And I knew now that what I had hungered after in my best years was neither knowledge, nor honour, nor riches; nor to be a priest or a great creator in steel; no, friend, but to build temples; not chapels for prayers or churches for wailing penitent sinners, but a temple for the human spirit in its grandeur, where we could lift up our souls in an anthem as a gift to heaven.
I could never do this now. Perhaps there was nothing that I could do any more. And yet it seemed to me as I sat there that I had conquered.
What happened then? Well, there had been a terrible drought all that spring—it is often so in this valley. The eternal north wind sent the dry mould sweeping in clouds over the whole countryside, and we were threatened with one of our worst years of scarcity if the rain didn’t come.
At last people ventured to sow their corn, but then the frosts set in, and snow and sleet, and the seed froze in the earth. My neighbour the brazier had his patch of ground sown with barley—but now he would have to sow it again, and where was he to get the seed? He went from farm to farm begging for some, but people hated the sight of him after what had happened about Asta—no one would lend him any, and he had no money to buy. The boys on the roads hooted after him, and some of the neighbours talked of driving him out of the parish.
I wasn’t able to sleep much the next night either, and when the clock struck two I got up. “Where are you going?” asked Merle. “I want to see if we haven’t a half-bushel of barley left,” I said. “Barley—what do you want with barley in the middle of the night?” “I want to sow the brazier’s plot with it,” I said, “and it’s best to do it now, so that nobody will know it was me.”
She sat up and stared at me. “What? His—the—the brazier’s?”
“Yes,” said I. “It won’t do us any good, you know, to see his bit of field lying bare all summer.”
“Peer—where are you going?”
“I’ve told you,” said I, and went out. But I knew that she was dressing and meant to come too.
It had rained during the night, and as I came out the air was soft and easy to breathe. The morning still lay in a grey half-light with yellow gleams from the wind-clouds to the north. The scent of the budding birches was in the air, the magpies and starlings were up and about, but not a human soul was to be seen; the farms were asleep, the whole countryside was asleep.