VII
Keith next day was permitted to have a good look at the five twenty-crown pieces found in the package handed to him by the Rector. Their weight and brightness made them delightful to handle, but they were not "toys for children" his father remarked, and with that remark they passed out of sight for ever. Once or twice he put timid questions to his mother, who never answered directly, but reminded him of all the money his father had spent and was spending on him for food and clothes and schooling and all sorts of things. Keith almost wished that he had received some nice books instead, or anything that could make him feel that he really had got a big glorious reward for something he really had done. Now the achievement seemed as illusive as the reward.
He tried to reason the case out with himself, and the conclusion at which he arrived was that his father probably was entitled and certainly welcome to the money, but that as he, Keith, had earned it and owned it, something should be said to him about the use of it. And as so often was the case, it became a question of abstract justice. The value and possibilities of the money lay beyond his grasp, but the ethics of its disposal, from his simple childish point of view, seemed too clear for serious discussion. Once or twice he stole a look at his savings bank book, which his mother kept among her own papers, but no new entry appeared on its meagre credit side. By and by he almost lost sight of the whole incident, engrossed as he was with the experiences of the current hour, but the memory of it recurred fitfully, and in moments of dissatisfaction it tended to assume the shape of a grievance, if not a charge, against the father. From this tendency he fled instinctively to an idea of money as not worth bothering about. And that idea also helped when the atmosphere of worry about money matters surrounding his mother became too intense and depressive.
There was comparatively little of it that summer. His mother was in better health and spirits than he had seen her for a long time, and she was as happy as Keith when the father announced that they would have a summer place of their own on one of the islands in Lake Maelaren, somewhat farther out than the one where Uncle Laube lived. It was too far away to have become absorbed by the rapidly growing city, and yet too close at hand to be quite desirable as a summer location for the more prosperous. The island was of sufficient size to hold a couple of real farms in the centre, while the shore line was occupied by occasional villas. Halfway between these two mutually foreign regions, on a sharp slope that still remained largely uncleared, stood a little red house with just two rooms in it. One of these was occupied by the old couple that owned the house. The other one had been rented to the Wellanders for the summer, and in that one room the mother, the grandmother and Keith established themselves, with the father appearing as a regular week-end guest.
Taking it all in all, it was the freest, and in many ways the happiest summer of Keith's childhood. He was permitted to roam around pretty much as he pleased, and there were several other small boys to play with, none of them enterprising enough to arouse the distrust of Keith's mother. They were all city boys however, as foreign to nature as Keith, and there was no older person on hand to give their excursions and games a constructive twist without turning them into lessons. There was plenty of wild life about, and it helped in many ways to give them a better time, but that was as near as they got to it. Exactly the same thing happened during subsequent summers, and so the boy always looked upon flowers and trees and birds and insects as delightful but puzzling representatives of a world of which he did not know the language.
It was good fun, however, and temporarily it took Keith farther away from himself and from his cherished books than he had been since his first discovery of the latter. The boys proved decent, wholesome company, more bent on discharging their surplus energy than on doing mischief. Much of their time was spent in or near the water, so that Keith developed into a pretty good swimmer for his age, though always of the cautious type. And between games they would discuss the world from a boy's point of view. There was particularly one boy of the same age as Keith with whom he had talks of a kind quite new to him. Oscar's parents were still very young, and he spoke of them more as chums than as masters. And he spoke of them with a sort of restrained enthusiasm that set Keith thinking very hard. He loved his parents, especially his mother, and admired them, especially his father at certain times, but he was not conscious of any feeling about them corresponding to the one displayed by Oscar, whose father, after all, was nothing but a captain on one of the small steam sloops running between the city and some of the surrounding islands.
Oscar was especially eloquent when he spoke of the love his parents had for each other. He gave examples that seemed exaggerated to Keith, but nevertheless impressed him. In return Keith boasted similarly of his own parents, and he meant every word he said, but always what he had to tell fell short of the pictures drawn by Oscar.
"You don't understand," cried Oscar one day when again they were debating this fascinating topic all by themselves. "It's all right for your mother to kiss your father when he leaves and when he returns, and to be looking for him all the time. But that's not enough. That's not the way my parents love each other. And I don't think your father cares so very much for your mother. But my father is so much in love with my mother that he would like to eat what she has chewed!"
"No--o!" protested Keith, rather appalled by the illustration used, and yet feeling as if he had beheld some undiscovered country. There was a pause during which he stared incredulously at Oscar.