Old Agnete
An old woman went up the mountain-path with short, tripping steps. She was little and thin. Her face was pale and wizened, but neither hard nor furrowed. She wore a long cloak and a quilled cap. She had a Prayer-Book in her hand and a sprig of lavender in her handkerchief.
She lived in a hut far up the high mountain where no trees could grow. It was lying quite close to the edge of a broad glacier, which sent its river of ice from the snow-clad mountain peak into the depths of the valley. There she lived quite alone. All those who had belonged to her were dead.
It was Sunday, and she had been to church. But whatever might be the cause, her going there had not made her happy, but sorrowful. The clergyman had spoken about death and the doomed, and that had affected her. She had suddenly begun to think of how she had heard in her childhood that many of the doomed were tormented in the region of eternal cold on the mountain right above her dwelling. She could remember many tales about these wanderers of the glaciers—these indefatigable shadows which were hunted from place to place by the icy mountain winds.
All at once she felt a great terror of the mountain, and thought that her hut was dreadfully high up. Supposing those who moved about invisibly there wandered down the glaciers! And she who was quite alone! The word 'alone' gave to her thoughts a still sadder turn. She again felt the full burden of that sorrow which never left her. She thought how hard it was to be so far away from human beings.
'Old Agnete,' she said aloud to herself, as she had got into the habit of doing in the lonely waste, 'you sit in your hut and spin, and spin. You work and toil all the hours of the day so as not to perish from hunger. But is there anyone to whom you give any pleasure by being alive? Is there anyone, old Agnete? If any of your own were living——Yes, then, perhaps, if you lived nearer the village, you might be of some use to somebody. Poor as you are, you could neither take dog nor cat home to you, but you could probably now and then give a beggar shelter. You ought not to live so far away from the highroad, old Agnete. If you could only once in a while give a thirsty wayfarer a drink, then you would know that it was of some use your being alive.'
She sighed, and said to herself that not even the peasant women who gave her flax to spin would mourn her death. She had certainly striven to do her work honestly and well, but no doubt there were many who could have done it better. She began to cry bitterly, when the thought struck her that his reverence, who had seen her sitting in the same place in church for so many, many years, would perhaps think it a matter of perfect indifference whether she was dead or not.
'It is as if I were dead,' she said. 'No one asks after me. I would just as well lie down and die. I am already frozen to death from cold and loneliness. I am frozen to the core of the heart, I am indeed. Ah me! ah me!' she said, now she had been set a-thinking; 'if there were only someone who really needed me, there might still be a little warmth left in old Agnete. But I cannot knit stockings for the mountain goats, or make the beds for the marmots, can I? I tell Thee,' she said, stretching our her hands towards heaven, 'something Thou must give me to do, or I shall lay me down and die.'
At the same moment a tall, stern monk came towards her. He walked by her side because he saw that she was sorrowful, and she told him about her troubles. She said that her heart was nearly frozen to death, and that she would become like one of the wanderers on the glacier if God did not give her something to live for.
'God will assuredly do that,' said the monk.