They rose from the table.
"Come here," said his father, and went into the bedroom. His mother followed. "Ask father for forgiveness," she said. His father had taken out the stick from behind the looking-glass.
"Dear papa, forgive me!" the innocent child exclaimed. But now it was too late. He had confessed the theft, and his mother assisted at the execution. He howled from rage and pain, but chiefly from a sense of humiliation. "Ask papa now for forgiveness," said his mother.
The child looked at her and despised her. He felt lonely, deserted by her to whom he had always fled to find comfort and compassion, but so seldom justice. "Dear papa, forgive," he said, with compressed and lying lips.
And then he stole out into the kitchen to Louise the nursery-maid, who used to comb and wash him, and sobbed his grief out in her apron.
"What have you done, John?" she asked sympathetically.
"Nothing," he answered. "I have done nothing."
The mother came out.
"What does John say?" she asked Louise. "He says that he didn't do it." "Is he lying still?"
And John was fetched in again to be tortured into the admission of what he had never done.
Splendid, moral institution! Sacred family! Divinely appointed, unassailable, where citizens are to be educated in truth and virtue! Thou art supposed to be the home of the virtues, where innocent children are tortured into their first falsehood, where wills are broken by tyranny, and self-respect killed by narrow egoism. Family! thou art the home of all social evil, a charitable institution for comfortable women, an anchorage for house-fathers, and a hell for children.
After this John lived in perpetual disquiet. He dared not confide in his mother, or Louise, still less his brothers, and least of all his father. Enemies everywhere! God he knew only through hymns. He was an atheist, as children are, but in the dark, like savages and animals, he feared evil spirits.
"Who drank the wine?" he asked himself; who was the guilty one for whom he suffered? New impressions and anxieties caused him to forget the question, but the unjust treatment remained in his memory. He had lost the confidence of his parents, the regard of his brothers and sisters, the favour of his aunt; his grandmother said nothing. Perhaps she inferred his innocence on other grounds, for she did not scold him, and was silent. She had nothing to say. He felt himself disgraced—punished for lying, which was so abominated in the household, and for theft, a word which could not be mentioned, deprived of household rights, suspected and despised by his brothers because he had been caught. All these consequences, which were painful and real for him, sprang out of something which never existed—his guilt.
It was not actual poverty which reigned in the house, but there was overcrowding. Baptisms, and burials followed each other in rapid succession. Sometimes there were two baptisms without a burial between them. The food was carefully distributed, and was not exactly nourishing. They had meat only on Sundays, but John grew sturdy and was tall for his age. He used now to be sent to play in the "court," a well-like, stone-paved area in which the sun never shone. The dust-bin which resembled an old bureau with a flap-cover and a coating of tar, but burst, stood on four legs by the wall. Here slop-pails were emptied and rubbish thrown, and through the cracks a black stream flowed over the court. Great rats lurked under the dust-bin and looked out now and then, scurrying off to hide themselves in the cellar. Woodsheds and closets lined one side of the court. Here there was dampness, darkness, and an evil smell. John's first attempt to scrape out the sand between the great paving-stones was frustrated by the irascible landlord's deputy. The latter had a son with whom John played, but never felt safe. The boy was inferior to him in physical strength and intelligence, but when disputes arose he used to appeal to his father. His superiority consisted in having an authority behind him.
The baron on the ground-floor had a staircase with iron banisters. John liked playing on it, but all attempts to climb on the balustrade were hindered by the servant who rushed out.
He was strictly forbidden to go out in the street. But when he looked through the doorway, and saw the churchyard gate, he heard the children playing there. He had no longing to be with them, for he feared children; looking down the street, he saw the Clara lake and the drawbridges. That looked novel and mysterious, but he feared the water. On quiet winter evenings he had heard cries for help from drowning people. These, indeed, were often heard. As they were sitting by the lamp in the nursery, one of the servant-maids would say, "Hush!" and all would listen while long, continuous cries would be heard. … "Now someone is drowning," one of the girls said. They listened till all was still, and then told stories of others who had been drowned.
The nursery looked towards the courtyard, and through the window one saw a zinc roof and a pair of attics in which stood a quantity of old disused furniture and other household stuff. This furniture, without any people to use it, had a weird effect. The servants said that the attics were haunted. What "haunted" meant they could not exactly say, only that it had something to do with dead men going about. Thus are we all brought up by the lower classes. It is an involuntary revenge which they take by inoculating our children with superstitions which we have cast aside. Perhaps this is what hinders development so much, while it somewhat obliterates the distinction between the classes. Why does a mother let this most important duty slip from her hands—a mother who is supported by the father in order that she may educate her children? John's mother only occasionally said his evening prayer with him; generally it was the maidservant. The latter had taught him an old Catholic prayer which ran as follows:
"Through our house an angel goes,
In each hand a light he shows."
The other rooms looked out on the Clara churchyard. Above the lime-trees the nave of the church rose like a mountain, and on the mountain sat the giant with a copper hat, who kept up a never-ceasing clamour in order to announce the flight of time. He sounded the quarter hours in soprano, and the hours in bass. He rang for early morning prayer with a tinkling sound, for matins at eight o'clock and vespers at seven. He rang thrice during the forenoon, and four times during the afternoon. He chimed all the hours from ten till four at night; he tolled in the middle of the week at funerals, and often, at the time I speak of, during the cholera epidemic. On Sundays he rang so much that the whole family was nearly reduced to tears, and no one could hear what the other said. The chiming at night, when John lay awake, was weird; but worst of all was the ringing of an alarm when a fire broke out. When he heard the deep solemn boom in the middle of the night for the first time he shuddered feverishly and wept. On such occasions the household always awoke, and whisperings were heard: "There is a fire!"—"Where?" They counted the strokes, and then went to sleep again; but he kept awake and wept. Then his mother came upstairs, tucked him up, and said: "Don't be afraid; God protects unfortunate people!" He had never thought that of God before. In the morning the servant-girls read in the papers that there had been a fire in Soder, and that two people had been killed. "It was God's will," said the mother.
His first awakening to consciousness was mixed with the pealing, chiming, and tolling of bells. All his first thoughts and impressions were accompanied by the ringing for funerals, and the first years of his life were counted out by strokes of the quarter. The effect on him was certainly not cheerful, even if it did not decidedly tell on his nervous system. But who can say? The first years are as important as the nine months which precede them.
The recollections of childhood show how the senses first partly awaken and receive the most vivid impressions, how the feelings are moved by the lightest breath, how the faculty of observation first fastens on the most striking outward appearances and, later, on moral relations and qualities, justice and injustice, power and pity.
These memories lie in confusion, unformed and
