The carriage was instantly sent to Varde for a physician, but none of the doctors were at home, and it had to wait for hours. At bedtime it had not yet returned.
Niels sat by the child’s cot. Every half hour or oftener he would send some one out to listen and look for the carriage. A mounted messenger was also despatched to meet it, but he failed to see any carriage and rode all the way to Varde.
This waiting for help that did not come made it all the more agonizing to watch the suffering of the sick child. The malady made rapid progress. Toward eleven the first attack of convulsions set in, and after that they came again and again at shorter and shorter intervals.
A little after one, the mounted messenger returned, saying that the carriage could not be expected for some hours yet, as none of the doctors had been at home when he rode out of town.
Then Niels broke down. He had fought against his despair as long as there was any hope, but now he could fight no more. He went into the dark parlor adjoining the sick-room and stared out through the dusky panes, while his nails dug into the wood of the casement. His eyes seemed to burrow into the darkness for some hope; his brain crouched for a spring up toward a miracle; then suddenly all was still and clear for an instant, and in the clearness he turned away from the window to a table standing there, threw himself over it, and sobbed without tears.
When he came into the sick-room again, the child was in convulsions. He looked at it as if he would stab himself to death with the sight: the tiny hands, clenched and white, with bluish nails, the staring eyes turning in their sockets, the distorted mouth, and the teeth grinding with a sound like iron on stone—it was terrible, and yet that was not the worst. No, but when the convulsions ceased and the body grew soft again, relaxing with the happy relief of lessened pain, then to see the terror that came into the child’s eyes when it felt the first faint approach of the convulsions returning, the growing prayer for help when the pain came nearer and yet nearer—to see this and not be able to help, not with his heart’s blood, not with all he possessed! He lifted his clenched hands threateningly to heaven, he caught up his child in a mad impulse of flight, and then he threw himself down on the floor on his knees, praying to the Lord Who is in heaven, Who keeps the earth in fear through trials and chastisements, Who sends want and sickness, suffering and death, Who demands that every knee shall bend to Him in trembling, from Whom no flight is possible—either at the uttermost ends of the ocean or in the depths of the earth—He, the God Who, if it pleases Him, will tread the one you love best under His foot, torture him back into the dust from which He himself created him.
With such thoughts, Niels Lyhne sent prayers up to the God; he threw himself down in utter abandonment before the heavenly throne, confessing that His was the power and His alone.
Still the child suffered.
Toward morning, when the old family physician drove in through the gate, Niels was alone.