And now I am coming to what I was going to tell you. You will understand that it was not easy to send away the two children, and it doesn’t make things better to get letters from them constantly begging us to let them come home again. But we had still one little girl left, little Asta, who was just five. I wish you could have seen her. If you were a father and your tortured nerves had often made you harsh and unreasonable with the two elder ones, you would try—would you not?—to make it up in loving-kindness to the one that was left. Asta—isn’t it pretty? Imagine a sunburnt little being with black hair, and her mother’s beautiful eyebrows, always busy with her dolls, or fetching in wood, or baking little cakes of her own for father when mother’s baking bread for us all, chattering to the birds on the roof, or singing now and then, just because some stray note of music has come into her head. When mother is busy scrubbing the floor, little Asta must needs get hold of a wet rag behind her back and slop away at a chair, until she has got herself in a terrible mess, and then she gets smacked, and screams for a moment, but soon runs out and sings herself happy again. When you’re at work in the smithy, there comes a sound of little feet, and “Father, come to dinner”; and a little hand takes hold of you and leads you to the door. “Are you going to bath me to-night, father?” Or “Here’s your napkin, father.” And though there might be only potatoes and milk for dinner, she would eat as if she were seated at the grandest banquet. “Aren’t potatoes and milk your favourite dish, father?” And she makes faces at you in the eagerness of her questionings. At night she slept in a box at the foot of our bed, and when I was lying sleepless, it would often happen that her light, peaceful breathing filled me too with peace; and it was as if her little hand took mine and led me on to sleep itself, to beautiful, divine sleep.
And now, as I come to the thing that happened, I find it a little hard to write—my hand begins to tremble. But my hope is that there may be some comfort in it for you too, as there has proved to be for Merle and me in the end.
Our next neighbours here were a brazier and his wife—poor folks, like ourselves. Soon after we first came I went over to have a talk with him. I found him a poor wizened little creature, pottering about with his acids, and making a living as best as he could, soldering and tinning kettles and pans. “What do you want?” he asked, looking askance at me; and as I went out, I heard him bolt the door behind me. Alas! he was afraid—afraid that I was come to snatch his daily bread from him. His wife was a big-boned fleshy lump of a woman, insolent enough in her ways, though she had just been in prison for criminal abetment in the case of a girl that had got into trouble.
One Sunday morning I was standing looking at some apple trees in bloom in his garden. One of them grew so close to the fence that the branches hung over on my side, and I bent one down to smell the blossom. Then suddenly I heard a cry: “Hi, Tiger! catch him!” and the brazier’s great wolf-dog came bounding down, ready to fly at my throat. I was lucky enough to get hold of its collar before it could do me any harm, and I dragged it up to its owner, and told him that if anything of the sort happened again I’d have the sheriff’s officer after him. Then the music began. He fairly let himself go and told me what he thought of me. “You hold your jaw, you cursed pauper, coming here taking the bread out of honest working people’s mouths,” and so on. He hissed it out, flourishing his arms about, and at last it seemed to me he was fumbling about for a knife or something to throw at my head. I couldn’t help laughing. It was a scene in the grand style between two Great Powers in the world-competition.
A couple of days later I was standing at the forge, when I heard a shriek from my wife. I rushed out—what could be the matter? Merle was down by the fence already, and all at once I saw what it was—there was Asta, lying on the ground under the body of a great beast.
And then—Well, Merle tells me it was I that tore the thing away from the little bundle of clothes beneath it, and carried our little girl home.
A doctor is often a good refuge in trouble, but though he may sew up a ragged tear in a child’s throat ever so neatly, it doesn’t necessarily follow that it will help much.
There was a mother, though, that would not let him go—that cried and prayed and clung about him, begging him to try once more if nothing could be done. And when at last he was gone, she was always for going after him again, and grovelled on the floor and tore her hair—could not, would not, believe what she knew was true.
And that night a father and mother sat up together, staring strangely in front of them. The mother was quiet now. The child was laid out, decked and ready. The father sat by the window, looking out. It was in May, and the night was grey.
Now it was that I began to realise how every great sorrow leads us farther and farther out on the promontory of existence. I had come to the outermost point now—there was no more.