Part 38 (1/2)

Most men would say things have steadily gone from bad to worse with me, and certainly I shall not pretend to feel any love for suffering in itself. On the contrary, it hurts. It does not enn.o.ble. It rather brutalises, unless it becomes so great that it embraces all things. I was once Engineer in charge at the First Cataract--now I am a blacksmith in a country parish. And that hurts. I am cut off from reading because of my eyes, and from intercourse with people whose society would be a pleasure because there are no such people here. All this hurts, even when you've grown used to it--a good thing in itself it is not. Many times I have thought that we must have reached the very bottom of the inclined plane of adversity, but always it proved to be only a break.

The deepest deep was still to come. You work on even when your head feels like to split; you save up every pin, every match; and yet the bread you eat often tastes of charity. That hurts. You give up hoping that things may be better some day; you give up all hope, all dreams, all faith, all illusions--surely you have come to the end of all things.

But no; the very roots of one's being are still left; the most precious thing of all is still left. What can that be, you ask?

That is what I was going to tell you.

The thing that happened came just when things were beginning to look a little brighter for us. For some time past my head had been less troublesome, and I had got to work on a new harrow--steel again; it never lets one rest--and you know what endless possibilities a man sees in a thing like that. Merle was working with fresh courage. What do you think of a wife like that? taking up the cross of her own free will, to go on sharing the life of a ruined man? I hope you may meet a woman of her sort one day. True, her hair is growing grey, and her face lined.

Her figure is not so straight as once it was; her hands are red and broken. And yet all this has a soul of its own, a beauty of its own, in my eyes, because I know that each wrinkle is a mark left by the time when some new trouble came upon us, and found us together. Then one day she smiles, and her smile has grown strained and full of sadness, but again it brings back to me times when both heaven and earth breathed cold upon us and we drew closer to each other for warmth. Our happiness and our sufferings have moulded her into what she now is. The world may think perhaps that she is growing old; to me she is only more beautiful than before.

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 s.n.a.t.c.h 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, flouris.h.i.+ng 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-compet.i.tion.

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.

And I discovered too, dear friend, that these many years of adversity had shaped me not in one but in various moulds, for I had in me the stuff for several quite distinct persons, and now the work was done, and they could break free from my being and go their several ways.

I saw a man rush out into the night, shaking his fist at heaven and earth; a madman who refused to play his part in the farce any more, and so rushed down towards the river.

But I myself sat there still.

And I saw another, a puny creature, let loose; a humble, ashen-grey ascetic, that bent his head and bowed under the lash, and said: ”Thy will be done. The Lord gave, the Lord hath taken away--” A pitiful being this, that stole out into the night and disappeared.

But I myself sat there still.

I sat alone on the promontory of existence, with the sun and the stars gone out, and ice-cold emptiness above me, about me, and in me, on every side.

But then, my friend, by degrees it dawned on me that there was still something left. There was one little indomitable spark in me, that began to glow all by itself--it was as if I were lifted back to the first day of existence, and an eternal will rose up in me, and said: Let there be light!

This will it was that by and by grew and grew in me, and made me strong.

I began to feel an unspeakable compa.s.sion for all men upon earth, and yet in the last resort I was proud that I was one of them.