So I left them; I whistled as I walked away with exaggerated indifference,
as though nothing on earth were any concern of mine.
"Come with me instead," she said. And he went. They were already behind
the outhouses, then behind the two great rowan trees; they hurried lest
Mrs. Brede should see them. Then they were gone.
A door wide open, but where did it lead? I saw no sweetness in her,
nothing but excitement. She had learned grammar, but no language; her soul
was undernourished. A true woman would have married; she would have been a
man's wife, she would have been a mother, she would have been a
benediction to herself. Why pounce on a pleasure merely to prevent others
from having it? And she so tall and handsome!
The dog stands growling over a bone. He waits till another dog approaches.
Then suddenly he is overcome with gluttony, pounces on the bone and
crushes it between his teeth. Because the other dog is approaching.
It seemed as though this small event had to happen before my mind was
ready for the night. I awoke in the dark and felt within me the nursery
rhyme I had dawdled over so long: four rollicking verses about the juniper
tree.
To the top of the steepest mountains,
where the little juniper stands,
no other tree can follow
from all the forest lands.
Halfway to the hilltop
the shivering pine catches hold;
the birch has actually passed him,
though sneezing with a cold.
But a little shrub outstrips them,
a sturdy fellow he,
and stands quite close to the summit,
though he measures barely a yard.
They look like a train from the valley below
with the shortest one for the guard.
Or else perhaps he's a coachman now--
why, it's only a juniper tree.
Down dale there's summer lightning,
green leaves and St. John's feast,
with songs and games of children,
and a dozen dances at least.
But high on the empty mountain
stands a shrub in lonely glory,
with only the trolls that prowl about,
just like in a story.
The wind with the juniper's forelock
is making very free;
it sweeps across the world beneath
that lies there helpless and bare,
but the air on the heights is fresher
than you'll ever find it elsewhere.
None can see so far around
as such a juniper tree.
There hovers over the mountain
for a moment summer's breath;
at once eternal winter
brings back his companion, death.
Yet sturdy stands the juniper
with needles ever green.
I wonder how the little chap
can bear a life so lean.
He's hard as bone and gristle,
as anyone can see;
when every other tree is stripped,
his berries are scarlet and sleek,
and every berry's plainly marked
with a cross upon its cheek.
So now we know what he looks like too,
this jolly juniper tree.
At times I think he sings to himself
a cheerful little song:
"I've got a bright blue heaven
to look at all day long!"
Sometimes to his juniper brothers
he calls that they need not fear
the trolls that are prowling and peering
about them far and near.
Gently the winter evening
falls over the copse on the height,
and a thousand stars and candles
are lit in the plains of the sky.
The juniper trees grow weary
and nod their heads on the sly;
before we know it they're fast asleep,
so we say: "Good night, good night!"
I got up and wrote out these rhymes on a sheet of paper, which I sent to a
little girl, a child with whom I had walked much in the country, and she
learned them at once. Then I read them to Mrs. Brede's little girls, who
stood still like two bluebells, listening. Then they tore the paper out of
my hand and ran to their mother with it. They loved their mother very
much. And she loved them too; they had the most delightful fun together at
bedtime.
Brave Mrs. Brede with her children! She might have committed a madness,
but could not find it in her heart to do so. Yet did anyone prize her for
that? Who? Her husband?
A man should take his wife to Iceland with him. Or risk the consequences
of her being left behind for endless days.