Our courtyard is full of children and my little boy has picked a
bosom-friend out of the band: his name is Einar and he can be as good as
another.
My little boy admires him and Einar allows himself to be admired, so
that the friendship is established on the only proper basis.
"Einar says . . . Einar thinks . . . Einar does," is the daily refrain;
and we arrange our little life accordingly.
"I can't see anything out of the way in Einar," says the mother of my
little boy.
"Nor can I," say I. "But our little boy can and that is enough. I once
had a friend who could see nothing at all charming in you. And you
yourself, if I remember right, had three friends who thought _your_
taste inexcusable. Luckily for our little boy. . . ."
"Luckily!"
"It is the feeling that counts," I go on lecturing, "and not the
object."
"Thanks!" she says.
Now something big and unusual takes place in our courtyard and makes an
extraordinary impression on the children and gives their small brains
heaps to struggle with for many a long day.
The scarlatina comes.
And scarlatina is not like a pain in your stomach, when you have eaten
too many pears, or like a cold, when you have forgotten to put on your
jacket. Scarlatina is something quite different, something powerful and
terrible. It comes at night and takes a little boy who was playing quite
happily that same evening. And then the little boy is gone.
Perhaps a funny carriage comes driving in through the gate, with two
horses and a coachman and two men with bright brass buttons on their
coats. The two men take out of the carriage a basket, with a red
blanket and white sheets, and carry it up to where the boy lives.
Presently, they carry the basket down again and then the boy is inside.
But nobody can see him, because the sheet is over his face. The basket
is shoved into the carriage, which is shut with a bang, and away goes
the carriage with the boy, while his mother dries her eyes and goes up
to the others.
Perhaps no carriage comes. But then the sick boy is shut up in his room
and no one may go to him for a long time, because he is infectious. And
anyone can understand that this must be terribly sad.
The children in the courtyard talk of nothing else.
They talk with soft voices and faces full of mystery, because they know
nothing for certain. They hear that one of them, who rode away in the
carriage, is dead; but that makes no more impression on them than when
one of them falls ill and disappears.
Day by day, the little band is being thinned out and not one of them has
yet come back.
I stand at my open window and look at my little boy, who is sitting on
the steps below with his friend. They have their arms around each
other's necks and see no one except each other; that is to say, Einar
sees himself and my little boy sees Einar.
"If you fall ill, I will come and see you," says my little boy.
"No, you won't!"
"I will come and see you."
His eyes beam at this important promise. Einar cries as though he were
already ill.
And the next day he is ill.
He lies in a little room all by himself. No one is allowed to go to him.
A red curtain hangs before the window.
My little boy sits alone on the steps outside and stares up at the
curtain. His hands are thrust deep into his pockets. He does not care to
play and he speaks to nobody.
And I walk up and down the room, uneasy as to what will come next.
"You are anxious about our little boy," says his mother. "And it will be
a miracle if he escapes."
"It's not that. We've all had a touch of scarlatina."
But just as I want to talk to her about it, I hear a fumbling with the
door-handle which there is no mistaking and then he stands before us in
the room.
I know you so well, my little boy, when you come in sideways like that,
with a long face, and go and sit in a corner and look at the two people
who owe so much happiness to you--look from one to the other. Your eyes
are greener than usual. You can't find your words and you sit huddled up
and you are ever so good.
"Mother, is Einar ill?"
"Yes. But he will soon be better again. The doctor says that he is not
so bad."
"Is he infectious, Mother?"
"Yes, he is. His little sister has been sent to the country, so that she
may not fall ill too. No one is allowed to go to him except his mother,
who gives him his milk and his medicine and makes his bed."
A silence.
The mother of my little boy looks down at her book and suspects nothing.
The father of my little boy looks in great suspense from the window.
"Mother, I want to go to Einar."
"You can't go there, my little man. You hear, he's infectious. Just
think, if you should fall ill yourself! Einar isn't bothering at all
about chatting with you. He sleeps the whole day long."
"But when he wakes, Mother?"
"You can't go up there."
This tells upon him and he is nearly crying. I see that the time has
come for me to come to his rescue:
"Have you promised Einar to go and see him?" I ask.
"Yes, Father. . . ."
He is over his trouble. His eyes beam. He stands erect and glad beside
me and puts his little hand in mine.
"Then of course you must do so," I say, calmly. "So soon as he wakes."
Our mother closes her book with a bang:
"Go down to the courtyard and play, while Father and I have a talk."
The boy runs away.
And she comes up to me and lays her hand on my shoulder and says,
earnestly:
"I _daren't_ do that, do you hear?"
And I take her hand and kiss it and say, quite as earnestly:
"And I _daren't refuse_!"
We look at each other, we two, who share the empire, the power and the
glory.
"I heard our little boy make his promise," I say, "I saw him. Sir
Galahad himself was not more in earnest when swearing his knightly oath.
You see, we have no choice here. He can catch the scarlatina in any case
and it is not even certain that he will catch it. . . ."
"If it was diphtheria, you wouldn't talk like that!"
"You may be right. But am I to become a thief for the sake of a nickel,
because I am not sure that I could resist the temptation to steal a
kingdom?"
"You would not find a living being to agree with you."
"Except yourself. And that is all I want. The infection is really only a
side matter. It can come this way or that way. We can't safeguard him,
come what may. . . ."
"But are we to send him straight to where it is?"
"We're not doing that; it's not we who are doing that."
She is very much excited. I put my arm round her waist and we walk up
and down the room together:
"Darling, today our little boy may meet with a great misfortune. He may
receive a shock from which he will never recover. . . ."
"That is true," she says.
"If he doesn't keep his promise, the misfortune has occurred. It would
already be a misfortune if he could ever think that it was possible for
him to break it, if it appeared to him that there was anything great or
remarkable about keeping it."
"Yes, but . . ."
"Darling, the world is full of careful persons. One step more and
they become mere paltry people. Shall we turn that into a likely thing,
into a virtue, for our little boy? His promise was stupid: let that
pass. . . ."
"He is so little."
"Yes, that he is; and God be praised for it! Think what good luck it is
that he did not know the danger, when he made his promise, that he does
not understand it now, when he is keeping it. What a lucky beggar! He is
learning to keep his word, just as he has learnt to be clean. By the
time that he is big enough to know his danger, it will be an
indispensable habit with him. And he gains all that at the risk of a
little scarlatina."
She lays her head on my shoulder and says nothing more.
That afternoon, she takes our little boy by the hand and goes up with
him to Einar. They stand on the threshold of his room, bid him good-day
and ask him how he is.
Einar is not at all well and does not look up and does not answer.
But that does not matter in the least.