VIII—"MY FATHER THANKED GOD"
He threw his arms round my neck and kissed me fervently on both cheeks as he whispered in a trembling voice:
"Oh, thank God we've got you back again! Welcome home, my dear boy—welcome—welcome! Thanks be to God from your mother and me and all of us! O my God, my God!—it has been a hard time!"
He shook me as you shake a friend in exuberant joy. And then he took my arm. "Why, I could not recognize you at first," he said with a little smile. "You have changed—somewhat.... But on the whole you are looking quite well."
"Yes, am I not?" I said. "Quite well—I think so myself."
I smiled.
I remembered that that was what they always said at the hospital....
Then we drove along the road to my home, and in thirsty eagerness my mind drank in all the old, familiar and beautiful luxuriance: the white road with the perfume of the poplars; the hedges with the wild roses; the white-washed, thatched farmsteads; the bright, summer gleam of the blue fjord.
It was all just the same as when I left home nearly two years ago—so it seemed to me, at any rate. I could not see any change.
My father had sat silent awhile and had now and then stolen a glance at me, and I understood why. He had to feel at home with my face first before he could feel quite at home with myself. He was never at any time one to speak much, by the way.
We drove past one of the big farms. The house stood close up to the road, and looked so peaceful, so bathed in sunshine; and the blossoms from the fruit trees sprinkled their pure white snow over the bright lawns.
"The farmer in there fell last September," said my father; "and his two sons are also gone. There are no more men left now in that family....
"The husband is gone over there, and yonder the son. Both sons from that place are gone. And over there they have lost a son-in-law—you know, the one who had just got married. At the farm yonder the husband came home a cripple last Christmas; and the son in that one is blind."
His hushed and mournful words spoke of nothing but death and grief. There was scarcely a farm or a house the door of which was not marked with the cross of death, or in which mourning or disablement had not a home....