IN THE PLACE OF THE DEAD
When the children, a few days later, had emerged from the poorest of
the mountain districts, they came one evening to a farm where sickness
and sorrow reigned. It was a big rich farmstead. The eldest girl had
just died, only ten years old. And now the little boy, the only son,
seven years old, lay sick with the same disease of which the sister had
died. The wife, a stately, beautiful woman, stood over the fire and
whipped barley-meal into the boiling water, when the little group of
children with, as usual, shy, timid faces, came in.
She had a stern husband, and had to do her work well and as usual, even
though sorrow filled her heart and anxiety over the little one who,
too, might be taken from her, tortured her.
She turned toward the door when it remained open so long in order to
let in all the five children.
To-day they pushed Anna-Lisa ahead of them. It was always so hard for
those who were poorly clad to come into such a big fine house, and ask
for food and sleeping room.
The wife stared at Anna-Lisa.
‘Come up to the fire, child,’ she said with a sad, gentle voice. She
put out her hand to greet Anna-Lisa, who was much impressed. It wasn’t
usual to be greeted like that when one was one of the famine people.
‘What may your name be, girl?’ asked the wife, and pushed back the
scarf from Anna-Lisa’s light hair.
‘Anna-Lisa,’ she answered, and looked up into the mistress’s sad eyes
with her honest blue ones.
‘No, that can’t be possible! “Anna-Lisa,” like our Anna-Lisa, whom the
Lord took away!’
The wife put both hands to her head, and sank down on the hearth bench.
She had already removed the gruel kettle from the fire.
‘Yes, it is true,’ assured Andy, and stepped forward. ‘Her name is
Anna-Lisa, like our grandmother, who is dead.’
The husband came in, followed by the two farmhands. They were covered
with snow, although out on the step, they had stamped off the worst of
what had covered them in the woods where they had been driving timber.
Though he was still a young man, he walked with bent head.
‘How is our little chap?’ he asked his wife as he passed her.
‘Same as the girl. The Lord will probably take him too.’
The master went silently to the table, sat down, and said grace. He
took a wooden spoon and ate out of the same dish as the men, though
each one had his own wooden bowl of milk. There were also goat’s-milk
cheese, bread, and butter on the table.
‘Has Mother Gullen gone?’ he asked in a low voice.
‘She left before noon, but then she couldn’t do anything more for
little Karl. Even if we drove the ninety miles to the doctor’s, it
wouldn’t help any. He’s half-unconscious now--we’ll soon be childless.’
The man ate spoonful after spoonful, but it was plain that sorrow
filled him, as well as his wife, who, outwardly calm, stood by the
table and cut up rye bread for the woodsmen, who also looked depressed.
‘But there’s no scarcity of little people, otherwise, I see,’ said the
master bitterly. ‘When one can’t keep and feed one’s own, it’s best to
send other people’s children away.’
‘That would be a sin, it seems to me,’ said the wife patiently. ‘If
we’ll soon be without children, these poor things, I hear, are without
parents. I think that is just as hard.’
It was perfectly quiet in the big kitchen, which the fire lighted up
brightly. The copper kettles over the door shone in a long rich-man’s
row. The built-in beds were provided with red striped curtains. The
tall Dalecarlian clock was quite gorgeous, painted blue with red roses.
There were neat rag carpets on the white scrubbed floor. And inside
the shining window-panes, with their airy hand-woven curtains, were
seen flowers, myrtles, balsamines, snap-dragons, fuchsias. So it was
an unusually pleasant room, which was not put to shame by the three
spinning-wheels, pushed to one side for the moment.
‘Go and greet father, Anna-Lisa,’ said the wife, and pushed the girl
toward the master with a sad, meaningful smile.
Anna-Lisa reddened painfully when she went forward alone. She looked
gentle and sweet at this moment, pleasant, neat, and combed, though her
clothes were poor and worn.
The master looked up surprised.
‘What in the world is _your_ name, girl?’
‘Anna-Lisa.’ She looked timidly and anxiously over at her sister and
brothers.
The master put his hands to his head as if confused, just as his wife
had done.
‘Heavens, Brita Dea, she looks just exactly like our Anna-Lisa before
she was sick!’
‘I thought, too, when I saw her here, that our Anna-Lisa went away so
that this one should come in her stead.’
The wife looked steadily and earnestly at her husband. She took
Anna-Lisa’s hand, and put her arm slowly, almost caressingly, around
the girl’s neck, while she led her back to the rest beside the fire.
When the men, after thanking God for food, left the table, she set it
for the children. Milk and mush, and, what wasn’t often their lot,
sandwiches of the fine, and at that time highly prized, rye bread.
Then she went quickly and quietly away. The children understood that
she went to see the sick boy.
They sat around the table, restless and thoughtful. The talk about
Anna-Lisa’s staying worried them.
The wife came out of the little room off the kitchen, where the sick
child lay. She went swiftly through the kitchen and out.
‘Maybe he is dead,’ whispered Anna-Lisa. ‘Then they’ll be angry with
the Lord, and will chase us away.’
‘No,’ objected Maglena. ‘Didn’t you see that her eyes were shining?
More likely the boy is better, and then they will be glad and want to
thank the Lord, and then they’ll take you, Anna-Lisa.’
Again the children sat in depressed spirits.
Suddenly Anna-Lisa put her head down on her hands which were folded on
the table. She wept--wept, though so quietly that no one could hear it.
But her shoulders shook, and the hopeless position of her head betrayed
her.
The children munched their fine sandwiches in anxious silence.
‘Please, Anna-Lisa, please,’ said Andy, and tried to draw her hands
away. It seemed to him so hard, so unusual, to see Anna-Lisa, who was
generally so quiet and calm, weeping so helplessly.
Anna-Lisa raised her face, red with weeping.
‘I don’t want to be without you--first the little girls, I miss them
awfully--and then all of you.’
‘Well, it will be hard for us too,’ said Andy gently. ‘You’ve been so
good to the little ones, and to all of us, for that matter.’
‘And who will milk Golden Horn--and mend for the boys--and wash and
keep you in order?’ sniffed Anna-Lisa. She looked at the two smallest
at the table with a troubled, motherly eye. ‘You don’t wash or comb
yourselves if I don’t keep after you.’
Magnus and Per-Erik lowered their eyes guiltily. Brave men as they
wanted to be, they thought it terribly bothersome, all this combing and
washing. It wasn’t any fun either on Saturday nights to have to pull
off the shirt which wrapped around their bodies so warmly, and then
struggle to get their arms into another which would be icy cold, yes,
even wet, thought the boys, since it had lain in the knapsack where
snow and the cold wind had got into it. And no shirt ever really fitted
them either. The shirt, as well as other garments, came always as a
surprise to them--sometimes it was so big it hung down and dragged.
Another time it was so small and tight that your nose got squeezed when
the change took place.
Anna-Lisa used to rub their necks and ears and eyes with soft soap and
water, and wipe them with old clothes that were washed but not mangled,
of course, and so hard that ‘they scratched like wolves’ claws,’
insisted the little men when they rose in opposition.
They sat at the table truly alarmed lest Anna-Lisa should stay here;
though they didn’t have the same worries that she did about the coming
lack of neatness and order. The only thing that would comfort them in
her absence was just the suddenly flaming hope that without her they
should go free of water, soft soap, and towels.
‘You’d be well off here, Anna-Lisa,’ said Andy with an attempt at
cheerfulness in his voice. ‘You’ll have a real bed to sleep in and this
kind of food all the time.’
‘And you’ll all be on the roads, and I’ll be thinking that you are
sleeping in some cold shed where you’ll get vermin from other famine
people, and that you never have enough to eat.’
‘We’ve had that too sometimes. Don’t you remember the big farm where
they had such a lot of children, anyway, and we got a whole kettleful
of pea soup? They cooked it just especially for the wandering people.’
‘Yes, and I’ll probably stand here and cook for such people too,’
continued Anna-Lisa complainingly, ‘and think that you are hungry and
do not know a single day in advance where you are going to get a bed
for the night.’
‘Oh, but that isn’t so bad,’ Maglena’s soft voice chimed in. ‘We’ve
never had to sleep outside, and pretty soon it is going to be so light
all night that we can sleep out on the ground with the flowers.’
‘And then I’ll be lying in a bed,’ said Anna-Lisa with the same
complaining voice.
But at the same time she smiled a little shame-facedly. And with that a
bright feeling of relief went through the rest.
‘It is awful how hard it is to be satisfied,’ said Andy contemplatively.
‘I’ve gone all this time and thought how nice it would be if we all
came to really fine good people--that mother would like--and now----’
Andy became quiet; it was evident that he found it hard to think of
possibly leaving the thoughtful, capable sister behind them.
‘You must go with us, wherever we go, Anna-Lisa,’ murmured Maglena with
the last bit of bread in her mouth. She wiped nose and fingers on the
mended, washed-out apron, and rubbed her head against Anna-Lisa’s cheek.
‘You see, it’s always fun to be outside--even if it isn’t so
comfortable, you always see so much. The snow gets into such queer
shapes on everything. And it’s fun to see the tracks in the snow when
it is smooth on the marshes and fields. There are long ripples in it,
just like lace. Rabbits and foxes and dogs and magpies and crows all
mark the snow with their feet in different ways, so it is nice enough
for a wedding.’
‘I don’t see anything like that. I see only you,’ murmured Anna-Lisa
sorrowfully.
‘Yes, you must come with us again, Anna-Lisa, do you hear? Now
it will soon be spring and the big streams open up and they sing
so beautifully. We have Golden Horn with us, so we’ll have milk
to drink--and marsh berries on the marshes and blueberries and
strawberries, as much as we can eat.’
‘Yes, if we’ve been out and had a hard time this winter, I guess we can
get along in the summer too,’ said Magnus decidedly.
‘Girl, I think you ought to go with us,’ asserted Per-Erik. The words
cost him a certain amount of self-conquest, for the threatening danger
of washing and combing stood always before him.
‘Be quiet,’ warned Anna-Lisa, and raised her head to listen. ‘There was
a voice in the little room; the boy is alive; maybe he wants some one.’
She tiptoed across the room and paused perplexed at the door.
‘Come here--I don’t want to be alone,’ she heard a thin weak voice call.
‘Is it you, Anna-Lisa?’ said the little patient on the sofa. ‘Sing,
“Wherever I go” to me--then I’ll go to sleep.’
The boy turned his face, now damp with perspiration after a sudden turn
for the better, to the wall, closed his eyes, and waited for the song.
Anna-Lisa knew the song well, but it went against her to sing alone,
and in a strange place.
‘Sing, do you hear?’ called the boy in an invalid’s impatient voice.
Anna-Lisa sang softly:
‘Wherever I go, in forests, hills, and valleys,
A Friend follows me,
I hear His voice.’
While she sang, she stroked and cooled the boy’s forehead with a linen
rag which she moistened in the water in a porcelain mug that stood on a
chair by the bed.
The wife came in with her husband. It was he that she had gone to find
and bring with her. He too should see the miracle that had happened to
the boy, their only child.
The man was so moved when he saw the child, who, red with fever, had
recently been throwing himself about in pain, now lying in quiet,
healthy sleep, that he involuntarily clasped his hands in thanks and
praise to a helping God.
Anna-Lisa interrupted her song and stood up to leave the room.
The man took her arm.
‘You shall stay with us, girl, for as happy as I am now I’ve never been
in all my life.’
Anna-Lisa drew slowly away from him. Unhappy and frightened, she
glanced at the door. It seemed as if all the world’s treasure that she
was about to lose were on the other side of it.
‘Aren’t you glad to get away from need and trouble, and have a home
and protection here all your days now, when I’ve thought you should
stay here for always?’ asked the young master, surprised and almost
displeased when he saw the girl’s anxious expression.
‘Yes,’ answered the girl in a low voice. ‘Only it is so hard to think
of the little boys. I am the one that has washed them and combed them,
and milked Golden Horn so that they had sweet milk every day. The
smallest one is not so old as this boy, and he must be on the roads
while I am comfortable.’