give himself leisure to sleep in the bright summer nights. He
understood that it might easily tumble in on the swaying ground if he
made it too high. Therefore he built instead a low turf-thatched
roof-tree, under which he could not stand upright but had to creep.
Every morning he fetched from the shore trimmed saplings, twigs, and
pieces of fir bark. Finally he built a hearth of stones, where he let
the juniper twigs smoulder and glow all night to drive off the midges.
During his work he sometimes talked to himself half aloud, pretending
that he was bailiff over a whole gang of workmen, and he called the
island Wander Isle.
He met the goat-girl quite often. Her name was Lena. She went about with
her knitting, feeding her charges on clearings and meadows. She taught
him to set nooses and traps. Eventually they met every morning to see
whether the fortune of hunting had been favorable to them, and she made
him a good friend to all the wild animals.
“Did you see that gorgeous bird?” she asked, pointing to a blue-black
black-cock that roused the whole wood with his thunderous wing-beats.
“Him I call the Rich Bachelor of Vaxjö, for he asks neither after his
home or his relatives, but just sits at the tavern in his fine
dress-coat and smoothes his ruffles.”
“And just hark now!” she said one night when an owl hooted in the
ravine. “Him I call the Tax Collector, who, when he turns his head in
his white collar and rolls his red eyes or snaps his bill, frightens
both man and beast. But if it’s a question of the little white harmless
eggs in his own nest, then you’ll see. Then he has a father’s heart in
the right place.”
But about nothing did she know so many traditions as about the cranes.
“Never yet,” she said, “have I got to see the long-legged bald-headed
cranes when from their mossy retreats they set up their trumpeting and
hold their autumn assembly for taking flight. Round their camp they have
outposts that sit with a stone in their one uplifted claw, so that it
may tumble down and wake them if they fall asleep. But the most
wonderful thing is that then if any human being sees the ashen-gray
birds go up, he himself begins to flap with his arms and longs to be
able to fly with them, so high that the lakes below on the earth are
only like little shimmering water-drops.”
“I want to see the cranes,” answered Johannes.
“Perhaps you may get to see them in the autumn, but then you must first
teach yourself a great deal. First, you must be able to stand so quiet
that you look like a dry juniper bush, and to bend down so that you look
like a stone, and to lay yourself flat on the ground so that no one can
tell you from a pile of rotten twigs.”
“All that I shall try to teach myself, but you must never go on my
island. It isn’t the way you think there. I have a high fireplace and
hangings on the walls, and the floor between the rugs is so shining and
slippery that you can’t walk on it but have to crawl.”
The pretty stories he had read in the dean’s books ran in his memory,
and he wanted to show the girl that he was not inferior to her but could
in turn rouse her to wonder and curiosity.
“If you’ll let me get a sight of that house, I’ll go down to the
settlement and fetch you a musketoon with bullets and powder-horn.”
“To my island you’ll never come.”
“If you’ll let me get a sight of that house, I’ll teach you in five days
to feed yourself on ferns and roots and nothing.”
“That’s why I’ve come hither. Keep that promise, and you shall see my
house, if you can really get there.”
With that he fastened the skis on his feet and vanished in the mist on
the fen.
“The enemy stands on the shore,” he said to his imaginary soldiers on
the island, “but they have neither axe nor knife for making skis. We may
feel secure, if only we always remain upright and good.”
But late in the evening when he was about to lay fresh juniper on the
hearth, he saw the goat-girl coming on the fen with the help of twigs
and dry branches.
“The enemy thinks to take us by storm,” he continued, “but there is a
secret which I have long suspected. I shall make the whole Wander Isle
sail to sea like a boat.”
He pressed a pole against the outermost tussocks of the fen, and the
floating island swam swaying further out on the water.
Then he laid himself calmly to sleep by the crackling embers, but when
after a while he suddenly opened his eyes, the goat-girl stood straight
before him and peeped in under the low roof on which fox-skins lay
spread inside out to dry.
She asked him nothing about the high fireplace or the hangings or the
slippery floor, but merely said, “A fresh breeze has blown up, so that
the island has driven to land on the other shore. But why do you let the
dry fox-skins lie on the roof instead of spreading them in here on the
ground? And we ought to stick in juniper around the island so that
people can’t see either us or the hut.”
He thought she spoke sensibly and went ashore at once to collect the
juniper. When it was already long after midnight, they still worked at
the strengthening and beautifying of his island. They even made of
birch-bark and pegs a door which they could set before the entrance, and
when they finally shoved the island off from the land again, they
anchored it out in the water with two piles.
“Now the drawbridge is raised,” said Johannes, “and we must see to
providing the new guests with entertainment such as is right.”
“The cook-maids and scullery-maids are always so slow,” she said and
turned the two fish upon the hearth.
The heather droned and the lake splashed so that the island and the
sedge and all the closed water-lilies swayed. As soon as mealtime had
passed, Johannes lay down at full length nearest the hearth, but Lena,
who did not yet feel that she possessed the right of ownership to Wander
Isle, huddled together outside at the entrance with one hand as a
pillow. She still heard the juniper sputter with heart’s delight, and as
she fell asleep she counted the small sparks that sailed forth above the
chink in the roof like stars through the night air. That was the
fifth--that was the sixth--that was the seventh----. So she was put in
mind of one of her songs:
It was on the seventh morn of the week,
When the prayer-bells rang, I ween,
That the bitter tears ran a-down her cheek,
Though her bride-wreath still was green.
Next day she no longer thought of leaving the island, and the third day
they began without noticing it to say “our island.” Every morning they
landed at the rock, and then she went up to the clearing with her goats
or followed him to examine nooses and traps. At last she began also to
teach him her art of feeding himself for many days on berries and ferns
and nothing, and she noticed that he soon won even greater aptitude in
this than she had herself. He grew thin and dry as a blown-off branch,
and yet his sinews knotted themselves all the harder. But he always
remained quiet and taciturn; and when she asked him what weighed on his
mind, he went off on his own paths and remained long away.
They no longer knew the names of the days, but on the Sabbath the wind
carried the distant sound of the bells far into the wilderness, and then
Johannes put on his embroidered leather coat and led her upon the
overgrown sepulchre-mound, from which they could see over fen and lake.
With her hand in his he spoke then of God’s love, which covered the
wretchedest crevices with its fairest bounties, and often they knelt in
the grass for long periods and prayed that He would likewise sow a few
grains of His seed in their souls.
After much conversation, however, Johannes was always doubly heavy in
mind and sought for solitude.
The nights became ever darker, and often when she turned back from her
herd she had to light her way with a torch between mountain walls and
the roots of overblown trees. The giant firs, heaven high, were like
tents, where black hands sprawled out from among the ragged leafage to
seize her by the braids; but she felt no fear, she thought only of one
thing. Wherever she went and whatever she busied herself with, she only
thought that the summer would soon be ended and that no one could know
what would then become of Johannes and her.
Then one October morning she was awakened by Johannes.
“Do you remember the cranes you spoke of?” he asked. “Now I can both
stand so quiet that I look like a dry juniper bush, and bend down so
that I look like a stone, and lie down flat on the ground so that no one
can tell me from a pile of rotten twigs. I have taught myself more than
that. I can feed myself on berries and roots, and if those are wanting I
can starve along on nothing.”
She sat up and listened to a far-off noise.
“That is no cranes.”
“Then I’ll investigate what it is.”
He washed himself in the lake, put on his leather coat as on a Sunday,
and pushed her gently aside when she wanted to hold him back.
“Don’t go, Johannes!” she begged. “I won’t let you go from me without
following.”
In silence they came ashore with the island at the ledge and went down
through the woods toward the settled land to a bare clearing, from which
there was a free outlook over the mossy heath and meadows as far as
Kerstin Bure’s mill and the church.
“Johannes!” she burst out with almost a scream, and seized him tightly
by the coat-tails. “Come back with me to our place!”
He answered her meekly: “My conscience has pained me long enough. Do you
see down there on the heath the gray creatures with thin legs? And the
outposts that you told about are standing there too. It’s Mons Bock, who
is out again on his recruiting. In that crane-dance I’d like to play
myself.”
He walked violently away from her, so that the coat-tail was torn off at
the cracking seam, and began to run down to the heath between the ferns
and charred stumps.
She followed irresolutely after him, but when she saw how he spoke to
the outposts and stepped straight into the assembled crowd of armed
peasants, she went at a warm pace to get to him.
When she came into the ring, he already stood before Mons Bock and was
taking his recruit penny.
“Where have you stuck your knapsack, Smålander?” asked the general.
“I have no knapsack, but I can feed myself for five days on nothing.”
Lena pressed forward between him and the general’s dark-brown horse.
“He, Johannes here, is no serving-boy, but we have a place of our own up
in the woods.”
“As to the marriage I should like to see the certificate in black and
white,” answered Mons Bock, and the hot color rose and fell on her
forehead as he spoke.
Then Lena held out in her two hands the torn-off coat-tail and let him
see that it fitted to the leather coat.
“I call that a parson’s certificate on real sheepskin,” he broke out.
“The recruit money may therefore be yours, my good young lady, but the
boy has clean perjured himself. And now, ye worthy yeomen of Småland,
forward in Jesus’ name! Drums we have none, but we can still in our
poverty stamp with wooden shoes the old Swedish march that it makes me
warm at heart to hear.”
Staves and wooden shoes banged and clattered on rocks and ledges. Even
the riders had wooden shoes tied fast to their feet, so that they tried
in vain to use their stirrups.
When the last farmers had vanished across the heath, Lena went on to the
mill. She dared not relate that Johannes had gone along to the war, but
only told of how she had met him in the woods, exhibiting the coat-tail,
which was carefully inspected and turned over.
“That’s the right coat-tail, sure enough,” said Kerstin Bure, “and
though I don’t like to see women in my service, you may as well stay
with me till Johannes comes. I really need a pair of strong arms, for I
am well on in years and all my men have been bitten with madness and
have run off with Stenbock. There is hardly an able-bodied man left in
the parish, except the sexton, the idiot!”
After she had said this she spoke no more to Lena of what had passed in
the woods and asked nothing about Johannes, but silently continued her
occupations, as was her custom. The mill stood with unmoving wings,
because there was no meal to grind, and through the long snowy months of
winter there was heard in it neither steps nor voices. Beggars who went
past on the road supposed it was unoccupied and deserted.
* * * * *
When the spring began to re-appear and white trailing clouds swept
across the heavens, there came one day a boy hot and panting, who ran
along the road and to each and all whom he met shouted a single word,
until he vanished in the woods on the other side of the heather. Some
hours later a rider came at a gallop and shouted in the same manner on
all sides until he was gone. The women gathered in crowds on the hill by
the church. Sweden, Sweden was saved, and Mons Bock and his goat-boys
had beaten the whole enemy’s army at the Straits of Öresund!
Kerstin Bure alone asked nobody what had happened but sat every noon on
the mill stairs in the glorious sunshine and carded wool with Lena. All
at once as they were sitting silent and busy, while the spring freshet
purled in ditches and brooks, they heard that the bells were ringing in
the neighboring parishes to the south, although it was Wednesday.
Expectantly the people ranged themselves along the road on both sides
and from the wide-open door of the church advanced the stumbling pastor
of the congregation, followed by his chaplains and in full ceremonials.
Once more the well-known march of the wooden shoes clattered on ledges
and stones, but now to bag-pipes and shawms. It was the returning army
of farmers. There were deep lines of shaggy beards and slashed
sheep-skin coats and noble blue eyes. With staves in hand, muskets in
the strap, and wide hats over their flowing hair, the homeward-bound
troops marched back from their victory. Far in the van the fiery cross
went from church to church as far as the northernmost wooden chapels,
where the Lapps tied their reindeer to the steeples, and all the sunny
springtime of Sweden was filled with the song of praise that re-echoed
from the bells.
Just in front of the hay-wagons with the wounded rode Mons Bock in his
gray overcoat with his riding-whip instead of a sword. Calling down
blessings upon their saviour, the peasants hailed him with waving aprons
and caps, but he turned to his ensigns and shouted that they should
sing.
When the voices ceased, Mons Bock went on alone and sang stanza after
stanza which he himself had put together.
Kerstin Bure had risen on the mill stairs and looked and looked beneath
her lifted hand, but Lena, who had broken her way forward so fearlessly
in the thickets of the wilderness, did not dare this time to wait and
look about any longer, but stole away and threw herself sobbing among
the empty meal-sacks.
Step by step Kerstin Bure withdrew up the stairs until she stood at the
very top with her back against the wall of the mill. Then she pressed
her hands like opera-glasses to her eyes. In the last wagon Johannes
sat on the hay among the wounded, as merry and quiet as always, but
paler and with bandages around his arm and shoulder.
She pressed her hands even harder to her eyes.
“So after all he was what I thought him, though to prove his soul
thoroughly I commanded him otherwise. Then, though he is Kerstin Bure’s
foster-son, he shall still keep for his life long her whom he himself
has chosen, even if she is the poorest of goat-girls.”
But at the moment she heard how the sexton and his ringer clattered at
the trap-doors of the steeple, and the great bell gave forth its first
stroke.
She knitted her brow and went into the mill, saying: “I’ve no meal to
grind, but if he lets his bell sound, though he has had no son in the
war, my mill shall play, too.”
Creaking, the dust-white axle-beam began to move and purr, and while the
peasant army marched singing by, the empty mill kept turning its great
wings faster and faster.
THE FORTIFIED HOUSE
Surprised by the winter cold, the Swedes in crowded confusion had taken
up their quarters behind the walls of Hadjash. Soon there was not a
house to be found that was not filled with the frost-bitten and the
dying. Cries of distress were heard out in the street, and here and
there beside the steps lay amputated fingers, feet, and legs. Vehicles
stood fastened to each other so tightly packed from the city gate to the
market-place that the chilly-pale soldiers who streamed in from all
sides had to crawl between the wheels and runners. Fastened in their
harness and turned away from the wind, the horses, their loins white
with frost, had already stood many days without food. No one took care
of them, and several of the drivers sat frozen to death with hands stuck
into their sleeves. Some wagons were like oblong boxes or coffins, where
from the chink of the flat lid stared out mournful faces, which read in
a prayer-book or gazed longingly with feverish delirium at the
sheltering houses. A thousand unfortunates, in muffled tones or
silently, cried to God for mercy. Under the sheltered side of the city
wall dead soldiers stood in lines, many with red Cossack coats buttoned
over their ragged Swedish uniforms and with sheepskins around their
naked feet. Wood-doves and sparrows, which were so stiff with frost that
they could be caught with the hand, had fallen on the hats and shoulders
of the standing corpses and fluttered their wings when the chaplains
went by to give a Last Communion in brandy.
Up at the market-place among burnt areas stood an unusually large house,
from which could be heard raised voices. A soldier delivered a fagot to
an ensign who stood in the doorway, and when the soldier went back into
the street, he shrugged his shoulders and said to whomsoever cared to
hear him: “It’s only the gentlemen quarreling in the chancellery.”
The ensign at the door had lately arrived with Lewenhaupt’s forces. He
carried the fagot into the room and threw it down by the fireplace. The
voices within ceased immediately, but as soon as he had closed the door
they began with renewed heat.
It was His Excellency Piper who stood in the middle of the floor, his
countenance wrinkled and furrowed, with glowing cheeks and trembling
nostrils.
“I say that the whole affair is madness,” he burst out, “madness,
madness!”
Hermelin with his pointed nose was constantly twitching his eyes and his
hands, while he sprang back and forth in the room like a tame rat; but
Field Marshall Rehnskiöld, who with his handsome, stately figure was
standing by the fireplace, only whistled and hummed. If he had not
whistled and hummed, the quarrel would have been finished by this time,
because for once they were all fully agreed; but the fact that he
whistled and hummed instead of being silent or at least speaking, that
could be endured no longer. Lewenhaupt at the window took snuff and
snapped shut his snuff-box. His pepper-brown eyes protruded from his
head, and it looked as if his comical peruke became ever bigger and
bigger. If Rehnskiöld had not continued to whistle and hum, he would
have controlled himself today as yesterday and on all other occasions,
but now wrath rose to his brow.
He shut his snuff-box for the last time and mumbled between his teeth,
“I do not desire that His Majesty should understand statesmanship. But
can he lead troops? Does he show real insight at a single encounter or
attack? Trained and proved old warriors, who never can be replaced, he
offers daily for an empty bravado. If our men are to storm a wall, it is
considered superfluous that they bind themselves protecting fagots or
shields, and therefore they are wretchedly massacred. To speak freely,
my worthy sirs, I can forgive an Upsala student many a boyish freak, but
I demand otherwise of a general in the field. Truly it avails not to
carry on a campaign under the command of such a master.”
“Furthermore,” continued Piper, “His Majesty at present incommodes no
general with any particularly hard command. At the beginning, when one
succeeded in distinguishing himself more than another, it went better;
but now His Majesty goes around mediating and reconciling with a foolish
smile so that one could go crazy.”
He raised his arms in the air with a wrath which had lost all sense and
bounds, notwithstanding he was altogether at one with Lewenhaupt. While
he was still speaking, he turned about and betook himself impetuously to
the inner apartments. The door slammed with such a clatter that
Rehnskiöld found himself yet more called upon to whistle and hum. If he
only had chosen to say something! But no, he did not. Gyllenkrook, who
sat at the table and examined departure-checks, was blazing in the face,
and a little withered-looking officer at his side whispered venomously
into his car: “A pair of diamond ear-rings given to Piper’s countess
might perhaps even yet help Lewenhaupt to new appointments.”
If Rehnskiöld had now ceased to whistle and hum, Lewenhaupt would still
have been able to control himself, to take up the roll of papers he
carried under his coat and sit down at a corner of the table; but
instead, the venerable and at other times taciturn man grew worse and
worse. He turned about undecidedly and went toward the entrance door,
but there he suddenly stood still, drew himself up and smacked his heels
together as if he had been a mere private. Now Rehnskiöld became quiet.
The door opened. An icy gust of wind rushed into the room, and the
ensign announced with as loud and long-drawn a voice as a sentry who
calls his comrades to arms: “Hi-s Majesty!”
The king was no longer the dazzled and wondering half-grown youth of
aforetime. Only the boyish figure with the narrow shoulders was the
same. His coat was sooty and dirty. The wrinkle around the
upward-protruding over-lip had become deeper and a trifle grin-like. On
the nose and one cheek he had frostbite, and his eyelids were red-edged
and swollen with protracted cold, but around the formerly bald vertex of
his head the combed-back hair stood up like a pointed crown.
He held a fur cap in both hands and tried to conceal his embarrassment
and diffidence behind a stiff and cold ceremoniousness, while bowing and
smiling to each and all of those present.
They bowed again and again still more deeply, and when he had advanced
to the middle of the floor, he stood still and bowed awkwardly toward
the sides, though with somewhat more haste, being in appearance wholly
occupied with what he was about to say. Thereupon he remained a long
while standing quite silent.
Then he went forward to Rehnskiöld and, with a brief inclination, took
him by one of his coat-buttons.
“I would beg,” he said, “that Your Excellency provide me with two or
three men of the common soldiers as escort for a little excursion. I
have already two dragoons with me.”
“But, Your Majesty! the country is over-run with Cossacks. To ride in
here to the city from Your Majesty’s quarters with so small an escort
was already a feat of daring.”
“Oh, nonsense, nonsense! Your Excellency will do as I have said. Some
one of the generals present, who is at leisure, may also mount and take
one of his men.”
Lewenhaupt bowed.
The king regarded him a trifle irresolutely without answering, and
remained standing after Rehnskiöld hastened out. None of the others in
the circle considered it necessary to break the silence or to move.
Only after a very long pause did the king bow again to everyone
separately and go out into the open air.
“Well?” inquired Lewenhaupt and clapped the ensign on the shoulder with
the return of his natural kindliness. “The ensign shall go along! This
is the first time the ensign has stood eye to eye with His Majesty.”
“I had never expected he would be like that.”
“He is always like that. He is too kingly to command.”
They followed after the king, who clambered over wagons and fallen
animals. His motions were agile, never abrupt, but measured and quite
slow, so that he never for a moment lost his dignity. When he had
finally made his way forward through the throng to the city gate, he
mounted to the saddle with his attendants, who were now seven men.