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DITTE: GIRL ALIVE!
BY
MARTIN ANDERSON NEXOe
_Translated from the Danish_
NEW YORK
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1920
BY
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
CONTENTS
PART I
CHAPTER PAGE
I DITTE'S FAMILY TREE 3
II BEFORE THE BIRTH 10
III A CHILD IS BORN 22
IV DITTE'S FIRST STEP 26
V GRANDFATHER STRIKES OUT AFRESH 33
VI THE DEATH OF SOeREN MAN 39
VII THE WIDOW AND THE FATHERLESS 47
VIII WISE MAREN 52
IX DITTE VISITS FAIRYLAND 69
X DITTE GETS A FATHER 79
XI THE NEW FATHER 87
XII THE RAG AND BONE MAN 103
XIII DITTE HAS A VISION 115
XIV AT HOME WITH MOTHER 124
XV RAIN AND SUNSHINE 138
XVI POOR GRANNY 144
XVII WHEN THE CAT'S AWAY 151
XVIII THE RAVEN FLIES BY NIGHT 163
XIX ILL LUCK FOLLOWS THE RAVEN'S CALL 172
PART II
CHAPTER PAGE
I MORNING AT THE CROW'S NEST 183
II THE HIGHROAD 192
III LARS PETER SEEKS THE KING 203
IV LITTLE MOTHER DITTE 219
V THE LITTLE VAGABOND 230
VI THE KNIFE-GRINDER 239
VII THE SAUSAGE-MAKER 250
VIII THE LAST OF THE CROW'S NEST 267
IX A DEATH 284
X THE NEW WORLD 291
XI GINGERBREAD HOUSE 303
XII DAILY TROUBLES 311
XIII DITTE'S CONFIRMATION 320
PART I
CHAPTER I
DITTE'S FAMILY TREE
It has always been considered a sign of good birth to be able to
count one's ancestors for centuries back. In consequence of this,
Ditte Child o' Man stood at the top of the tree. She belonged to one
of the largest families in the country, the family of Man.
No genealogical chart exists, nor would it be easy to work it out;
its branches are as the sands of the sea, and from it all other
generations can be traced. Here it cropped out as time went on--then
twined back when its strength was spent and its part played out. The
Man family is in a way as the mighty ocean, from which the waves
mount lightly towards the skies, only to retreat in a sullen flow.
According to tradition, the first mother of the family is said to
have been a field worker who, by resting on the cultivated ground,
became pregnant and brought forth a son. And it was this son who
founded the numerous and hardy family for whom all things prospered.
The most peculiar characteristic of the Man family in him was that
everything he touched became full of life and throve.
This boy for a long time bore the marks of the clinging earth, but
he outgrew it and became an able worker of the field; with him began
the cultivation of the land. That he had no father gave him much
food for thought, and became the great and everlasting problem of
his life. In his leisure he created a whole religion out of it.
He could hold his own when it came to blows; in his work there was
no one to equal him, but his wife had him well in hand. The name Man
is said to have originated in his having one day, when she had
driven him forth by her sharp tongue, sworn threateningly that he
was master in his own house, "master" being equivalent to "man."
Several of the male members of this family have since found it hard
to bow their pride before their women folk.
A branch of the family settled down on the desert coast up near the
Cattegat, and this was the beginning of the hamlet. It was in those
times when forest and swamp still made the country impassable, and
the sea was used as a highway. The reefs are still there on which
the men landed from the boats, carrying women and children ashore;
by day and by night white seagulls take turns to mark the place--and
have done so through centuries.
This branch had in a marked degree the typical characteristics of
the family: two eyes--and a nose in the middle of their faces; one
mouth which could both kiss and bite, and a pair of fists which they
could make good use of. In addition to this the family was alike in
that most of its members were better than their circumstances. One
could recognize the Man family anywhere by their bad qualities being
traceable to definite causes, while for the good in them there was
no explanation at all: it was inbred.
It was a desolate spot they had settled upon, but they took it as it
was, and gave themselves up patiently to the struggle for existence,
built huts, chopped wood and made ditches. They were contented and
hardy, and had the Man's insatiable desire to overcome difficulties;
for them there was no bitterness in work, and before long the result
of their labors could be seen. But keep the profit of their work
they could not; they allowed others to have the spending of it, and
thus it came about, that in spite of their industry they remained as
poor as ever.
Over a century ago, before the north part of the coast was
discovered by the land folk, the place still consisted of a cluster
of hunch-backed, mildewed huts, which might well have been the
originals, and on the whole resembled a very ancient hamlet. The
beach was strewn with tools and drawn-up boats. The water in the
little bay stank of castaway fish, catfish and others which, on
account of their singular appearance, were supposed to be possessed
of devils, and therefore not eaten.
A quarter of an hour's walk from the hamlet, out on the point, lived
Soeren Man. In his young days he had roamed the seas like all the
others, but according to custom had later on settled himself down
as a fisherman. Otherwise, he was really more of a peasant and
belonged to that branch of the family which had devoted itself to
the soil, and for this had won much respect. Soeren Man was the son
of a farmer, but on reaching man's estate, he married a fisher girl
and gave himself up to fishing together with agriculture--exactly as
the first peasant in the family had done.
The land was poor, two or three acres of downs where a few sheep
struggled for their food, and this was all that remained of a large
farm which had once been there, and where now seagulls flocked
screaming over the white surf. The rest had been devoured by the
ocean.
It was Soeren's, and more particularly Maren's foolish pride that his
forefathers had owned a farm. It had been there sure enough three or
four generations back; with a fairly good ground, a clay bank
jutting out into the sea. A strong four-winged house, built of
oak--taken from wrecks--could be seen from afar, a picture of
strength. But then suddenly the ocean began to creep in. Three
generations, one after the other, were forced to shift the farm
further back to prevent its falling into the sea, and to make the
moving easier, each time a wing was left behind; there was, of
course, no necessity for so much house-room, when the land was eaten
by the sea. All that now remained was the heavy-beamed old
dwelling-house which had prudently been placed on the landward side
of the road, and a few sandhills.
Here the sea no longer encroached. Now the best had gone, with the
lands of Man, it was satiated and took its costly food elsewhere;
here, indeed, it gave back again, throwing sand up on to the land,
which formed a broad beach in front of the slope, and on windy days
would drift, covering the rest of the field. Under the thin
straggling downs could still be traced the remains of old plowland,
broken off crudely on the slope, and of old wheeltracks running
outwards and disappearing abruptly in the blue sky over the sea.
For many years, after stormy nights with the sea at high tide, it
had been the Man's invariable custom each morning to find out how
much had again been taken by the sea; burrowing animals hastened the
destruction; and it happened that whole pieces of field with their
crops would suddenly go; down in the muttering ocean it lay, and on
it the mark of harrow and plow and the green reflection of winter
crops over it.
It told on a man to be witness of the inevitable. For each time a
piece of their land was taken by the sea with all their toil and
daily bread on its back, they themselves declined. For every fathom
that the ocean stole nearer to the threshold of their home, nibbling
at their good earth, their status and courage grew correspondingly
less.
For a long time they struggled against it, and clung to the land
until necessity drove them back to the sea. Soeren was the first to
give himself entirely up to it: he took his wife from the hamlet and
became a fisherman. But they were none the better for it. Maren
could never forget that her Soeren belonged to a family who had owned
a farm; and so it was with the children. The sons cared little for
the sea, it was in them to struggle with the land and therefore they
sought work on farms and became day-laborers and ditchers, and as
soon as they saved sufficient money, emigrated to America. Four sons
were farming over there. They were seldom heard of, misfortune
seemed to have worn out their feeling of relationship. The daughters
went out to service, and after a time Soeren and Maren lost sight of
them, too. Only the youngest, Soerine, stayed at home longer than was
usual with poor folks' children. She was not particularly strong,
and her parents thought a great deal of her--as being the only one
they had left.
It had been a long business for Soeren's ancestors to work themselves
up from the sea to the ownership of cultivated land; it had taken
several generations to build up the farm on the Naze. But the
journey down hill was as usual more rapid, and to Soeren was left the
worst part of all when he inherited; not only acres but possessions
had gone; nothing was left now but a poor man's remains.
The end was in many ways like the beginning. Soeren was like the
original man in this also, that he too was amphibious. He understood
everything, farming, fishing and handicraft. But he was not sharp
enough to do more than just earn a bare living, there was never
anything to spare. This was the difference between the ascent and
the descent. Moreover, he--like so many of the family--found it
difficult to attend to his own business.
It was a race which allowed others to gather the first-fruits of
their labors. It was said of them that they were just like sheep,
the more the wool was clipped, the thicker it grew. The downfall had
not made Soeren any more capable of standing up for himself.
When the weather was too stormy for him to go to sea, and there was
nothing to do on his little homestead, he sat at home and patched
seaboots for his friends down in the hamlet. But he seldom got paid
for it. "Leave it till next time," said they. And Soeren had nothing
much to say against this arrangement, it was to him just as good as
a savings bank. "Then one has something for one's old days," said
he. Maren and the girl were always scolding him for this, but Soeren
in this as in everything else, did not amend his ways. He knew well
enough what women were; they never put by for a rainy day.