The Soul of a Child eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 293 pages of information about The Soul of a Child.

The Soul of a Child eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 293 pages of information about The Soul of a Child.

“Was Granny a servant when she came to Stockholm?”

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

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

“We are just as good as anybody else, are we not?”

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

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

“Where is he now,” Keith demanded, agog with interest.

“He is dead, and—­and we have never had anything to do with his family.”

XIII

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

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

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

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

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The Soul of a Child from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.