast chords; and, without transition, swept into the second movement of the Ninth Sonata, rendering the four variations with a virtuosity which brought all present to their feet, clapping and crying out: “Brava! Brava!” She rose, turned, and bowed. Then, sitting down again, she played the scherzo of the Eroica; and when she ceased, there was a dead silence more flattering than any applause could have been.

On that occasion, I sneaked out of the room, tears in my eyes, and, from the hall, saw my father sitting in a neighbouring drawing-room, playing chess with a full-bosomed, flashing-eyed lady whom he seemed to dominate by sheer physical presence. To him, music was nothing but noise.

It was summer, as it mostly was when we were at home; and at night I could not sleep. So I went downstairs in my tower and, from the landing two stories below my room, penetrated into the gallery in search of my mother. The whole house seemed to be asleep, so it must have been in the early hours of the morning. On the gallery, a few candles were burning, as they always did at night. My mother’s suite was at the far end of the gallery; and in order to reach it, I had to pass the doors of several of the guest-rooms and those of my father’s apartment. Just before I passed his bedroom, the door was opened from the inside; and the fine lady came out, in a gorgeous, open dressing-gown which showed her silk night-wear underneath. Behind her stood my father, in pyjamas, bowing her out. Neither saw me in that shadowy passage; and I let myself drop to the floor, eclipsing myself between two chairs. I did not fully understand; but, when the lady had swept out of sight into her own room, and my father had closed his door, I understood enough to have lost all taste for snuggling into my mother’s bed. I was only seven or eight; but I knew I must not mention this to her.

I will add a few other memories of home, if that can be called home which remained essentially alien.

One day—I was a mere toddler—I had somehow escaped from Annette on whose hand I had descended into the great kitchen with its cook and its kitchen-maids. Thence I had gone out to the stone-paved court behind the house. I might say that this is a genuine memory; for my mother, who always lived under the premonition of an early death, never allowed Annette to tell me anything which might, in my imagination, work out to the disadvantage of my father on whom I might one day be dependent.

To the left or north of that court, there was my father’s open-air gymnasium where he often exercised on parallel and so-called horizontal bars, or on a trapeze. He was extraordinarily proficient in such things and prided himself on the fact. He could readily perform what he called the “giants’ turn”—no doubt the literal translation into English of a Swedish technical term. To do it, he jumped clear of the ground, firmly grasping the bar which was perhaps set at a height of eight feet. Swinging back and forth a few times, he suddenly gathered for a supreme effort and went over in a complete circle, four, five times, and gracefully at that—a not inconsiderable feat for a man weighing 225 pounds.

On this occasion, I saw him there and stopped, putting a finger in my mouth, for I was in deadly fear of him. When he saw me, he dropped to the ground and advanced. I turned to flee; but he caught me up in his arms and returned to the bar. There, he lifted me high overhead, and I, scared out of my wits, closed my little hands about it. He was still laughing as he let go; but, seeing my distorted face, he grunted with disgust, turned away, and strode off.

Now it so happened that Annette had almost immediately missed me and run up into the hall where my mother sat reading. I could not have gone out through the open front door without passing in sight of my mother, except through the dining-room. Both women ran to look. A glance sufficed to show that the dining-room was empty. So they ran to the back door, passing my father’s “office”, and out into the court. Annette kept straight on, into the garden; but my mother, fortunately, turned to her left; and a moment later she saw me hanging from the bar. It was none too soon; for, though I began to bawl lustily at sight of her, I was weakening and, in a moment, would have let go. She called to me to drop and caught me in her arms; and, naturally, I was made much of between the two women. Strangely, my memory of the scene—perhaps my earliest direct memory—is not an emotional but a visual one. Whenever I think of it, I see my mother sweeping forward, towards me, in the shape of the winged Victory of Samothrace.

In this connection I might add that it was the rarest thing for me to see my father and my mother engaged in a common activity. When it did happen, they were invariably on horseback. My father kept two or three huge Danish saddle-horses for himself; they were the only breed capable of carrying his weight in a gallop; even these he used up; for he was never satisfied with the ponderous, cradling gallop natural to beasts of their build. My mother had an equal number of mares of English-Arabian blood; like her hackneys, they were coal-black and always showed the whites of their eyes. She, too, was a daring rider and often, when we were at home, crossed, at a stretched gallop, fields and meadows, taking hedges and brooks in her stride as if they were not there. For a woman, she was not light, either; I weighed her at one time, later; and she tipped the beam at over one hundred and seventy. Year after year, these horses awaited her; nobody else used them. No doubt they, too, were replaced in the course of the years; but I was never aware of the change. No doubt, too, there was less riding towards the end; for in her later years my mother suffered from cancer.

Perhaps the fact that the horses ran idle during most of the year—for we spent no more than from four to six weeks at home in the twelve-month—had something to do with a serious accident which might have been fatal. We had just arrived at Thurow in the morning; and right after luncheon my mother sent word around to the stables to have a mount brought to the door. I believe the first words exchanged between my parents had been angry ones; my mother had just discovered that funds on which she had counted were not available. Very likely the visit to Sweden was occasioned by that difficulty.

At any rate, when she appeared in front of the house, in her riding-habit, the horse would not stand. The groom who had brought it was too light to hold it; and repeatedly, as my mother approached, the long train of her habit over one arm, the mare shied away sideways, circling about the groom who had trouble in keeping his feet. My mother was grimly patient, as she tried to outmanœuvre the horse; and at last, the groom quickly holding out his hand to support her foot, she swung herself up into the side-saddle. The mare reared on her hind-feet and pivoted, throwing her head; but my mother was her match and, touching the animal’s rump with her crop, forced it down on its knees. Suddenly, as my mother let her rise, the mare gave in; and horse and rider dashed away through the great avenue of trees which formed the approach to the house from the east. I had been standing on the step of the house, admiring my mother who looked superb as she matched her skill against the animal’s temper. I must have been twelve years old at the time.

An hour or so later my mother was carried in on the door of one of the labourers’ houses in the village. In taking a hedge, the horse had thrown her; and, what was worse, she had been unable to free her foot; so that she was dragged along over rough, heathery ground for several hundred feet before a gang of men working in a nearby field could stop the animal. Worst of all, the vicious beast had lashed out, kicking up its heels, and had hit my mother’s head above her left eye.

The whole house was in a turmoil; and my father who, luckily, had not yet gone out, dashed away on horseback to fetch the doctor from the city. As chance would have it, the family physician, having heard of our arrival, was already on his way to pay my mother his respects. My father met him within a few miles of Thurow; and the physician covered the remainder of the distance at a gallop.

It took my mother six or eight weeks to recover. There remained, under ordinary circumstances, no disfigurement; but anger or excitement made the resultant swelling over the frontal bone of her still smooth brow, conspicuous. I learned to watch for that sign. Nor was her nerve affected in any way. My father wanted to dispose of the mare; but my mother objected, saying to him, in my hearing, that her being thrown was his fault, not the animal’s. She soon tamed the mare.

Our stay at home was, on this occasion, lengthened to three months; for, brought on by her fall, some internal trouble declared itself; and soon I was told that it had been found necessary for her to undergo an operation.

This was the occasion of my seeing my grandfather on my mother’s side for the first and only time in my life. Why it should have been the only time I do not know for certain. My mother never told me; and her father died within a few years. From Annette, who had been with my mother even before her marriage, I heard that there had been an estrangement between the old judge and all three of his daughters and even his only son. That son had, in 1870, joined the Prussian army, against his father’s will; and he had been killed in action at Mars-la-Tour. My mother’s oldest sister had gone on the stage; her second sister, also older than she, had become a singer on the concert stage; my mother had married against his will.

For the operation, she was taken to Hamburg in Germany; and my grandfather, a stern, grenadier-like figure, had gone there to make the arrangements. He met the train at the station and was much surprised to find her sitting up in her compartment. In addition to his own carriage he had brought an ambulance for which there was no need. Without paying any attention to my father, he went up to his daughter, bent down to kiss her, and, seeing her wince with a sudden pain as she tried to rise, he picked her up bodily, to my amazement, and carried her through the station to his carriage. She was taken directly to the hospital.

On the third day, the operation was performed; and three weeks later my mother was sitting up again.

Meanwhile my father, I, and such servants as had been taken along were staying at one great hotel overlooking the inner basin of the Alster, a noble sheet of water in the heart of the city; my grandfather, at another. From the moment on when my mother was convalescent I spent, very naturally, much of my time at the hospital; and there I saw a good deal of my grandfather who, as a rule, was sitting rigidly in her room, on a straight-backed chair, without ever leaning back, though he often rested his chin on the gold knob of his cane. As far as I could see, he was content just to be there. When he came in, he invariably put his hand on my head, by way of greeting, while I, of course, jumped up and asked him how he did, sir.

But once I arrived after him; and even before I entered the room, I became aware of an agitated conversation going on inside. For a moment I listened; and then, realizing that I was not meant to hear, I knocked to make my presence known. What little I had heard gave me a profound shock. Not only did I infer that my grandfather advised my mother to get a divorce; I also heard him use words of my father which no gentleman can use of another while he considers him as being within the pale. As soon as my mother became aware of me, she checked the next outburst. I do not remember how I came to know anything of what followed; but I did know that, shortly after, before my mother left the hospital, large sums of money were transferred to her; and that she, in return, had to sign certain papers before a lawyer.

I also know somehow that my father was furious over this transaction to which he, too, had to attach his signature. Much later I came to the conclusion that the money made over to my mother was in lieu of what would have come to her at my grandfather’s death; and that the papers she had to sign were in the nature of a release waiving any further participation in her father’s estate; the transfer was probably made in such a way as to make it impossible for my father to touch the money.

I tried later to extract an explanation from my mother, telling her what I knew; but she put me off, adding that I had much better not get any ideas in my head which might prejudice me against my father. As I have said, she foresaw that sooner or later I should be dependent on him.

Nevertheless, I suspected henceforth that the division between my parents was much deeper than appeared on the surface. During the last few years, when our visits at home became both shorter and less frequent, it happened that I overheard harsh words between them; and there was, before we left Hamburg, at least one towering scene between my grandfather and my father, at our hotel where my grandfather had called almost formally. There was a sitting-room between our two bedrooms; and the scene took place there; that I was in the adjacent room neither of the two men knew, of course. I understood nothing; but I heard enough to know that the older man called the younger “sir”. While my father did nearly all the talking, my grandfather interrupted him a score of times with monosyllabic but explosive exclamations.

My grandfather left shortly after; and before he drove to the station, I was sent to call on him and to say good-bye. On this occasion he gave me a fine old watch which he recommended me not to carry just yet; but he wished me to have it as an heirloom. Within a decade I had to sell it in New York, to buy bread and butter for a few weeks.

Shortly, my mother and I went to one of the German island resorts in the North Sea, leaving it, however, very soon to go to a French resort, Trouville or Biarritz, which my francophile mother preferred. My father, I believe, went home.

I must have been about twelve years old at the time; for after that there was only one more visit home before the final one; and this last but one visit was made memorable to me in various ways. I will mention the pleasant way first. My mother was entirely her usual self; nobody would have thought that two or three years later she was to come home, mentally unbalanced and physically disfigured by disease, doomed to die, an old woman.

Her usual self she betrayed, among other things, by the superior way in which she at least tried to handle a serious scrape into which I got myself soon after our arrival.

Naturally, when at home, I spent a good deal of my time on the beach. My father was a landsman; he had never cared for the sea except as a feature of the landscape of Thurow. My mother, on the other hand, had the nostalgia for the elemental aspects of nature; she understood my passion for salt water. I was, by that time, an expert oarsman, a bold swimmer, and very self-reliant. Repeatedly I had gone out with the fishermen from a nearby fishing village; but there was no boat of our own.

One day, in unsettled weather, I went down to the beach very early in the morning, hoping to be able to go out with the fishermen; but they had left, utilizing the land-breeze which blew during the small hours of the night. I roamed about, scrutinizing the wreckage thrown ashore by the last west wind; and my random walk took me away from that part of the beach which lay in front of the house.

On a point of land far to the north, practically on the horizon, there stood a lighthouse; and for years it had been my ambition to go there and to examine it. The shore between the spot where I found myself at perhaps eight o’clock and the lighthouse curved around a deep bay; and I had already noticed that the distance across was no more than a third of the distance around, when I saw a small boat drawn up on the shingle; for the smooth, fine sand which formed the beach in view of the house ceased about a mile north, becoming first shingle, and finally rock.

The fishermen, I said to myself, had gone long ago; none of the larger boats was visible in the bay; it was most unlikely that this little craft would be needed. The village lay another mile or so ahead, behind the beach-crest, in a hollow sheltered from the winds. I looked about for an isolated hut to which this boat might belong but found none. Had I seen one, I should have gone to ask for permission to use the boat; as it was, I must frankly admit that I trusted to the fact that nobody, within a radius of miles from my father’s place, had ever objected to my using whatever I found that took my fancy; but, of course, I always returned things. I was the “young master”, son of the man who, in England, would have been called the squire; and most people were, if not fawning, yet friendly. I made up my mind to use the boat. The oars were in it.

But even at that I was careful to mark the point where it lay and the manner in which it was secured. A large stone served as an anchor, the boat being fastened to it by perhaps fifty feet of rope. The position of the boat was clearly indicated by two enormous spruces standing out from the woods beyond the beach.

I dragged the stone down to the boat, and by a supreme effort, lifted it into the bows. Picking up one of the oars lying on the thwarts I pushed myself off, surprised at the ease with which I succeeded in doing so. Then, sitting down on the middle thwart, I began to row across the bay, turning frequently, to hold a straight course for the lighthouse. The day was overcast, with a grey sky and practically no wind.

I had gone no more than a few hundred yards when, to my complete reassurance, I saw the tower of Thurow appearing above the trees. Taking my bearings, I found that the lighthouse, the place whence I had taken the boat, and the tower were in a straight line. That fact would help me to put the boat back where it belonged. With a will I settled down to the task of crossing the bay.

At home, of course, nobody knew where I had gone; but that did not worry me. Annette was still, more or less, responsible for my safety; but more in the sense that it was assumed I should not do anything which would cause her anxiety or which might expose her to inconvenient questions. When she was worried, I was apt to laugh at her; and she would say, “Boys will be boys,” shedding a tear, perhaps, over my recklessness, but always ready to condone anything I might do; it was never very wicked. Once, at Florence, when my mother held one of her musical afternoons, I had caused a serious disturbance by letting a frantic cat to whose tail I had tied pewter cups and pitchers, escape from me in to the drawing-room of the villa where the animal, rearing and furiously clawing at the monster she imagined to be pursuing her, caused a commotion. But Annette had not been able to do anything but bend over with laughter when she was supposed to be scolding me; the ladies, mostly members of the Florentine aristocracy, had been “too funny for anything”. I was very fond of Annette.

It took me perhaps two or three hours to cross the bay; and only when I had done so did things begin to happen. No sooner was I in line with the two points of land, the one on which the lighthouse stood and the other south of Thurow, than I became aware of two or three disturbing factors at once.

The first to attract my attention was the extraordinary rate of speed with which I began to move: the water to both sides of the boat was streaked and ridged with the current. The other was that the whole point consisted of smooth, sleek granite which offered no place for landing; the third, that there was nobody about anywhere. It was true, for a second I had caught sight of the lighthouse-keeper’s cottage; but bold rocks had intervened at once; and I knew that I was out of sight of anyone who might have come to the rescue.

Besides, I found myself in a narrows. There were rocky islands to the west. The current was setting straight north; and in the immediate proximity of the land, to my left, it was running with terrifying force. A glance over my shoulder showed me that the current would at least sweep me clear of the rocky islands, which served to explain the speed of the current.

I was now thoroughly alarmed; but I kept my head cool. The presence of the rocky islands and of the current running between them explained why it should have been found necessary to place the lighthouse where it stood. Every now and then I had a vision of being swept out, through the Sound, into the Kattegat and, through the Skagerrak, into the North Sea or the Atlantic, whence the Gulf Stream might take me into the Arctic Ocean. But behind the islets there were seemingly quiet backwaters. I began to manœuvre to get into them; and suddenly I felt the boat being caught in the backwash and irresistibly carried south, straight towards the rocks. But just before I expected the impact, the current turned again, sweeping me sideways, and then north again. There was half a minute during which the boat was in a spin, pivoting about a point below my seat on the mid thwart.

And then came relief. If the boat fought the current, the current also fought the boat; and presently it cast it forth, spewed it out as it were, into comparatively quiet water between land and mid-channel. I saw two steamers, one standing in, one out; and that, too, reassured me: I was on one of the main traffic lanes of the Baltic; if worse came to worst, I should be picked up. The lighthouse was still close at hand, too; I was not yet headed for the Kattegat.

Once more I settled down to a steady spell of rowing; and soon I convinced myself that here, outside of the islands, I was making progress southward. I could not see the tower of Thurow; and a strong current still held me back; but with every stroke of the oars the lighthouse seemed to move an inch or two north, a fact I could verify against the forest beyond. I pulled and pulled; and soon I found that, the farther I held to the west, outward, the better my progress; from which I inferred that the current was strongest inland, along the line which joined the two points of the bay.

I held southward for perhaps an hour before I turned east. By that time I was clear of the chaos of islets. Before I did turn, I rested for a few minutes. Though I was getting very tired, I was still far from the point of exhaustion.

And then, with a supreme effort, I pulled straight east, rowing as hard as I could. I was rewarded, for shortly, by signs which I could not have specified, I knew that the water in which I was, was that of the bay. At last I could rest without losing my southing.

I had no way to make sure of the time, for there was no sun. My watch I had left at home, as I always did when I went rambling. But the clock of my stomach told me that lunch-time was past. At that my conscience smote me; if Annette did not matter, my mother did.

I went at it again and pulled now for the line joining lighthouse and tower; for to my great joy the tower had come into sight again. Then I held to that line; and after hours of endeavour I recognized the two trees which were my landmark for the anchoring place of the boat. Before I reached it, a wind sprang up, and a squall hit me with drenching rain. But the wind helped; wind and waves now drove me shoreward; and to my infinite relief I at last touched bottom.

I pulled the boat up on the shingle beach as far as I could, utilizing the lift of every wave which came from behind. When the craft was at last clear of the water, I beached the anchor stone and dragged it up as far as the rope allowed.

Then I struck for home, now walking, now running. I approached the house via the lawns, but took care not to expose myself to the view from the windows. I need not have troubled; nobody was watching for me on this side.

I reached the terrace and made for the great door which was panelled with glass. Inside the door were the cloak-rooms and, beyond, another glass door. Through these two doors I commanded a view of the hall to the great fireplace where a huge fire was roaring up the chimney; and there, in a deep arm-chair, my mother was quietly sitting and reading a yellow, paper-bound, French book. She did not look worried.

I gave a caper of satisfaction; but I was wet through and did not care to show myself to her in that state. I made up my mind not to say a word to anyone about where I had been and what dangers I had lived through. Why scare the women, if only ex-post-facto?

I circled the house, entered by the back-door, ran up the service stairs, and made for the tower. Annette was just coming from my room.

At sight of me she stopped dead and burst into tears.

“Cry-baby!” I said and brushed past her.

I quickly changed clothes from head to foot, leaving my wet things strewn over the floor to serve Annette right.

Then, my watch-chain coquettishly draped over my chest, I jauntily descended into the hall, greeting my mother in the most casual way, and went and kissed her.

“Whence this demonstrativeness?” she asked, smiling at me.

“Oh!” I said airily, “just so”; threw myself down in a chair opposite hers, and added, “Tell me a story,” to disguise the fact that I might have told a story myself.

The sequel came the next day.

It was threshing-time; and there was a new steam-engine on the place, together with a threshing machine. So far, threshing had been done by horse-power, a team being hitched to a pole and driven in a circle.

Naturally, every male on the place, including myself, was in the field where the puffing monster was at work. My father was there, too, on horseback, and with him were a number of our neighbours, several of them being titled people. All the “volunteers”, as the young apprentices in management were called, were also there: it was quite an imposing cavalcade.

The threshing machine spewed the straw high up into the air whence it fell like rain, forming a shapeless stack, the finer chaff drifting away on the breeze.

It was a marvellous midsummer day following a fierce wind-storm that had blown overnight, pelting and washing the world with streams of rain. That was the reason why threshing had not started till after lunch. Around the ever-growing straw-stack scores of children from the village were playing wildly. I was sitting on the ground, profoundly impressed with the miracle of the puffing engine.

It must have been five o’clock when I saw Annette coming across the field. The humpbacked “inspector”, mounted on a pony, to whom she spoke, broke rank a moment later and came galloping across to where I sat. This inspector always amused me. He was very long-legged; but his upper body was short, consisting as it did of two spheres, the larger his body, with the smaller, his head, balanced above it; for he exhibited the rare phenomenon of a man with two humps, one in front and one behind; he could rest his chin on his chest. Though he was by no means an old man, his globular head was without a trace of hair.

I saw he was heading for me; so I greeted him with a laugh. “Hello, Niels,” or whatever his name was.

“You’re wanted at the castle,” he said in Swedish; “your mother wants you.”

Though I never learned to speak Swedish well, for the language of the house, at least when my mother was at home, was English, I understood and jumped up to join Annette.

“What does Mother want?” I asked as we set out for the house.

“I don’t know,” she said. “There’s an ugly fellow with her, one of the fishermen from the village. He’s threatening her. That much I made out.”

My heart missed a beat; I knew at once that it must be something to do with the boat. “See you later,” I said to Annette and broke into a run.

When I reached the house, I made at once for the hall.

My mother was sitting in her favourite arm-chair; and opposite her stood a short, grim man with white hair—on which reposed a sou’wester without a neck-guard, which had been torn off—and a dirty-white fanbeard stained below the chin with tobacco. His attitude was anything but respectful; and as I entered, he was spitting into the fireplace.

From the dining-room a trim maid was wheeling the tea-wagon in, with all the paraphernalia of afternoon tea.

“Sit down, Mr. Sterner,” I heard my mother say. “You’ll have a cup of tea, won’t you?” Like myself, my mother spoke only a broken Swedish, though she understood it perfectly.

“Thank you kindly, madam,” said the stranger with the air of a lord. “I prefer to stand. It wouldn’t be fitting for the likes of me to sit down in a place like this. As for the tea, I didn’t come for anything of the kind. I came for cold cash.”

I could have knocked his head off for the sneering tone in which he spoke; but one did not fight before ladies. I glared at him instead, as much as to say, “Just come outside with me. I’ll blacken your eye for you.”

“That’s the young gentleman,” he said with a baleful look, putting a world of sarcasm into the last word. “You pay up, or I’ll have the law of him.”

“Of a child?” my mother asked mildly.

“Of the child’s father,” said the man.

“As I said, Mr. Sterner,” replied my mother, “I’d rather spare my husband the annoyance. And you, a lawsuit,” she added, smiling. “For I can assure you that, unless you can prove my son to have been at fault, my husband will refuse to compromise.”

“At fault!” the old man blustered. “He took the boat. He was seen. It wasn’t his boat, was it? We plain people call that stealing.”

It was the first time in my life that I ran up against this profound division in the social order; but I understood it at once. This man felt aggrieved; justly aggrieved, perhaps; and I had no doubt that my mother had already offered to do the fair thing by way of compensation. Nor had I any doubt that, had I been the son of a fellow fisherman, he would have been satisfied with anything that could be called fair. But here was the rub: I was the squire’s son; and he was itching for a fight with the squire. As he would have said, he had him where he wanted him. All this I saw even before I knew of the most damaging fact which came out in answer to the first thing I said.

“Well, I borrowed the boat; I thought no harm.”

“Borrowed the boat!” he repeated, with the emphasis this time on the first word. “Borrowing means returning. You stole it.”

“I did return it. I put it back exactly where I took it.”

“Where is it, then, young gentleman? Can you tell me that?”

“If it’s not where I found it, I can’t,” I said.

“Found it!” he repeated out of a vast scorn. “It was tied to a stone. That wasn’t finding.”

I was getting angry, more at his tone even than at his implications. “I never untied it; and when I put it back, I carried the stone up on the beach as far as the rope would let me.”

“That’s just what I say you didn’t. Or it would be there.”

My mother who had poured the tea held up a cup. “You are sure you won’t take anything, Mr. Sterner?”

“Quite sure, madam. Thank you kindly.”

“Now tell me, Mr. Sterner,” she went on evenly. “What does a boat like that cost new?”

“That isn’t the point,” the old man prevaricated. “I need the boat, and I haven’t got it. I’m losing money.”

“And you won’t take less than five hundred kroner?”

“Not an oere less.”

“As I said,” my mother proceeded. “I haven’t that much of my own in the house. Will you take an order on my bank at Lund?”

“I will not, madam.”

“In that case, I don’t see what I can do.”

“You can send for the master.”

But I knew that that was exactly what my mother wished to avoid; it frightened her. I was furious but impotent.

“I’ll tell you what I will do, Mr. Sterner,” my mother said. “I shall have the cash for you by tomorrow morning at ten.”

“How much now?”

“Nothing!” I cried before my mother could answer.

He glared at me; but, strangely, my mother confirmed what I had said, though she did not speak fiercely. “Listen, Mr. Sterner,” she said. “You come back tomorrow morning at ten. My husband will be at home then, too. If I don’t have the full sum, you can see him. I wouldn’t now know where to send for him.”

The old man considered for a moment, spitting again. I began to suspect that he thought it as well himself not to let it come to a meeting between him and my father. He was holding my father only as a threat over my mother; and I despised him for it. And then he showed an unexpected shrewdness.

“Very well, madam,” he said less grimly. “Where’ll I go and whom’ll I ask for?”

My mother smiled. “I may not be down myself yet,” she said. “Come to the back-door and ask for Annette.”

The old man nodded and actually tipped his sou’wester as he stalked away.

“The dirty beggar!” I cried as soon as the door had closed on his back. Then, turning to my mother, I spoke very quickly. “It was the wind, of course, overnight. I drew that boat up as far as it would go; higher up than it had been. It was quite out of the water. If the undertow was strong enough to break the rope, that rope can’t have been much good. By the way, I’m almost sure, Mother, the boat never cost even one hundred kroner.”

“Likely not,” she said. “But you see, he may be right in what he says, that he needs the boat for his work. He makes his living by the boat.”

“I never thought...”

“I know,” said my mother. “Run along. I’m not scolding you. But I’m afraid, if your father knew, he’d fly off.”

“He’d flog me,” I said. “Let him.”

“My dear boy, you’d live through it, I suppose. But I couldn’t bear it. You’ll understand one day. As I said, run along.”

I did. I should have liked to return to the scene of the threshing; but I went to the beach instead, running. I wanted to see the broken rope.

The beach showed all the signs of having been swept by waves to an unusual height; and it was covered with ridge after ridge of fresh kelp.

But there was no broken rope; nor was there the stone to which it had been tied. A drag-mark led from the point where it had lain to the water’s edge and beyond. Looking out over the bay, I almost at once saw the boat, between half a mile and a mile out, where it floated in a peculiar way, with its nose down. It struck me that this seemed to point to trickery.

I was on the point of returning home to fetch help; but, in view of the threshing there might be none but women at the house. Even Karl, my father’s valet, had been at the threshing machine. A steam-engine to thresh grain was still enough of a novelty to draw every male. The fat old butler, of course, could be of no use to me.

For a moment I pondered; then I stripped and ran out into the water. The bottom dropped rapidly here; this was not sand but shingle which rests at a steeper angle. Within a few yards from shore I was beyond my depth.

I held straight for the boat and reached it in half an hour’s strenuous swimming; there was still a swell; but it did not trouble me.

I had no difficulty in boarding the boat, though I had to climb over the stern which stood high out of the water. Carefully I crawled into the bows. Sure enough, the anchor-stone was hanging from its rope. After I had taken it around to the wider stern, it was easy to haul it in, hand over hand, till it came to the surface. It was not so easy to lift it clear, with a swaying bottom below me; but I managed.

I promptly rowed back to the shore, let the breeze partially dry me, and dressed. Meanwhile I was thinking. My first intention had been to go to the village and to fetch the man. On second thought, however, I saw that I needed a witness.

It took me a minute or so to make up my mind. The whistle which proclaimed a stop in the threshing operations helped me to come to a decision. I was going to get someone from the field to come along.

Chance favoured me. The field lay directly behind a fringe of wood. I had hardly run through the latter, at right angles to the beach, when I came out into a lane skirting that field; and in that lane the “inspector” was coming from the north at a slow gallop.

I held up my hand; and when the man drew to a stop, I explained, speaking very fast, what I was after.

“I’ll go with you, young Herr,” he said; and he helped me to mount behind him.

It was slow riding through the woods, for there was no path. But as soon as we were on the beach, we broke into a trot. I showed the inspector the boat, with the oars in it, and the stone as well.

We went north. Meanwhile I explained what had happened at the house, and Niels showed quick comprehension. He saw the implications of the old man’s threats. “It’s nothing short of blackmail,” he said grimly.

We reached the village, a few hundred yards inland, hidden and sheltered by the crest of the beach. It lay just outside my father’s domain; and I, having never been there, was appalled at the signs of poverty which I saw.

But the inspector said, in a tone which brooked no contradiction, “Better let me speak for you.”

The first hut we came to was Sterner’s; and an old woman came to the door as the inspector shouted, “Hello, there!” Seeing us, she promptly turned back; and a moment later her husband appeared.

“Well?” he asked, “Bringing the money?”

“Much money you’re going to get!” Niels said scornfully. “Be glad if I don’t put you behind iron bars. Come along. We’ve something to show you.”

“I want my money,” the old man replied. “I’m not going to go with you.”

“You’d better. If you don’t, I’ll have to have the police in. It’s your last chance to settle this peacefully.”

The old man looked frightened. He scratched his ear; and then he fell into step. I should have felt sorry for him had I not by this time been convinced that the whole thing had been a trick. Strangely, without being very clear about it in my mind, I resented most that the relation between my father and my mother should have been so well known as to make it possible for the old man to take advantage of it.

Niels I half admired; and half I despised him for siding so absolutely with his employers.

We reached the boat.

“There’s your pile of rubbish,” Niels said. “If anyone offers you ten kroner for it, you’d better jump at the chance.”

“The oars alone are worth ten kroner,” said the old man sullenly.

Niels snorted. “Now listen, my man,” he went on. “Let me hear that you’ve bothered either the lady of the castle again or this young gentleman, and I’ll tell you what I’ll do to you. The old hag, your woman, won’t gather faggots in the woods next fall.”

The old man’s face fell. It was the perquisite of the women in the fishing village to gather their firewood for the winter from the ground in the woods belonging to the manor. The families directly connected with the work in nursery and farm—they lived in a separate village owned by my father—were supplied with more solid fuel in lieu of payment for the work they did in felling it. There was a trained forester on the place who supervised that part of the economy of the estate. In rank, he stood on a par with the inspector, who was his son-in-law.

The old man’s attitude changed abruptly to a cringing submission. “Thank you kindly,” he said. “You won’t have cause. But without a boat I’m without bread.” He removed his sou’wester and bowed to me. “Thank you kindly, young master, for having returned the boat.”

“That’s nothing,” I said. “I returned it once before; and then you pushed it back into the water yourself, dragging the stone. I borrowed the boat and I returned it; but I mean to pay you for its hire nevertheless.” I tossed him a krone which I happened to have in my pocket.

He bowed after us as we rode away.

It was getting late; no doubt Annette was worried again at my absence; and everybody in the house was dressing for dinner.

When, at sundown, we came to the corner of the woods behind which lay the lawns, the inspector stopped his horse, saying, “Well, that’s that. You’d better dismount here and slip in unobserved. No use creating talk.”

“None whatever,” I agreed, jumping to the ground. “And thank you kindly!” The last words I spoke in the old man’s manner; and the inspector laughed.

When I reached my room, Annette was there, laying out my clothes; for, though I was not yet allowed to sit at the dinner table, at night, but took my meal by myself in a small room upstairs, I was required to change.

“I want to see Mamma,” I said.

“You’ll be late.”

“Doesn’t matter. I’ve something important to tell her.”

And I ran down to the gallery whence, without further preliminaries, I burst into my mother’s dressing-room which was not locked.

She had just been put into her corset—an operation of which I had heard the servants speak among themselves. She was a massive woman, no longer slender; and it required the combined strength of two maids to lace her up. As I burst in, she was standing in the centre of the room, her arms raised, her breast heaving in the endeavour to restore circulation within her armour. Her maid stood ready to slip her gown over her head, for which purpose she had stepped on a chair; the girl who had been acting as reinforcement was on the point of leaving the room. Both gasped at this intrusion of a male; but my mother laughed.

“Mamma!” I cried, blushing at finding her in her state of undress. “Don’t worry over the money for that old fellow. I found his boat. And I got the inspector to come with me as a witness. I even paid him for having used the thing.”

“Did you?” she said. “Well, that was good. You must tell me all about it. But now run along so I can finish.”

I did. Naturally, this was a major event in my young life. But it was shortly followed by another.

It was only a few days later; and threshing was not yet finished when my father, at noon, came in late for luncheon, in riding breeches and the cavalry gaiters which he used to wear.

“Well,” he said as soon as he had sat down. “That fool Karline got himself fired. You know what he did?” This to my mother. “There the machine was just running at its best, when he pitched his fork into it, bundle and all. It went clean through the whole works before we could stop the engine.”

From the far end of the table, my mother looked up. “Does that put an end to the work?”

“No. Niels thinks we can go on. But, of course, we should make repairs overnight. I should send to town for spare parts. Trouble is I can spare neither horses nor man.”

“Well,” said my mother, “there are my hackneys. You’d send a democrat, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes, I’d send a democrat. It’d be all right for the hackneys ...”

By this time I knew, from many signs, that my father had heard of the incident with the boat. He had made sly remarks which had convinced me of the fact. He had not spoken to me directly; but he had dragged occasions in by their hair to mention fishing boats and old, irate fishermen; he had even gone so far as to mention the old man’s name, in some quite arbitrary connection, and to use the word “blackmail” immediately after; like this: “Oh yes, there’s pretty good fishing right along the shore. Especially for old man Sterner. He’s got a way of blackmailing the poor fish into his nets.” And whenever he had done so, he had had a surreptitious eye on me or my mother. Yet I inferred from his humour that the part I had played in the adventure had raised me in his estimation. My mother never gave a sign that she understood his allusions; and neither did I. But some of the “volunteers” invariably laughed.

This change in his attitude towards me encouraged me now to say what, without it, I should never have dared.

“I can drive the hackneys.”

There was a dead silence around the table, as if I had committed blasphemy.

“I think he can, Charles,” my mother said at last.

“Well-l-l. I’d thought of it. I’d like to see him drag a boat up on the beach, though, before I trust him. But perhaps you’ve done that, too, sir?”

“I wouldn’t deny it,” I said. “More than once. At least twice. And it was a fishing dory at that.”

“Was it?” my father asked, looking directly at me, so that I had to blush. “Well, it doesn’t take as much muscular power to hold the horses’ lines. Do you know which way a horse goes when you pull on the right?”

“I do, sir. They go where I want them to go. I’ve driven the hackneys before. And other horses. But especially the hackneys, taking mother out. She always lets me drive when I’m along.”

“Yes,” he said, “but then she serves as a sort of stone-anchor, doesn’t she?”

“Maybe. But even a stone-anchor doesn’t seem to hold a boat when it wants to run away. And where you want to send me, there are hitching-posts.”

“Right,” said my father. “If there had been a hitching-post for the boat, as there should have been, and a chain and a lock, it wouldn’t have gone gallivanting across the bay.”

With that, he dropped the subject for the moment.

In rising from luncheon, however, my father touched my shoulder and led the way through the hall to the office at the rear of the house where his consultations with inspector, factor, or lawyer were held.

Niels was there, sitting at the desk and making out a list from notes in his note-book. He looked very ludicrous, for he had put two dictionaries under, as I called it, his “sit-upon”.

I was given my instructions. I was to drive to town, rest the horses for half an hour while I attended to my business at the implement shop, and then to bring back what would be handed out to me, according to the inspector’s list.

A groom with my father’s horse was waiting at the back-door. He mounted and gave me and the inspector a sign to come along. We set off for the stables.

These stables formed, with the barns, a huge quadrangle a quarter of a mile behind the house. I felt very important, of course; it was the first time that I was going to drive the hackneys alone.

They were in a paddock; and my father sat by as a stable-hand caught them to lead them in and to put the harness on their backs. A few minutes later they were hooked to the democrat.

I climbed up on the seat and waited for the order to start.

“Now listen here, sonny,” said my father on his prancing horse. “Don’t walk them; but don’t let them run, either. You know the road. It should take you two and a half hours each way. Half an hour’s rest.” And he looked at his watch. “So you should be back at half-past seven.”

“All right, sir,” I said and clicked my tongue.

The horses tossed their heads and were off. I knew that my father was critically looking after me.

As I said, I felt very important; I was not yet fourteen.

The road led southward, past the east line of the estate; and I turned into it through the huge gates which were open. I gave the horses the reins, and they fell into an easy trot. I knew these were pedigreed animals which were never allowed to run themselves into a lather; I meant to show that I could be trusted.

For nearly two hours I drove with the greatest care, mostly through woods, timing myself by such houses as I passed and whose approximate distance from home was known to me.

And then, just as the road emerged from the woods, running now between open fields, something disastrous happened. There, in the middle of the road, lay an unfolded newspaper; and at the very moment when the horses reached it, already made suspicious by the white patch, the breeze lifted the paper and blew it into a perpendicular position. Both horses reared on their hind-feet and ran away. There was no checking them; they gripped the road and tore along in tremendous bounds. Within a few minutes they were flinging the lather to right and left. To this day I do not believe that even a grown person of the tremendous strength of my father could have held them.

On the other hand, there was no great danger so long as the horses kept on the road; and the road was straight and remained straight right into the city. In the city, I should, of course, be in constant danger of running people down. Besides, the democrat, a light vehicle, was being thrown from side to side by every stone a wheel encountered; shortly I should have to pass through a gate in the ancient fortifications surrounding the city. There, the pavement would be of cobblestones which would multiply the side-thrusts.

I knew the approach to the city well. To either side of the road there was a lake or pond—remains, I believe, of ancient moats. I had, of course, never been in them; but I said to myself, excited as I was, that, if I saw a chance of driving the horses right into the water, that would effectively stop them. I was still hoping that I should get them under control without so extreme a measure when the gleam of water came in sight far ahead.

And then I saw my chance. The ditch to my right was shallow; and just as we were on the point of entering upon the dam between the two lakes, I pulled as hard as I could on the right line, standing up and bracing one foot against the dash-board. It worked. The horses dashed into the water, which splashed over my head, though it was quite shallow. A moment later the animals stood.

I gave them ten minutes to recover their breath; but their flanks were still heaving when I turned them back to the road. They were docile as lambs; but I knew, of course, that now there was great danger from a chill.

I went on into the city, found the address, asked a lounger to watch my horses for a moment, and ran into the office of the place. Having told the clerk who I was and handed him the slip with the list of numbered parts that were wanted, I ran out again to walk the horses to and fro, driving them slowly.

In a few minutes the repair parts were ready for me; and I drove up to the loading platform of the shop to receive them.

Then, instead of giving the horses the half hour’s rest, I drove out of town, the way I had come, and, timing myself, kept them at a walk for an hour. It was shortly after five.

Slowly they dried. They seemed quite recovered. At last I judged it safe to trot them again; and, watching out for the point whence they had bolted, drove on somewhat faster. But when I saw the paper, which had simply flopped over, I stopped, alighted, and ran to pick it up. There was barely a breath of wind; and I wondered at the wickedness of chance which had made the sheets rise at the precise moment when it could do harm. I may have borrowed the expression, but I have come to call that “the malice of the object”. I folded the paper up, as exhibit A, and put it in my pocket.

Then I went on again. The hair of the horses was now completely dry; but, of course, since the moisture consisted of sweat, it was patterned in wisps. They needed a good brushing-down which I should have given them, to return to the yard in full glory, but I had neither brush nor curry-comb.

It was slightly after seven when I turned in through the gates of Thurow. In the yard, there was a tremendous commotion. Work for the day had been stopped; for, after all, as I heard later, it had, around five o’clock, been found impossible to go on using the machine without first making repairs.

Wonder of wonders, the steam-engine was travelling and pulling the threshing machine. A cavalcade of riders and an army of children accompanied it. I felt sorry for myself at having missed the show.

A moment later I saw my father detaching himself from the cavalcade, sitting his huge Dane like a centaur, and coming to meet me at a ponderous gallop. I drew my horses in; and he, having come to a stop, a few yards from their heads, eyed them with a baleful flicker. I could see at a glance that he was in one of those black moods which made people tremble before him.

He asked no question; he did not give me a chance to explain; he simply manoeuvred his horse alongside the democrat, reached over with one powerful hand, gathered my collar into his grip, lifted me bodily from the seat and laid me across his horse’s neck, where he began to belabour me with his riding-crop, within sight of two hundred people, grown-ups and children.

I gave no sound but gritted my teeth.

Having finished with me, he dropped me to the ground, hissed, “Now go to the house!” and turned away.

I did not go to the house but hid away in some disused shed to master the tears of rage which had come at last. I did not even feel any pain from the flogging I had received. But I was not going to show myself at the house in the state I was in.

That was the end of my acquaintance with the man my father had been. When, after my mother’s death, I was, for a few years, thrown back upon him, he was vastly changed; but of that I must speak later.

When I did go to the house, late at night, I was fully composed and could act as if nothing had happened. I even admired my mother when, as was her custom, at home and abroad, she showed herself to me before going down for dinner. I kissed her and smiled. She looked unusually fine in a gown of gold-coloured brocade, with a great pearl necklace about her throat; for there were guests for dinner. My father had invited the cavalcade.

But after dinner I sought her out in the hall where the company was assembled for the demi-tasse and liqueurs. I plucked her wide sleeves.

“Mother,” I whispered, “I’ve got to see you.”

“All right,” she said. “Where?”

“Upstairs. In the gallery or in your boudoir.”

“I’ll be up in fifteen minutes,” she said; I could see she knew that this was a crisis.

I waited for her in the gallery; when she came, the train of her gown as usual over her left arm, she put her hand on my right shoulder, walking to the left of me. Thus we went along the whole length of the gallery to her boudoir. Opening the door, she pushed me ahead of her; and when she had entered, she turned the key.

It was a strange fact that, whenever we were at home, my mother and I were very much closer to each other than when we were abroad; in spite of the fact that abroad we were alone, apart from servants. I felt that this was because we were facing a common enemy. Abroad, there were too many distractions.

Undoubtedly it was this mutual understanding, this common sympathy which inspired me to do what, under the circumstances, was the exactly right thing to do. Perhaps I should say that, during the last few hours, I had vastly matured.

I told her exactly what had happened, without comment or adornment; though I believe I let it be seen I was proud of the fact that I had proved myself equal to handling a difficult situation—difficult at least for a boy.

When, in my narration, I had reached the point where, on my way home, I stopped to pick up the paper and remove it from the ground before driving over the spot a second time, I drew the folded sheets out of my pocket. She nodded, muttering to herself. I could readily see that, for the moment, she was more excited than I. No doubt she divined that I should not be telling her all this with the air of detachment which characterized my recital unless something catastrophic were to follow; and no doubt my own rising tension as I approached the climax, clenching my fists in the effort to control my nerves, imparted itself to her; and she inferred that a proud child’s innermost feelings, his very spiritual chastity, as it were, had been outraged. Throughout the tale I remained standing, only half facing her and speaking to the air.

When the climax came, I saw from the tail of my eye how she was stiffening herself to receive the shock. By that time I could not entirely suppress a sob; but I went on without a break, and my words were perfectly matter-of-fact. I did not characterize my father’s action by any epithet. I merely let it be understood that he had not asked for a word of explanation.

I felt that, for the moment, my mother and I were a unity; we revolted against a portion of the outside world in one common impulse of passionate rebellion.

When I had finished, she sat speechless for a long while, pale and distraught. I knew my own crisis had become hers. I was desperately trying to keep a balance between her and me.

It was several minutes before she spoke. Meanwhile she was rising out of her arm-chair and stood like a statue, the train of her gown once more over her arm. The tension between us was enormous.

Then, sounding almost hostile, her words came; the tone, I knew, was due solely to the intense endeavour not to let her emotions run away with her.

“What do you intend to do?” she asked.

I shrugged my shoulders. “That’s what I wanted to see you about. I cannot remain here.”

“No,” she said. Then, bending her head as if in thought, she went to the door and stood there, the fingers of her right hand playing about the key. It was with the effect of a sudden clearing of her mind in an irrevocable resolution that she turned the key and, putting her hand on the knob, faced me. “Remain in your room until I send Annette to call you. It may not be until tomorrow afternoon. I do not want you to meet your father. We shall leave together.”

I was appalled. “But, mother ...”

She shook her head. “It had to come to this. It doesn’t matter.”

And, opening the door, she left me alone.

I remained behind for a few minutes and then did as she had told me to do. On the way to my room I was, of course, able to look down into the hall where I saw her standing in the centre of a group of men, one of whom was talking to her: a neighbour of ours, an old nobleman. She was smiling as she listened to him; nothing betrayed that she had just gone through a crisis which was to determine the brief remainder of her life. I, though not yet fourteen, had become a man.

Yet I could have wished for nothing better than to meet my father and, in a very cool and distant manner, to settle accounts with him; which perhaps proved that I was still very much a boy ...

But we did not leave next day.

That night I could not sleep. It must have been in the early morning hours, around two or three o’clock, when I felt, since I was not to go out in daytime, that I must take leave of park and woods and beach at night. I only partly dressed, pulling on a pair of trousers over my night-wear; and I descended into the hall. I did not go out at once. As usual, there were night-lights burning everywhere; and the front door, I knew, remained unlocked; since my own birth, with the ensuing thunderstorm and fire, my mother insisted, whenever she was at home, that the main door remain open.

All about, through the windows, the light of a bright moon shone in. Everything looked weird and unfamiliar as, with bare feet, I walked through the rooms. Throughout the house, there was not a sound.

Then, in one of the drawing-rooms, I came across a circular silver tray on a low table. On the tray stood two glasses and a bottle. Casually I picked the latter up, drew the cork, and smelt at the contents. It was port wine, which I knew; for a year or two earlier, I had had a small glass twice a day, prescribed as a tonic. The bottle was almost full.

I touched the glasses and found they had not been used.

I felt myself very much a man. Yet I was sorely troubled. I knew that what had happened was by this very time drawing wider and wider circles. It had involved the only woman who counted in my life. That that woman was my mother, what did it matter? Metaphorically I had to draw my sword and to defend her. By this time I felt feverish; not for a moment did it occur to me that the fever might be physical.

I had to steady my nerves. And what did a man do when his nerves needed steadying?

I poured myself a glass of wine and tossed it off. Since it went to my head instantly, I followed it up by another; in the very way in which I had seen—of all people—my father do it. It made me feel adventurous and bold. In this very room I had seen my father play chess with resplendent women. I loathed my father; but at the same time I imitated him, sitting down in a chair and bending forward from my hip, over the white marble arm and the bare bosom of my imaginary vis-à-vis, throwing her flashing glances. Again I poured a glass; and I raised it and clinked its brim against that of my conquest. No. I was not imitating my father; I was parodying him and his pompous manner when he acted the conqueror; pompous, smooth, and confident at the same time.

At last, no doubt swaying by this time, I went out on the terrace, for the air inside was not wide and open enough to contain my vast and cynical contempt. I went on to the steps and sat down, drawing my feet up into my dressing-gown, for the stone was cold. But inside I was burning with a strange heat; I could have sung or shouted. I gesticulated grandiosely. And there I emptied the bottle which I had taken along; at least it was found empty next morning.

So was I found, lying on the bare flagstones, burning with fever. Before the day was out, scarlatina had declared itself.

I was isolated, of course; but not all alone. My mother and two nurses brought from the city were with me; and apart from them and Annette nobody was allowed near, Annette serving as liaison-officer between kitchen and tower. The doctor, of course, came daily; but his was the only strange face I saw for weeks. Through him, my mother had conveyed a message to my father, to say that life and death depended on his keeping away; for in my delirium, which was severe, I talked of nothing but the challenge I had sent him; I yelled that he must accept it in the manner of medieval barons.

Even as I recovered and finally was allowed out of bed, my mother and I remained isolated with doctor and nurses. The fiction was kept up that I was not yet out of danger.

As a matter of fact, serious trouble developed with my ears—a trouble to which I owe my deafness today. But that very trouble made it desirable that we should move as soon as possible; for the doctor recommended that a specialist be consulted—an authority at Copenhagen, Hamburg, Paris, or London.

The manner in which our departure was handled may seem cruel or vindictive. Nobody knew of it beforehand. My mother had all her things brought over into the room above mine, Annette and the maid doing the work.

One morning, after my father had left the house, the baggage was taken down and loaded into a democrat which had been summoned. The landau had been ordered for the early afternoon, all those employed by Annette being told that secrecy was to be observed with regard to these preparations. My mother never, in my hearing, gave any direct indication that this was to be a flight; but Annette, for one, understood her to that effect.

Again it was not to be.

The baggage was on the way to the city; and so were the nurses and the maid; only my mother, myself, and Annette were still behind when my father appeared in the tower and demanded an interview with my mother, who peremptorily denied him access; I was aware of her bracing herself for a supreme effort.

But my father had the whip-hand; he threatened to countermand the order for the landau. He had seen the democrat leaving for the city and had ridden across the fields to ask for the meaning of this trip. Seeing my mother’s maid, he had guessed what it meant and come straight home.

My mother, who had negotiated with him through the locked door, stood for a moment, tense and white.

At last she said, “I’ll be out. I’ll see you in my room.”

It was within half an hour of luncheon. I, of course, remained behind; and shortly Annette brought me a tray. But I was far too excited to eat.

An hour went by; two hours. I heard the wheels of the landau rattling over the flagstones of the terrace.

I also heard the usual company of “volunteers” departing on their various errands.

By leaning out of my front window, I could see the carriage, with the coachman sitting bolt upright on his seat, and a groom standing in front of the impatient horses, the hackneys, which, every now and then, struck sparks from the stone of the pavement, pawing. Obviously, my father had missed his meal, which testified to the seriousness of the situation; obviously, too, this was advertising the crisis rather than concealing it. Annette, pale and nervous, was pacing the floor of the room behind me. By order of my mother she had locked the door even when she went for my lunch. She herself had had nothing to eat.

A third hour went by; and still the horses were standing down there, with the groom at their heads; and the coachman was, now and then, humping over, only to straighten his back again with a jerk.

It was after four o’clock when doors were opened and shut from the gallery. A moment later there was a knock at my door.

“All right,” said my mother’s voice sharply.

Annette sprang to open.

My mother was followed by a lackey whom, by a motion of her hand, she directed to pick up the half-dozen pieces of hand-baggage strewing the floor. She was excessively pale.

“Come, Phil,” she said as the lackey had passed through the door.

At this moment I heard the clatter of a heavy horse’s iron-shod hoofs on the pavement of the terrace: such as only one of my father’s Danes could produce. He was riding into the woods or the fields. Somewhere the threshing machine was humming once more in the distance.

Annette was hurriedly getting into her wraps which had been lying on my bed.

“Aren’t you ready, Annette?” my mother asked impatiently.

“Yes, madam,” she said.

And my mother led the way.

We emerged on the gallery; and an unexpected scene of striking significance burst upon us. The grand stairway was not central; it led down from the south wing of the gallery; and there, in the hall, the servants were gathering.

When my mother, in her travelling clothes, with a dark-blue veil floating out from her masculine Fedora hat, descended the steps, a lane formed among the servants. Many of them were tearful; half a dozen, males these, stood with stony faces. My mother nodded to them all, individually; and twice she stopped to hold out her hand, once to the old butler who bowed deeply, once to the ancient white-haired housekeeper who bent to kiss her ungloved hand.

It was a grand exit; and everybody felt it to be a final exit; my mother was leaving the place for good; what was more, she was definitely leaving her husband. This was understood; and the feeling of finality sent a lump into my throat.

A footman was holding the door as she stopped to draw on her glove.

Then we proceeded to the waiting carriage and took our seats, my mother and I side by side on the back seat; Annette facing us.

I left behind me one of my three lives, a life consisting of episodic snatches, repeated at first every year, then at lengthening intervals, but nevertheless beloved.

As I said, I had seen the last of the man my father had been, the proud, imperious and magnificent, if brutal man. When I was to see him again, he was broken in body and spirit, living, no longer in the present, but the past.

I had seen the last of the man; but I was shortly to have one more experience of his sardonic humour.

We missed our train and had to stay in the town overnight.

But next day we proceeded and in due time reached Hamburg where, this time, it was I who went to the hospital to undergo an operation. It was probably due to a still undeveloped technique that the operation cost me every trace of hearing in the left ear and seriously impaired the hearing in the other, though, up to my middle fifties, I remained able to carry on classes in teaching; and even after that the world did not, for another decade, become entirely silent to me.

The early months of the following year we spent at Paris. Of what we did when we were abroad I shall speak in the next chapter; here I must wind up the present phase in my relation to my father in which, I cannot deny, he had the last word.

But in order to explain, I must reach back once more.

One day, during the early part of our last stay at home, and before the catastrophic events recorded, we had been in the city, all three of us. What the occasion was I have long since forgotten. The stay lasted two or three days; and we had taken up quarters in the hotel which served the land-owners of the vicinity.

One afternoon, my mother had gone out in the carriage, to make calls; my father was conferring with some lawyer or factor, on business. I was free to do as I pleased; not even Annette was there to interfere with me.

Now I had recently become very anxious to grow a moustache. Considering that I was only thirteen, this was perhaps a premature ambition; but I have always been precocious.

So, in the early afternoon, I sought out, as I had done before, the best barber-shop and had myself shaved. The barber who attended to me knew me; and he also knew the size of my tips; so it was only natural that he should have treated the occasion as quite a matter of course.

Unfortunately, my father, having finished his business, or perhaps not having begun it, felt in need of a hair-cut: like myself he was blessed with a superabundant growth of hair which remained ungreyed until he was seventy-six. At the time he was only seventy-two or three and looked forty-five.

He saw me the moment he entered; but he gave no sign of recognition. This was all right; when gentlemen meet in a compromising place, they act as if they did not see each other.

But as he sat down, he drew his bushy eyebrows up into an arch and looked at my reflection in the mirror. I frowned; I did not consider that good form. In my opinion, he might, with perfect propriety, have spoken to me, accepting the situation without comment. What he had done on entering was equally correct, of course. But his half-wink was decidedly out of place.

If he wanted to wink at me, then his very silence made the situation embarrassing; for he was known in the establishment as the squire of Thurow; and I was known as his son. My barber had skilfully elicited this information from me on the occasion of our first encounter.

As a consequence of that half-wink of my father’s, there were now glances exchanged between the men of the shop; and, I fear, between the head-barber and my father.

When my barber had finished with me, he gave me the equivalent of an, “All right, sir.”

Since my father had not formally recognized me, I did not choose to recognize him; though, when I rose, I fear I blushed.

However, I paid for the service I had received, added my tip, more than usually generous, and departed with a “Good afternoon,” addressed to everybody or nobody in particular.

That was the preliminary for the joke he played on me when, at Paris, my birthday came around in mid-February.

We were staying at a hotel this time; and when, on the morning of my birthday, I went down into the dining-room to have my breakfast and to order my mother’s, I found, by the side of my plate, a small parcel addressed to me in my father’s bold script. What struck me right then and there was the fact that it had been mailed in Paris; it was the first time since the catastrophe that my father and my mother were in the same neighbourhood; but I hasten to add that there was no encounter and that I even concealed the fact from my mother. No doubt my father was there on one of his cryptic errands of pleasure; and I was too much of a gentleman to tell on him.

On opening the parcel, I found a slip of paper with some writing on it.

“A gentleman,” it said, “does not go to a shop to be shaved; unless he has a valet who does it for him, he shaves himself. He also polishes his own shoes when he is not at home.”

I was still wondering about the relevance of the last sentence as I opened the box contained in the parcel. It held a very complete and very good shaving outfit, knife, block-strop, brush, soap, and lotion.

I laughed; but I blushed.

My mother and I had agreed that we were going to go shopping together that afternoon, when I was to pick my own birthday present from her. When she rose, I showed her my father’s present; and she, too, laughed. Apparently she knew about the incident at the barber-shop.

In the afternoon, we went to the Rue de Rivoli. I chose a simple comb and a pair of equally simple but very expensive military hairbrushes.

It might interest American readers that I use the comb and the block-strop today, fifty-six years after that birthday; and that the brushes were discarded, by myself, after fifty-one years of use, to be handed on to my son. The razor, straight blade, of course, for I have never used anything else, stood up for forty years, when it was worn thin and narrow by constant stropping.

That was the last birthday or Christmas present I was to receive from my father. A year or so later, while in Egypt, we heard of a terrible accident that had happened to him. The cable of the elevator in which he found himself had snapped; and the cage had fallen through five or six stories. This had resulted in multiple fractures of spine and arms. Incomprehensibly his legs were unhurt. He had to spend many months in a London hospital; when he came out, he resembled his inspector except inasmuch as he was bent, above the hips, to the right.

My mother shuddered but did not go home. She, too, was undergoing a profound and terrible change: cancer of the womb had been the diagnosis, and already there was a serious doubt whether the knife could remove it.

I have briefly dealt with the life at home as far as it affected and matured me. But I have left one factor out of account, and that the one which fitted it into the wider world of the age and of Europe. The years I have dealt with were those from 1872 to 1886. Most of the countries which came into the limelight during that period I knew; but I knew little of their relations to each other.

My father was no admirer of Prussia or Germany; he was profoundly English in his sympathies, though he had a good-natured foible for the pleasure-loving side of France. At the same time, he was living in Sweden; and Sweden was then, as later, overshadowed by Germany. Bismarck was a popular hero there, at least in the upper strata of society. His policies were watched, analysed, discussed, applauded. The new Germany which was arising was admired, if with a tincture of fear. The industrial growth of the country, its commercial expansion were the marvel of foreign visitors; and most of those who sat down to the table at Thurow went to Berlin when they went abroad, not to Paris or London, as did my father. Yet he, too, took sides; and during the “Kulturkampf” and, later, during the anti-socialist legislation of Bismarck, he approved of the statesman who dominated Europe by sheer force of personality. What I heard of these discussions, over the table, at luncheon, opened my eyes to international problems.

My mother, strange to say, took a dynastic view. While she made fun of the old Emperor whom Bismarck dragged along in his wake, she had a profound attachment, which amounted to veneration, for the old emperor’s son Frederick, the later emperor of the hundred days, son-in-law of Queen Victoria. She was to live beyond his death, which she viewed in the nature of an international tragedy. When the news of that death came, being very ill herself, she wept for hours, and she prophesied nothing but evil from the reign of William II. She never, of course, liked the Germans of the middle classes, though some German aristocrats and many officers of rank in the army were counted among her friends. But she was essentially supernational; all her attachments and enthusiasms were personal; whereas those of the males around the table at Thurow were political. My father always felt uncomfortable in that Germanophile atmosphere.

I, of course, had no opinions of my own, and, as I have said, at the table, where I was admitted only for luncheon, I was a silent listener to the last.

It goes without saying, too, that my everyday life, when we were at home, was very largely an outdoor life; much more so than when we were abroad. I had my pony; there were dogs aplenty; there were all the various animals of the farm; and there were few of the over a hundred people employed on the place who were not my friends. I rode, I walked, I drove, I swam. I am an outdoor man to this day, a good rider, an excellent swimmer.

The influence of one man of whom I shall have to speak, pursued me even home, though he never appeared there. This man I called “uncle” though he was a relative neither of my father nor my mother. He was a Dane living at Hamburg, his name Jacobsen; and, though in other respects he was very different from my father, he had this in common with him that he was an accomplished athlete. Perhaps it was precisely for the reason that, on the whole, I was a weakly child, subject to all the infantile diseases, that he made it his task, whenever he could, to look after my physical development; and he did so with a unique devotion which made it appear as if nothing else counted in life but physical proficiency.

But “Uncle Jacobsen” belonged to my mother’s world; not to that of my father.