XVII
It would have been hard on Keith at any time. Coming as it did, the family disgrace, which he guessed rather than grasped, and the disappointment, which was a depressingly tangible thing, brought his natural sensitiveness to a morbid pitch.
There was one idea that haunted him day and night--the idea that he belonged to a race doomed in advance to decay and destruction.
Uncle Wilhelm's case was not an isolated one. There was Uncle Henrik, the youngest brother of Keith's father, who had gone to the dogs while still a youth, and in a more ignominious fashion, if possible. What was he now but a besotted tramp, begging shamelessly of friend or stranger for a few öre with which to buy a brief moment of coarse happiness?
There was Uncle Marcus, the husband of Keith's paternal aunt, who had hurt his leg in a storm and lost his splendid position as chief engineer of the swiftest steamer plying on the Northern route. Now he was disabled for ever, and proud Aunt Brita was at her wit's end to keep the home and the family together.
There were the two half-brothers of Uncle Wilhelm's silly wife--popular and dashing young fellows reading blithely the purple path to destruction. Even Keith's naïve mind had discovered which way they were headed, although his thoughts of them were not free from admiration.
And there were still others. Wherever he turned within the narrowing family circle, he met similar instances of progress in the wrong direction. Some were sinners and some were victims of fate--or seemed so--but it came to the same thing in the end.
"The Wellanders are going," Keith's mother said one day to Aunt Brita when she was too depressed and worried to mind the boy's presence.
"Yes," replied Aunt Brita grimly, "and so is everybody else who ever had anything to do with them. Keith will have to start it all over again from the beginning."
That seemed to settle it for the moment. Of what avail could his own feeble struggles be in the face of an adverse destiny?