Ditte: Girl Alive!

by Martin Andersen Nexo.

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 impa.s.sable, 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 ash.o.r.e; 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 circ.u.mstances. 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 cl.u.s.ter 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 Soren 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. Soren 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 Soren'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. Soren 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 Soren 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 Soren and Maren lost sight of them, too. Only the youngest, Sorine, 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 Soren'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 Soren 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. Soren 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 Soren 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 Soren 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 Soren 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.

CHAPTER II

BEFORE THE BIRTH

The children were now out of their care--that is to say, all the eight of them. Soren and Maren were now no longer young. The wear and tear of time and toil began to be felt; and it would have been good to have had something as a stand-by. Sorine, the youngest, was as far as that goes, also out of their care, in that she was grown up and ought long ago to have been pushed out of the nest; but there was a reason for her still remaining at home supported by her old parents.

She was very much spoiled, this girl--as the youngest can easily be; she was delicate and bashful with strangers. But, as Maren thought, when one has given so many children to the world, it was pleasant to keep one of them for themselves; nests without young ones soon become cold. Soren in the main thought just the same, even if he did grumble and argue that one woman in the house was more than enough.

They were equally fond of children. And hearing so seldom from the others they clung more closely to the last one. So Sorine remained at home and only occasionally took outside work in the hamlet or at the nearest farms behind the downs. She was supposed to be a pretty girl, and against this Soren had nothing to say: but what he could see was that she did not thrive, her red hair stood like a flame round her clear, slightly freckled forehead, her limbs were fragile, and strength in her there was none. When speaking to people she could not meet their eyes, her own wandered anxiously away.

The young boys from the hamlet came wooing over the downs and hung round the hut--preferably on the warm nights; but she hid herself and was afraid of them.

"She takes after the bad side of the family," said Soren, when he saw how tightly she kept her window closed.

"She takes after the fine side," said the mother then. "Just you wait and see, she will marry a gentleman's son."

"Fool," growled Soren angrily and went his way: "to fill both her own and the girl's head with such rubbish!"

He was fond enough of Maren, but her intellect had never won his respect. As the children grew up and did wrong in one way or another, Soren always said: "What a fool the child is--it takes after its mother." And Maren, as years went on, bore patiently with this; she knew quite as well as Soren that it was not intellect that counted.

Two or three times in the week, Sorine went up town with a load of fish and brought goods home again. It was a long way to walk, and part of the road went through a pine wood where it was dark in the evening and tramps hung about.

"Oh, trash," said Soren, "the girl may just as well try a little of everything, it will make a woman of her."

But Maren wished to shelter her child, as long as she could. And so she arranged it in this way, that her daughter could drive home in the cart from Sands farm which was then carrying grain for the brewery.

The arrangement was good, inasmuch as Sorine need no longer go in fear of tramps, and all that a timid young girl might encounter; but, on the other hand, it did not answer Maren's expectations. Far from having taken any harm from the long walks, it was now proved what good they had done her. She became even more delicate than before, and dainty about her food.

This agreed well with the girl's otherwise gentle manners. In spite of the trouble it gave her, this new phase was a comfort to Maren.

It took the last remaining doubt from her heart: it was now irrevocably settled. Sorine was a gentlefolks' child, not by birth, of course--for Maren knew well enough who was father and who mother to the girl, whatever Soren might have thought--but by gift of grace. It did happen that such were found in a poor man's cradle, and they were always supposed to bring joy to their parents.

Herrings and potatoes, flounders and potatoes and a little bacon in between--this was no fare for what one might call a young lady.

Maren made little delicacies for her, and when Soren saw it, he spat as if he had something nasty in his mouth and went his way.

But, after all one can be too fastidious, and when at last the girl could not keep down even an omelet, it was too much of a good thing for Maren. She took her daughter up to a wise woman who lived on the common. Three times did she try her skill on Sorine, with no avail.

So Soren had to borrow a horse and cart and drove them in to the homeopathist. He did it very unwillingly. Not because he did not care for the girl, and it might be possible, as Maren said, that as she slept, an animal or evil spirit might have found its way into her mouth and now prevented the food from going down. Such things had been heard of before. But actually to make fools of themselves on this account--rushing off with horse and cart to the doctor just as the gentry did, and make themselves, too, the laughing stock of the whole hamlet, when a draught of tansy would have the same effect--this was what Soren could not put up with.

But, of course, although the daily affairs were settled by Soren Man, there were occasions when Maren insisted on having her way--more so when it seriously affected _her_ offspring. Then she could--as with witchcraft--suddenly forget her good behavior, brush aside Soren's arguments as endless nonsense, and would stand there like a stone wall which one could neither climb over, nor get round.

Afterwards he would be sorry that the magic word which should have brought Maren down from her high and mightiness, failed him at the critical moment. For she _was_ a fool--especially when it affected her offspring. But, whether right or wrong, when she had her great moments, fate spoke through her mouth, and Soren was wise enough to remain silent.

This time it certainly seemed as if Maren was in the right; for the cure which the homeopathist prescribed, effervescent powder and sweet milk, had a wonderful effect. Sorine throve and grew fat, so that it was a pleasure to see her.