The long suppressed tears now broke forth, and trickled down over the boy’s cheeks.
“You, a child, what can you do?” said the doctor, kindly, and shook his head.
Just then there was a great noise in the air. The chimes in the steeple of the village church pealed forth a joyous Christmas carol, and the sound soared, rushing as with invisible wing-beats through the clear, frosty air. For it was Christmas-eve, and the bells were, according to Norse custom, “ringing-in the festival.” Thorwald stood long listening, with folded hands, until the bells seemed to take up the doctor’s last words, and chime: “What can you do, what can you do, what can you do?” Surely, there could be no doubt that that was what the bells were saying. The clear little silvery bells that rang out the high notes were every moment growing more impatient, and now the great heavy bell joined them, too, and tolled out slowly, in a deep bass voice, “Thor—wald!” and then all the little ones chimed in with the chorus, as rapidly as the stiff iron tongues could wag: “What can you do, what can you do, what can you do? Thorwald, what can you do, what can you do, what can you do?”
“A child—ah, what can a child do?” thought Thorwald. “Christ was himself a child once, and He saved the whole world. And on a night like this, when all the world is glad because it is His birthday, He perhaps will remember how a little boy feels who loves his mamma, and cannot bear to lose her. If I only knew where He is now, I would go to Him, even if it were ever so far, and tell Him how much we all love mamma, and I would promise Him to be the best boy in all the world, if He would allow her to stay with us.”
Now the church-bells suddenly stopped, though the air still kept quivering for some minutes with faint reverberations of sound. It was very quiet in the large, old-fashioned house. The servants stole about on tiptoe, and spoke to each other in hurried whispers when they met in the halls. A dim lamp, with a bluish globe, hung under the ceiling and sent a faint, moon-like light over the broad oaken staircase, upon the first landing of which a large Dutch clock stood in a sort of niche, and ticked and ticked patiently in the twilight. It was only five o’clock in the afternoon, and yet the moon had been up for more than an hour, and the stars were twinkling in the sky, and the aurora borealis swept with broad sheets of light through the air, like a huge fan, the handle of which was hidden beneath the North Pole; you almost imagined you heard it whizzing past your ears as it flashed upward to the zenith and flared along the horizon. For at that season of the year the sun sets at about two o’clock in the northern part of Norway, and the day is then but four hours long, while the night is twenty. To Thorwald that was a perfectly proper and natural arrangement; for he had always known it so in winter, and he would have found it very singular if the sun had neglected to hide behind the mountains at about two o’clock on Christmas-eve.
But poor Thorwald heeded little the wonders of the sky that day. He heard the clock going, “Tick—tack, tick—tack,” and he knew that the precious moments were flying, and he had not yet decided what he could do which might please God so well that he would consent to let his dear mamma remain upon earth. He thought of making a vow to be very good all his life long; but it occurred to him that before he would have time to prove the sincerity of his promise, God might already have taken his mamma away. He must find some shorter and surer method. Down on the knoll, near the river, he knew there lived a woman whom all the peasants held in great repute, and who was known in the parish as “Wise Marthie.” He had always been half afraid of her, because she was very old and wrinkled, and looked so much like the fairy godmother in his storybook, who was not invited to the christening feast, and who revenged herself by stinging the princess with a spindle, so that she had to go to sleep for a hundred years. But if she were so wise, as all the people said, perhaps she might tell him what he should do to save the life of his mamma. Hardly had this thought struck him before he seized his cap and overcoat (for it was a bitter cold night), and ran to the stable to fetch his skees.[10] Then down he slid over the steep hill-side. The wind whistled in his ears, and the loose snow whirled about him and settled in his hair, and all over his trousers and his coat. When he reached Wise Marthie’s cottage, down on the knoll, he looked like a wandering snow image. He paused for a moment at the door; then took heart and gave three bold raps with his skee-staff. He heard someone groping about within, and at length a square hole in the door was opened, and the head of the revengeful fairy godmother was thrust out through the opening.
“Who is there?” asked Wise Marthie, harshly (for, of course, it was none other than she). Then as she saw the small boy, covered all over with snow, she added, in a friendlier voice: “Ah! gentlefolk out walking in this rough weather?”
“O Marthie!” cried Thorwald, anxiously, “my mamma is very ill——”
He wished to say more, but Marthie here opened the lower panel of the door, while the upper one remained closed, and invited him to enter.
“Bend your head,” she said, “or you will knock against the door. I am a poor woman, and can’t afford to waste precious heat by opening both panels.”