If, in a state of prenatal existence, human beings-to-be could deliberately choose those to whom they wished to be born, taking into account, of course, what they intended to do with their earthly lives, then a future writer like myself could hardly, according to outward appearance, have chosen better than the determining destiny did choose for me in the matter of parents. To what extent reality bore out this appearance is the subject of the first part of this book.
     As a matter of fact, however, the first few hours of my life on this planet seemed to mark me for a life of adventure rather than for a life of discipline. I was born prematurely, in a Russian manor-house, while my parents were trying to reach their Swedish home before that event which, at least to me, was to prove of considerable importance. In that effort to reach home my parents failed for no other reason than that I insisted on arriving too soon; even then I already showed my constitutional disinclination to conform. Incredibly, within an hour or so of the event, the hospitable house, belonging to friends of my parents, was struck by lightning and burned to the ground. This was about 9 p.m. after I had seen the first flicker of candle-light, for electric bulbs had not yet been invented. I was later told that I promptly protested against having such an iniquity as life thrust upon me by bawling at the top of my voice. I do not actually remember, of course, the precipitate flight as my mother and I were borne out of the welter

of flames; nor can I be positively sure that I remember anything that befell during the next few weeks or even months. Yet I was, later, so often and so graphically told about the dramatic occurrence that I find it hard to sift out what I actually saw and felt from what I merely heard in years to come.
     The fact was that, during those years to come, I was in charge of a woman who, at the time, was my mother's maid and who had lived through it all; in contradistinction to my own future experience, the exciting circumstances of my entry into this world had formed the only extraordinary thing that had ever happened to her. She remained more or less closely associated with me for nearly seventeen years, up to the time of my mother's death. This young woman, of mixed Scotch and French descent, but more French than Scotch, became my nurse; and since, by reason of my mother's peculiar mode of life, she was doomed to remain single, she adopted me into her affections as if I had been her, not her mistress's, child. What she told me, vividly and in ever-repeated detail, dominated my inner life throughout my early years: it always started with the words, "Once upon a time there was a little boy." It dominated my life so completely that to this day I cannot distinguish my actual memories from the reflected ones.
     Thus, whenever I think of those first weeks of my life, I seem to see myself suddenly inside a private railway carriage which, coupled to a train, is crossing a long, spider-web steel bridge thrown across a river; I seem to see the struts and girders gliding past the windows; and, what is more, when I close my eyes, I seem to feel the bridge swaying in a blizzard sweeping over the no-man'sland which was once the border country between Russia

and Germany, underlain by a shadowy Poland; for my birth took place east of the Vistula.
     The next memory is that of a train on a huge ferry crossing the Baltic from Stralsund in Germany to Malmoe in Sweden; and there, too, I seem to see all sorts of things in great detail: the arrogant German train guards who prevented passengers from alighting to stretch their legs, and the scared faces of a few travellers who were not in the train, but stood huddled against the railing of the ferry.
     I myself, on the lap of Annette, the young nurse, was dressed in a long, embroidered, belaced, and beribboned dress, such as was used, at the time, and in Europe, indiscriminately for boys and girls. As I grew up into boyhood, shorter dresses were carried along, for me, throughout Europe and over not inconsiderable portions of Northern Africa and Western Asia as well; even after I had outgrown them, my nurse took them out and showed them to me whenever we left one place or arrived at another. To me, they were a sort of pedigree. Nobody, it seemed, not even myself, ever thought of discarding so useless a burden; not even when the exhibition had become embarrassing to my masculinity because I did not want to be reminded of the humiliating fact that, not so long ago, as geologic ages went, I, too, had been a baby.
     At this time I can hardly have been more than a month old; and within a few hours of our arrival on Swedish soil, I, being only inappreciably older, but having performed my first comparatively long journey, arrived, with all my appurtenances: father, mother, nurse, et al, for there were other servants as well, on my father's place on the "Sound" between Sweden and Denmark. My geograph-

ical ideas of the place are somewhat hazy; but I do remember a few points: we were within about twenty miles of the ancient city of Lund; we were within a few hundred yards of the sea; and on very clear days we could make out the coast of Denmark and even the city of Copenhagen across the water.
     But I have still to justify my first sentence.
     My father, of English-Swedish descent - it was my grandfather on that side who had immigrated into Sweden and naturalized and married there - was a land-owner on a fairly large scale, growing sand-pines for two or three Baltic governments desirous of anchoring their shorelines and sand-islands by afforestation. This business had been thoroughly established by my grandfather; and, as far as I could make out in after years, it ran itself in my father's time, requiring a minimum of exertion on his part; so that he was very largely a man of leisure, enjoying what for anyone else would have been a comfortable, even a large income from the labour of others. In addition to the land and the business, he had, at his father's death, come into a not inconsiderable fortune; and, at the end of his early manhood, at the age, I think, of forty or a little over, he had married a Scotswoman, daughter of a judge, my mother, who was not only an heiress but, her mother being dead, had brought him immediately a second fortune at least equal to his own.
     It is, of course, a well-known fact that writers who do not write what the public wants, but what they think the public should be told, do not make an income of their own. To all appearances, then, there were here four fortunes - the land; the money inherited by my father; the money which my mother had; and the money which

she expected on her father's death - all opportunely converging upon - myself? No, on myself and seven older sisters, the youngest of whom, at the time of my birth, was seven or eight years old.
     My mother, on the other hand. . . But I do not, at present, need to say more about her; some of her characteristics will appear as I speak of my father; and others will have to be reserved for my next chapter. But she was twenty years my father's junior.
     My sisters had all been born during the first pleasant years of their marriage; I, the unwanted one, came nine months before that marriage was to break up. It did not break up with any éclat; there was, so far, no quarrel; there was nothing of the kind. My mother simply told three of the servants to pack up for a round of travel and left, taking me along. Among the three servants, two were concerned with myself: the wet-nurse and Annette, the "bonne" as she was now called; the third was my mother's new maid. In all small things, Annette was destined to become a sort of impresaria to my mother as well; in fact, she "managed" or ruled the whole party. When, one day, in a grand scene, somewhere in France, my mother broke her own thraldom to Annette, everyone trembled. I was about eight at the time; and my mother's ultimatum, restricting Annette to the management of the boy, really resulted in my henceforth managing her.
     However, it is time for me to give some idea of my parents as individuals.
     My father was six feet seven inches tall, a personable man, the very devil with women. He rode hard, ate hard, and drank hard. Me he despised. Even at that early age I gave no promise of ever exceeding my present height which is of a mere six feet two and a half inches;

at best, when I stretch my old bones a little, six feet three; and I showed a regrettable lack of the power to resist infantile diseases: measles, scarlet fever, whooping cough, I caught them all; and I was thin, had a poor appetite, readily caught colds. I cannot give a portrait of my father as I came to know him without saying a word of myself. To be weak or ill was, in his eyes, the unpardonable sin. But I have, in recent years, tried to imagine to myself how my father would have lived and acted had the chance of birth thrown him into the Ontario of my time; that is, into a Canada where pioneer conditions are just yielding to the urbanization of the countryside: thus I created Ralph Patterson and gave him, among others, one son whom I attached to myself by giving him my middle name. I will admit that I, the dreamer, as his only son, must have been a sore disappointment to a man who, first of all, was a spender. Up to the time of my birth, he had had the land, a few thousand acres of it, and two fortunes to support him. By the time I began consciously to know him, he had run through those two fortunes; and when, after my mother's death, I became more closely and almost intimately acquainted with him, he was engaged in running through the third, namely, the land which he was mortgaging more and more heavily; the fourth, my mother's inheritance from her father, he considered himself as having been cheated out of; but, of course, I knew nothing of that till he, too, was near the end of his life. I have already said that the business of supplying the Baltic states with nursery stock, of which many millions were shipped every spring, whole shiploads of them, ran itself under the direction of a competent man called the "inspector". In addition to the nursery, there were some three hundred hectares of

ordinary farm land on which pedigreed cattle and fine saddle horses were raised, as well as the ordinary farm crops of wheat and vegetables for the market at Lund. On this branch of the rural economy enormous sums were spent, for my father was an innovator. Every sort of agricultural machinery invented in any part of the world promptly appeared on this farm and was, if not used, at least tried out. Often, after a few weeks, it was found that what was adequate for the North American prairies was ill adapted for Sweden. One or two large barns soon resembled a sort of international exhibition of farming implements. On the comparatively rare occasions when I was at home, I lived through a sort of abrégé of the history of agricultural invention. Thus, the large lawns
     which swept down from the house to the edge of the beach were, in my early years, cut by gangs of kneeling or squatting women wielding sickles which were kept razor-sharp. As I grew up into adolescence, huge horse-drawn lawn-mowers had taken their places, at a vastly increased expense, and to the dissatisfaction of the women who were thus deprived of a modicum of income. The horses, carefully selected for their light weight and their quiet step, had their feet encased in enormous, padded shoes made of felt and sacking.
     A few words about the house and the grounds.
     To my memory, the house looks enormous; and it was pretentiously called "Castle Thurow". If Annette can be trusted, there were twenty-nine rooms; I never counted them myself. Its front faced the sea; and a wide flight of steps, built of some basaltic rock, led up to an open sort of terrace, used as a driveway and a veranda, and paved with slabs of the same sort of stone, unhewn; in the middle, there was the main entrance. To the right,

the cliff-like structure was flanked by a tower which reached to twice the height of the main building. The lower three stories of this tower were an integral part of the house; its upper three stories, above the main roof, had contained the children's quarters. At the time which I remember clearly, my sisters were gone; and the fourth and fifth floors of the tower were reserved for myself and Annette and locked up when we were abroad. It is half a century ago that I saw it last; but my impression of it is, today, one of quiet dignity and straightlined power, most impressive when approached from the sea. The lawns in front must have comprised twenty-five or thirty acres; and they were dotted with fine old elms and oaks. What a place for a novelist to live in!
     As for the inside, one entered, via the main entrance, a huge hall reaching up through two stories, with, at its far end, an enormous fireplace in which at almost all times, summer as well as winter, there burned a log fire, more or less bright, of sticks probably four feet long, though they seem closer to eight to me. This hall was the scene of the everyday life of the household which never consisted of less than twenty people, exclusive of servants. It was comfortably furnished with a number of chesterfields and an abundance of arm-chairs. There, more than when we were abroad, so it seems to me now, my own indoor life was lived at the knees of my mother. The moment we started on our travels, she receded into a brilliant world of uniforms and bestarred evening clothes; except at home, I hardly ever saw her in daytime. We shall hear more of that anon.
     To the left of the hall lay the dining-room, oak-panelled, where it was nothing uncommon for thirty guests to sit down, in addition to the twenty members of the house-

hold. In front of it was the library; opposite, the two or three drawing-rooms, one of which was called the music room. There, my mother often stormed through the more emotional passages of great symphonic music, playing a fine grand piano, sola, or accompanied by violin or cello.
     On the second floor, all rooms opened from the gallery surrounding the hall; the gallery as such was reached by a grand stairway on the right. The rooms were the two masters' suites and a few others used for the more eminent guests. Less pretentious guest-rooms were on the third floor, the rest of which was given over to the servants and other permanent members of the household. In the early years, of course, some of my sisters still lived in the house; but, since they were even then young ladies rather than girls, they form a dim memory only; before I grew into conscious boyhood they had disappeared into the outer world, one going to Cambridge in England, two to the United States, one to Vienna, and the remaining God only knows where. They were my father's daughters; I was my mother's son. Even the youngest never became really intimate with me; and it was only a mild shock to the boy of twelve or thirteen when she died in childbirth in distant Chicago.
     Strange to say, what today remains most vivid in my memory picture of the interior of the house is the windows in wintertime. They were thickly curtained and, in their lower parts, hung with fur robes to keep the draughts out. Apart from the hall, every room had its stove: a large fayence structure which remained warm in the coldest winter from October until April.
     Behind the house were the orchards and kitchen gardens, separated from it by a sort of flag-stone court

which lay six or eight feet lower than the terrace in front. Behind the orchards and gardens stood a building which was called by a German name, the "Leutehaus"; it contained the dining-room and the bedrooms of the general run of the servants, indoor and out. This Leutehaus was perhaps the gayest place on the estate. Never a week went by without a dance taking place there, for which three or four musically-gifted men played accordions.
     The whole place was a world in itself, with stores of linen, bedding, etc., sufficient for a good-sized hotel; and most of it was made by servants in their leisure hours. All servants wore homespun, men as well as women. The household as such was run by an elderly lady of aristocratic appearance and manners who treated "the family" as her guests. My father, of course, was often absent in Paris or London, less frequently in Berlin, though he made it a point to be at home when my mother and I came for a visit.
     Altogether, there must have been a hundred men and women who looked after house and grounds; and several hundred, employed in nursery and farm, lived as tenants in the village belonging to the place.
     Every morning, at about six o'clock, and earlier in summer, one of a bevy of maids entered every bedroom, whether occupied by man or woman, and deposited a tall, brilliantly-scoured pewter pitcher of hot water for shaving and sitz-bath. Of the latter, one was placed at night for every occupant in every room, some of which harboured as many as four young men. This water, having been used or not used, as the case might be - and there were occasions when I, for one, merely pretended having used it - had to be carried down again in buckets later on in the forenoon.

     Most of the inmates of the house took the appearance of the maid as a signal to rise and descend for a frugal French breakfast - consisting traditionally of coffee, and fresh rolls baked every morning. Whoever had any business to attend to, did so after that.
     Meanwhile men made the rounds looking, in winter, after the twenty-odd stoves and the huge fire in the fireplace of the ball.
     A second breakfast followed at ten o'clock; and this was the first occasion at which a majority of the people in the house met in the dining-room. It was always a noisy gathering; for, in contrast to the later meals, everybody helped himself, and people ate and drank sitting or standing in groups. Huge sideboards were loaded with cold viands. Where carving was needed a girl or a lackey stood ready to do it. Roast beef was carved by a man; fowl, by a maid. It was an informal but extraordinarily plentiful meal at which my mother never appeared, though her maid did, to gather on a tray what her mistress had ordered.
     Lunch, properly speaking, was taken at one-thirty; and this was the first formal meal at which my mother presided when she was at home; and it was the only one at which I, too, was present. The fact that my mother sat in her chair at the head of the table gave the affair a decorous air. Everybody was served individually by maids under the direction of the butler. My father, too, was always present, occupying the place opposite my mother. At this meal wine was served to all but myself; and the conversation was general and often animated. I - looked about. It was, of course, the time, in the seventies and early eighties, when children were still only seen, not heard. I remember one occasion when, having

heard and probably understood a remark addressed by a smart young man, in very faulty English, to a very young lady, I burst out laughing. Almost immediately I felt my mother's eye resting on myself; having caught mine, it moved to the door. I rose and left the room.
     Dinner was at eight; and everybody dressed for it. It was only once, towards the end, that I, having meanwhile been supplied with a formal suit, was permitted to sit in at this function; and even then, sitting as I did near my father, separated from him only by a magnificent woman, I did not dare to take part in the conversation.
     Since I had never seen the place without them, I naturally did not show any surprise at the number of young men who lived there. Individually, they changed; as a group they exhibited a singular uniformity. They were the sons of large land-owners, mostly aristocrats, who were there in order to learn something of the management of an estate, paying handsomely for the privilege of doing such of the administrative work as would otherwise have required expensive clerical and executive help. They were, in fact, the only people belonging to the household properly speaking who did any work.
     In the afternoon, there were as a rule some twenty people or so gathered in the music room: they might be guests staying in the house or neighbours who had driven or ridden over. My mother was a drawing card, for she was a graduate of the conservatory of music at Vienna; and she had often been urged, even by virtuosi and composers, to go on the concert stage. Whenever she played, there was a peculiar, highly impressive atmosphere: as of the presence of something divine. I remember one occasion when a white-haired, extraordinarily handsome old man, as my mother left the piano, rose impulsively

out of his arm-chair and kissed her hand with an air of veneration. I was tremendously touched and never stirred in my corner while she swept out of the room. On another, later occasion, she had repeatedly run through the opening of the first movement of the Eroica and shaken her head, smiling. Suddenly she broke off with a few vast chords; and, without transition, swept into the second movement of the Ninth Sonata, rendering the four variations with a virtuosity which brought all present to their feet, clapping and crying out: "Brava! Brava!" She rose, turned, and bowed. Then, sitting down again, she played the scherzo of the Eroica; and when she ceased, there was a dead silence more flattering than any applause could have been.
     On that occasion, I sneaked out of the room, tears in my eyes, and, from the hall, saw my father sitting in a neighbouring drawing-room, playing chess with a fullbosomed, flashing-eyed lady whom he seemed to dominate by sheer physical presence. To him, music was nothing but noise.
     It was summer, as it mostly was when we were at home; and at night I could not sleep. So I went downstairs in my tower and, from the landing two stories below my room, penetrated into the gallery in search of my mother. The whole house seemed to be asleep, so it must have been in the early hours of the morning. On the gallery, a few candles were burning, as they always did at night. My mother's suite was at the far end of the gallery; and in order to reach it, I had to pass the doors of several of the guest-rooms and those of my father's apartment. Just before I passed his bedroom, the door was opened from the inside; and the fine lady came out, in a gorgeous, open dressing-gown which showed her silk nightwear

underneath. Behind her stood my father, in pyjamas, bowing her out. Neither saw me in that shadowy passage; and I let myself drop to the floor, eclipsing myself between two chairs. I did not fully understand; but, when the lady had swept out of sight into her own room, and my father had closed his door, I understood enough to have lost all taste for snuggling into my mother's bed. I was only seven or eight; but I knew I must not mention this to her.
     I will add a few other memories of home, if that can be called home which remained essentially alien.
     One day - I was a mere toddler - I had somehow escaped from Annette on whose hand I had descended into the great kitchen with its cook and its kitchen-maids. Thence I had gone out to the stone-paved court behind the house. I might say that this is a genuine memory; for my mother, who always lived under the premonition of an early death, never allowed Annette to tell me anything which might, in my imagination, work out to the disadvantage of my father on whom I might one day be dependent.
     To the left or north of that court, there was my father's open-air gymnasium where he often exercised on parallel and so-called horizontal bars, or on a trapeze. He was extraordinarily proficient in such things and prided himself on the fact. He could readily perform what he called the "giants' turn" - no doubt the literal translation into English of a Swedish technical term. To do it, he jumped clear of the ground, firmly grasping the bar which was perhaps set at a height of eight feet. Swinging back and forth a few times, he suddenly gathered for a supreme effort and went over in a complete circle, four, five times,

and gracefully at that - a not inconsiderable feat for a man weighing 225 pounds.
     On this occasion, I saw him there and stopped, putting a finger in my mouth, for I was in deadly fear of him. When he saw me, he dropped to the ground and advanced. I turned to flee; but he caught me up in his arms and returned to the bar. There, he lifted me high overhead, and I, scared out of my wits, closed my little hands about it. He was still laughing as he let go; but, seeing my distorted face, he grunted with disgust, turned away, and strode off.
     Now it so happened that Annette had almost immediately missed me and run up into the hall where my mother sat reading. I could not have gone out through the open front door without passing in sight of my mother, except through the dining-room. Both women ran to look. A glance sufficed to show that the dining-room was empty. So they ran to the back door, passing my father's "office", and out into the court. Annette kept straight on, into the garden; but my mother, fortunately, turned to her left; and a moment later she saw me hanging from the bar. It was none too soon; for, though I began to bawl lustily at sight of her, I was weakening and, in a moment, would have let go. She called to me to drop and caught me in her arms; and, naturally, I was made much of between the two women. Strangely, my memory of the scene - perhaps my earliest direct memory - is not an emotional but a visual one. Whenever I think of it, I see my mother sweeping forward, towards me, in the shape of the winged Victory of Samothrace.
     In this connection I might add that it was the rarest thing for me to see my father and my mother engaged in a common activity. When it did happen, they were invar-

iably on horseback. My father kept two or three huge Danish saddle-horses for himself; they were the only breed capable of carrying his weight in a gallop; even these he used up; for he was never satisfied with the ponderous, cradling gallop natural to beasts of their build. My mother had an equal number of mares of English-Arabian blood; like her hackneys, they were coal-black and always showed the whites of their eyes. She, too, was a daring rider and often, when we were at home, crossed, at a stretched gallop, fields and meadows, taking hedges and brooks in her stride as if they were not there. For a woman, she was not light, either; I weighed her at one time, later; and she tipped the beam at over one hundred and seventy. Year after year, these horses awaited her; nobody else used them. No doubt they, too, were replaced in the course of the years; but I was never aware of the change. No doubt, too, there was less riding towards the end; for in her later years my mother suffered from cancer.
     Perhaps the fact that the horses ran idle during most of the year - for we spent no more than from four to six weeks at home in the twelve-month - had something to do with a serious accident which might have been fatal. We had just arrived at Thurow in the morning; and right after luncheon my mother sent word around to the stables to have a mount brought to the door. I believe the first words exchanged between my parents had been angry ones; my mother had just discovered that funds on which she had counted were not available. Very likely the visit to Sweden was occasioned by that difficulty.
     At any rate, when she appeared in front of the house, in her riding-habit, the horse would not stand. The

groom who had brought it was too light to hold it; and repeatedly, as my mother approached, the long train of her habit over one arm, the mare shied away sideways, circling about the groom who had trouble in keeping his feet. My mother was grimly patient, as she tried to outmanceuvre the horse; and at last, the groom quickly holding out his hand to support her foot, she swung herself up into the side-saddle. The mare reared on her hindfeet and pivoted, throwing her head; but my mother was her match and, touching the animal's rump with her crop, forced it down on its knees. Suddenly, as my mother let her rise, the mare gave in; and horse and rider dashed away through the great avenue of trees which formed the approach to the house from the east. I had been standing on the step of the house, admiring my mother who looked superb as she matched her skill against the animal's temper. I must have been twelve years old at the time.
     An hour or so later my mother was carried in on the door of one of the labourers' houses in the village. In taking a hedge, the horse had thrown her; and, what was worse, she had been unable to free her foot; so that she was dragged along over rough, heathery ground for several hundred feet before a gang of men working in a nearby field could stop the animal. Worst of all, the vicious beast had lashed out, kicking up its heels, and had hit my mother's head above her left eye.
     The whole house was in a turmoil; and my father who, luckily, had not yet gone out, dashed away on horseback to fetch the doctor from the city. As chance would have it, the family physician, having heard of our arrival, was already on his way to pay my mother his respects. My father met him within a few miles of Thurow; and

the physician covered the remainder of the distance at a gallop.
     It took my mother six or eight weeks to recover. There remained, under ordinary circumstances, no disfigurement; but anger or excitement made the resultant swelling over the frontal bone of her still smooth brow, conspicuous. I learned to watch for that sign. Nor was her nerve affected in any way. My father wanted to dispose of the mare; but my mother objected, saying to him, in my hearing, that her being thrown was his fault, not the animal's. She soon tamed the mare.
     Our stay at home was, on this occasion, lengthened to three months; for, brought on by her fall, some internal trouble declared itself; and soon I was told that it had been found necessary for her to undergo an operation.
     This was the occasion of my seeing my grandfather on my mother's side for the first and only time in my life. Why it should have been the only time I do not know for certain. My mother never told me; and her father died within a few years. From Annette, who had been with my mother even before her marriage, I heard that there had been an estrangement between the old judge and all three of his daughters and even his only son. That son had, in 1870, joined the Prussian army, against his father's will; and he had been killed in action at Mars-la-Tour. My mother's oldest sister had gone on the stage; her second sister, also older than she, had become a singer on the concert stage; my mother had married against his will.
     For the operation, she was taken to Hamburg in Germany; and my grandfather, a stern, grenadier-like figure, had gone there to make the arrangements. He met the train at the station and was much surprised

to find her sitting up in her compartment. In addition to his own carriage he had brought an ambulance for which there was no need. Without paying any attention to my father, he went up to his daughter, bent down to kiss her, and, seeing her wince with a sudden pain as she tried to rise, he picked her up bodily, to my amazement, and carried her through the station to his carriage. She was taken directly to the hospital.
     On the third day, the operation was performed; and three weeks later my mother was sitting up again.
     Meanwhile my father, I, and such servants as had been taken along were staying at one great hotel overlooking the inner basin of the Alster, a noble sheet of water in the heart of the city; my grandfather, at another. From the moment on when my mother was convalescent I spent, very naturally, much of my time at the hospital; and there I saw a good deal of my grandfather who, as a rule, was sitting rigidly in her room, on a straight-backed chair, without ever leaning back, though he often rested his chin on the gold knob of his cane. As far as I could see, he was content just to be there. When he came in, he invariably put his hand on my head, by way of greeting, while I, of course, jumped up and asked him how he did, sir.
     But once I arrived after him; and even before I entered the room, I became aware of an agitated conversation going on inside. For a moment I listened; and then, realizing that I was not meant to hear, I knocked to make my presence known. What little I had heard gave me a profound shock. Not only did I infer that my grandfather advised my mother to get a divorce; I also heard him use words of my father which no gentleman can use of another while he considers him as being within the

pale. As soon as my mother became aware of me, she checked the next outburst. I do not remember how I came to know anything of what followed; but I did know that, shortly after, before my mother left the hospital, large sums of money were transferred to her; and that she, in return, had to sign certain papers before a lawyer.
     I also know somehow that my father was furious over this transaction to which he, too, had to attach his signature. Much later I came to the conclusion that the money made over to my mother was in lieu of what would have come to her at my grandfather's death; and that the papers she had to sign were in the nature of a release waiving any further participation in her father's estate; the transfer was probably made in such a way as to make it impossible for my father to touch the money.
     I tried later to extract an explanation from my mother, telling her what I knew; but she put me off, adding that I had much better not get any ideas in my head which might prejudice me against my father. As I have said, she foresaw that sooner or later I should be dependent on him.
     Nevertheless, I suspected henceforth that the division between my parents was much deeper than appeared on the surface. During the last few years, when our visits at home became both shorter and less frequent, it happened that I overheard harsh words between them; and there was, before we left Hamburg, at least one towering scene between my grandfather and my father, at our hotel where my grandfather had called almost formally. There was a sitting-room between our two bedrooms; and the scene took place there; that I was in the adjacent room neither of the two men knew, of course. I understood nothing; but I heard enough to know that the older man

called the younger "sir". While my father did nearly all the talking, my grandfather interrupted him a score of times with monosyllabic but explosive exclamations.
     My grandfather left shortly after; and before he drove to the station, I was sent to call on him and to say goodbye. On this occasion he gave me a fine old watch which he recommended me not to carry just yet; but he wished me to have it as an heirloom. Within a decade I had to sell it in New York, to buy bread and butter for a few weeks.
     Shortly, my mother and I went to one of the German island resorts in the North Sea, leaving it, however, very soon to go to a French resort, Trouville or Biarritz, which my francophile mother preferred. My father, I believe, went home.