Part 31 (1/2)

”I really should have liked to have you,” Murray answered, and it made Keith feel as if he had been more than compensated for his previous sufferings.

After that their friends.h.i.+p continued outwardly as before, but there was a difference. A tendency to nag and find fault appeared on both sides, and on several occasions they broke into actual quarrels. These always ended in reconcilations, but the old serenity had gone from their companions.h.i.+p, and each new misunderstanding left Keith a little more unhappy.

III

As a result of the changed relations.h.i.+p between himself and the friend he idealized, Keith began once more to look up Johan. He did it rather furtively, as if he had known that he was engaged in something unworthy of himself. There was an additional reason for this return to an a.s.sociation long spurned, and it had something to do with his manner of going about it.

What his mother had told him during the summer was still fermenting in his mind, but no amount of brooding over it would produce any results.

It was like trying to raise oneself by pulling at one's own bootstraps.

He must turn to some one else for the information that alone could solve the mystery. Murray was out of the question. Keith had never exchanged a word with him about the subject that was taking more and more of his attention. He knew what Murray would say if such a matter were broached:

”I don't think my papa would like me to talk of it, and it's rather nasty anyhow.”

No, Johan was the person to seek for knowledge of this kind. He was now smoking all the time when not under the eye of his mother. While Keith almost had stood still physically, Johan had forged ahead. There was no denying that he was coa.r.s.e and dull and awkward, but there was a shrewd gleam in his somewhat bleary eyes, and from time to time he threw out dark hints about enjoyments and experiences that little boys clinging to their mother's skirts could never master.

It became a sort of game between them--a game that pleased Johan and drove Keith to exasperation. It was a game of hide-and-seek. And the most remarkable feature of it was that, although Keith was dying to know, he found it impossible to ask any direct questions. His pose was that he didn't care, and Johan's counter-pose was that he didn't know what Keith was driving at.

Little by little, however, Keith extracted various stories about those new friends of Johan's, who lived in one of the neighbouring lanes and who had a big vacant attic at their disposal. There quite a number of boys gathered daily, and Johan did his best to impress Keith with the desperate character of their doings. Girls came to that meeting-place, too. It was the princ.i.p.al thing, according to Johan--the fact that made those exploits so deliriously reprehensible. One day Johan was in an unusually communicative mood.

”Yesterday,” he related with great gusto, ”Nils got hold of Ellen and kissed her. And then they crawled into a big empty box when they thought we didn't see them. And there they stayed ever so long. But Gustaf crawled up behind the box and peeped. And he saw what they did, and then he told us.”

”What did they do,” asked Keith tensely, forgetting his usual reserve.

”Oh, you know,” replied Johan teasingly.

”I don't,” said Keith stoutly, realizing that it was a dreadful admission of inferiority. ”And I want you to tell me.”

For a moment Johan hesitated. Then he shot at Keith a single word--a verb--that Keith had heard in the lane and among the longsh.o.r.emen on the Quay. He knew that it was bad--the worst one of its kind. He knew also in a vague sort of way that it touched the very heart of the mystery he was trying to solve. And yet it left him just as ignorant as before.

The bald use of that word by Johan stunned him for a moment. Then his hot thirst for light brushed all other considerations aside, and he said almost pleadingly: ”Can't you tell me all about it?”

”Oh, everybody knows,” said Johan, and his eyes began to wander s.h.i.+ftily as they always did when he found himself cornered.

”You don't know yourself,” Keith taunted him, suddenly grown wise beyond his ordinary measure.

”Yes, I do,” insisted Johan.

”Then tell--or I won't believe you.”

”They did what your papa and mamma do nights,” Johan shot back.

There was a long pause.

”They don't do anything,” Keith said at last almost in a whisper, ”except talk.”

”You bet they do,” a.s.serted Johan, sure now of having triumphed.