CHAPTER XIII

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.’