"Child, what does this mean?" said Herr Sesemann. "What did you want? why did you come down here?"White with terror, and hardly able to make her voice heard, Heidi answered, "I don't know."But now the doctor stepped forward. "This is a matter for me to see to, Sesemann; go back to your chair. I must take the child upstairs to her bed."And with that he put down his revolver and gently taking the child by the hand led her upstairs. "Don't be frightened," he said as they went up side by side, "it's nothing to be frightened about; it's all right, only just go quietly."On reaching Heidi's room the doctor put the candle down on the table, and taking Heidi up in his arms laid her on the bed and carefully covered her over. Then he sat down beside her and waited until Heidi had grown quieter and no longer trembled so violently. He took her hand and said in a kind, soothing voice, "There, now you feel better, and now tell me where you were wanting to go to?""I did not want to go anywhere," said Heidi. "I did not know Iwent downstairs, but all at once I was there.""I see, and had you been dreaming, so that you seemed to see and hear something very distinctly?""Yes, I dream every night, and always about the same things. Ithink I am back with the grandfather and I hear the sound in the fir trees outside, and I see the stars shining so brightly, and then I open the door quickly and run out, and it is all so beautiful! But when I wake I am still in Frankfurt." And Heidi struggled as she spoke to keep back the sobs which seemed to choke her.
"And have you no pain anywhere? no pain in your head or back?""No, only a feeling as if there were a great stone weighing on me here.""As if you had eaten something that would not go down.""No, not like that; something heavy as if I wanted to cry very much.""I see, and then do you have a good cry?""Oh, no, I mustn't; Fraulein Rottenmeier forbade me to cry.""So you swallow it all down, I suppose? Are you happy here in Frankfurt?""Yes," was the low answer; but it sounded more like "No.""And where did you live with your grandfather?""Up on the mountain.""That wasn't very amusing; rather dull at times, eh?""No, no, it was beautiful, beautiful!" Heidi could go no further;the remembrance of the past, the excitement she had just gone through, the long suppressed weeping, were too much for the child's strength; the tears began to fall fast, and she broke into violent weeping.
The doctor stood up and laid her head kindly down on the pillow.
"There, there, go on crying, it will do you good, and then go to sleep; it will be all right to-morrow."Then he left the room and went downstairs to Herr Sesemann; when he was once more sitting in the armchair opposite his friend, "Sesemann," he said, "let me first tell you that your little charge is a sleep-walker; she is the ghost who has nightly opened the front door and put your household into this fever of alarm.
Secondly, the child is consumed with homesickness, to such an extent that she is nearly a skeleton already, and soon will be quite one; something must be done at once. For the first trouble, due to her over-excited nerves, there is but one remedy, to send her back to her native mountain air; and for the second trouble there is also but one cure, and that the same. So to-morrow the child must start for home; there you have my prescription."Herr Sesemann had arisen and now paced up and down the room in the greatest state of concern.
"What!" he exclaimed, "the child a sleep-walker and ill!
Home-sick, and grown emaciated in my house! All this has taken place in my house and no one seen or known anything about it! And you mean, doctor, that the child who came here happy and healthy, I am to send back to her grandfather a miserable little skeleton?
I can't do it; you cannot dream of my doing such a thing! Take the child in hand, do with her what you will, and make her whole and sound, and then she shall go home; but you must do something first.""Sesemann," replied the doctor, "consider what you are doing!
This illness of the child's is not one to be cured with pills and powders. The child has not a tough constitution, but if you send her back at once she may recover in the mountain air, if not --you would rather she went back ill than not at all?"Herr Sesemann stood still; the doctor's words were a shock to him.
"If you put it so, doctor, there is assuredly only one way--and the thing must be seen to at once." And then he and the doctor walked up and down for a while arranging what to do, after which the doctor said good-bye, for some time had passed since they first sat down together, and as the master himself opened the hall door this time the morning light shone down through it into the house.
