differently when we sent a school-priest like him ashore. He was no man
for Tita Gray.”
“Do you mean, Lieutenant, that if we had sent another--yourself
perhaps--we would have had a better reception?”
“Gad, yes!” exploded the Lieutenant.
Lord, how they laughed! The pall of gloom lifted in a twinkling, as
they pictured the meeting between Lieutenant Lagerlöf and Tita Gray.
Aye, aye, he knew right enough that he could have managed her.
Lord, how they laughed!
VII
THE BIRD OF PARADISE
THEY had taken for the summer a cosy little cottage at the end of
Karlagatan, where they were so happy and content that Lieutenant
Lagerlöf and the children named the place Little Mårbacka, which was
assuredly the highest title of distinction they could bestow on a house
in a strange city.
The little house fronted a bit of a garden enclosed by a picket-fence,
and under the spreading trees they had their breakfasts and suppers. At
the back of the house were a couple of potato patches, beyond which,
over against a high cliff, stood a tiny hut not much larger than the
cabin on the _Uddeholm._
In that hut lived their hostess, Fru Strömberg, who was the wife of a
sea captain. During the winter months she occupied the cottage herself,
but summers she always let it to visitors. She now sat in her tiny
cabin from morn till night, surrounded by blooming oleanders and tables
and shelves laden with curios her husband had brought from foreign
parts.
When Fru Lagerlöf and Mamselle Lovisa were having coffee with their
friends and the Lieutenant had gone mackerel-fishing, and when Anna
had gone over to the candy man’s daughters’ and Johan to his crabs,
Back-Kaisa and Selma would repair to Fru Strömberg’s cabin.
Fru Strömberg was their special friend, and to sit with her under the
oleanders was as restful as sitting with Grandmother on the corner sofa
at Mårbacka. She could not tell stories, but she had many wonderful
things to show them: big sea-shells that were full of sound and
murmured when you put them to your ear; porcelain men from China with
long pig-tails and long moustaches; and she had besides two very big
shells, one a cocoanut, the other an ostrich egg.
Back-Kaisa and Fru Strömberg talked mostly of serious and religious
things, which the child did not understand; but sometimes they touched
on lighter subjects.
Fru Strömberg spoke of her husband and his voyages. He had a fine big
ship called the _Jacob_, and just now he was on a voyage to St. Ypes,
Portugal, to take on a cargo of salt. Back-Kaisa wondered how Fru
Strömberg could have any peace of mind, knowing that her husband was
drifting about on the perilous seas; Fru Strömberg replied that there
was One who protected him, and therefore she felt that he was as safe
on board his ship as when at home in the streets of Strömstad.
The kindly Fru Strömberg then turned to the little girl and said she
hoped the captain would soon be at home, for there was something on the
_Jacob_ she thought Selma might like to see. They had a bird of
paradise there.
“What is that?” asked the child, all interest now.
“It is a bird from Paradise,” Fru Strömberg told her.
“Selma has heard her grandmother talk about Paradise,” Back-Kaisa put
in.
Yes, of course. She remembered that Granny had told her about Paradise,
and that she (Selma) had pictured it as a place that looked like the
little rose-garden on the west side of the house at Mårbacka. At the
same time it was clear to her that Paradise had something to do with
God. And now she somehow got the impression that the one who guarded
Fru Strömberg’s husband so that he was as safe at sea as on land was
the bird of paradise.
She wanted so much to meet that bird. It might be able to help her.
Everyone felt so sorry for her mamma and papa because she was not
getting well. And to think that they had made this expensive trip only
on her account.
She would have liked to ask Back-Kaisa and Fru Strömberg whether they
thought the bird of paradise would do something for her, but she was
too shy. They might laugh at her, she feared. But she did not forget
what Fru Strömberg had told her. Every day she wished the _Jacob_ would
come, so that the bird of paradise could fly ashore.
Then one day she heard, to her great joy, that the _Jacob_ had arrived.
But she did not speak of this to any one. To her there was something
very sacred and mysterious about it all. Remembering how solemn her
grandmother had been when telling about Adam and Eve, she did not want
to tell Johan and Anna that on the _Jacob_ there was a bird from
Paradise which she was going to ask to cure her leg. No, she would not
speak of it even to Back-Kaisa.
Now every time she went to see Fru Strömberg she expected to find the
bird sitting warbling in one of her oleanders. But he did not appear.
How strange! she thought. One day she asked Back-Kaisa about it, and
was told the bird was on the ship. “But you’ll soon see it,” said
Back-Kaisa, “for to-morrow we’re all going on board the _Jacob._”
It seems that Captain Strömberg had hardly been home a day before he
and Lieutenant Lagerlöf were bosom friends. The Lieutenant had already
been out on the _Jacob_ several times, and liked it so well that
nothing would do but the whole family must see what a fine ship she
was.
When they set out none of them had any real notion as to what boarding
the _Jacob_ meant. The little girl thought the ship would be lying
alongside the quay like the big steamers. But indeed she lay in the
offing. They had to get into a little boat and row out. It was strange
to see that the nearer they got to the ship the larger she grew, till
at last she loomed high as a mountain. To those in the rowboat it
looked quite impossible to clamber up _there._
Mamselle Lovisa said straight out that if it was to that high boat they
were rowing she could not go aboard.
“Wait a bit, Lovisa,” said the Lieutenant, “and you’ll see it’s easier
than you imagine.”
Then Mamselle Lovisa declared she would as soon think of climbing the
flagpole at Laholmen. She thought they had better turn back at once.
Fru Lagerlöf and Back-Kaisa agreed with her, and were for going home.
But Lieutenant Lagerlöf stuck to his point. There was no fear but
they’d get aboard all right, he said. This was perhaps their one chance
of a lifetime to see how it looked on a merchant vessel; and they ought
not to miss such an opportunity.
“But once we’re up we’ll never be able to get down again,” argued
Mamselle Lovisa.
They met a boat laden with sacks.
“See that boat, Lovisa?” the Lieutenant said. “Do you know what’s in
those sacks?”
“My dear Gustaf,” returned Mamselle Lovisa wearily, “how should I
know?”
“Well, they’re sacks of salt from the _Jacob_,” the Lieutenant informed
her. “They have neither arms nor legs, yet they’ve come off the ship;
so surely you should be able to do it.”
“You ought to dress up once in crinoline and long skirts,” snapped
Mamselle Lovisa, “then perhaps you’d not be so brave.”
They went on like that the whole way out to the ship. The little girl
who so longed to meet the bird of paradise wished with all her heart
that her father might induce her aunt and the others to go on board;
though she, too, thought they could never in the world get up there.
All the same they presently lay-to under a swaying rope-ladder. A
couple of sailors jumped into the boat to help them with the climb. The
first to be taken was the little sick girl. One of the sailors boosted
her to his comrade, who bore her up the ladder and put her down on the
deck; here he left her to go and help the others.
She found herself standing quite alone on a narrow strip of deck.
Before her opened a great yawning hole, at the bottom of which
something white was being put into sacks. She stood there a long while.
Some of the folks down in the boat must have raised objections to
climbing the ladder, since no one appeared. When the little girl had
got her bearings, she glanced about for the bird of paradise. She
looked up at the rigging and tackle. She had pictured the bird as being
at least as large as a turkey, and easy for the eye to find.
Seeing no sign of it, she turned to the Captain’s cabin-boy, who had
just come up, and asked him where the bird of paradise was.
“Come along,” he said, “and you shall see him.” He gave her a hand lest
she might fall down the hole; then walking backwards, he led her down
the companionway into the Captain’s cabin--a fine room, with polished
mahogany walls and mahogany furniture.
In there, sure enough, was the bird of paradise!
The bird was even more beautiful than her imagination had pictured it.
It was not alive, yet it stood in the middle of the table--whole and
perfect in all its gorgeous plumage.
The little girl climbed up on to a chair and from there to the table.
Then she sat down beside the bird and regarded its beauty. The
cabin-boy, who stood by, showed her its long, light, drooping feathers.
“Look!” he said. “You can see he’s from Paradise, for he hasn’t any
feet.”[1]
[1] The first birds of paradise seen in Europe were mounted without
feet.--TRANSLATOR.
Now that seemed to fit in very well with her own concept of Paradise: a
place where one did not have to walk but moved about on wings. She
gazed at the bird in adoration, her hands folded as in prayer. She
wondered if the cabin-boy knew it was the bird that protected Captain
Strömberg, but dared not ask him.
The child could have sat there all day lost in wonder; but her reverie
was suddenly interrupted by loud shouts from the deck. It sounded as if
someone were calling, “Selma! Selma!”
Immediately afterwards, they all came rushing into the
cabin--Lieutenant Lagerlöf, Back-Kaisa, Fru Lagerlöf, Captain
Strömberg, Johan, and Anna. They were so many they quite filled the
room.
“How did you get here?” they asked as with one breath--wonder and
amazement depicted on their faces.
With that, the little girl remembered that she had walked on the deck,
had walked down the stairs and into the cabin--that no one had carried
her.
“Now come down off the table,” said one, “and let us see whether you
can walk.”
She crawled from the table to the chair, and from the chair to the
floor. Yes, she could both stand and walk.
How they rejoiced! Their hopes had not been in vain; the object of the
journey was fulfilled. The little girl was not going to grow up a
helpless cripple, but a normal human being.
The grown folk said it was the splendid baths at Strömstad that had
wrought the change. With tears of joy and gratitude, they blessed the
sea, the air, the city and all therein--glad they had come.
The little girl, meanwhile, had her own thoughts about it. She wondered
if it was not the bird of paradise that had helped her. Was it not the
little marvel with the quivering wings which had come from that land
where feet were not needed that had taught her to walk here on this
earth, where it was such a very necessary thing?
VIII
THE KEEPSAKE
THEY had said good-bye to Fru Strömberg and “Little Mårbacka.” The
children had packed away their precious sea-shells and the grown-ups had
locked their trunks. They were now going aboard the steamer that was to
bear them away from Strömstad.
A lot of people had gathered at the wharf. There stood Captain
Strömberg, their boating companions, and other summer visitors whose
acquaintance they had made, and many, many more.
“All the old pilots and skippers and fishermen in town must be here,”
observed a gentleman who had cruised with the Mårbacka folk.
“Yes; and all the fishwives and female bath attendants to boot,” said
another.
“They must have come down to bid Gustaf good-bye,” Fru Lagerlöf
remarked. “He seems to know everyone.”
Lieutenant Lagerlöf had to say farewell to so many that he came near
losing the boat. They all knew he had come to Strömstad to seek a cure
for a little child that could not walk, and had taken this opportunity
to offer their felicitations on the happy outcome.
“Ay, but it’s good, Lieutenant, to see the little gal standin’ on the
deck with the other kiddies,” said an old fisherman.
“It must have been your weakfish, Olaus, that set her up.”
“Ay, weakfish’s good eatin’,” the old man nodded.
The Lieutenant had already turned to a group of bath attendants.
“I give you thanks,” he said, “for you, also, had a share in the good
work.”
“You must come aboard, Gustaf,” Fru Lagerlöf shouted from the deck.
“The siren has sounded for the third time.”
At the very last moment two little girls ran up the gangplank and over
to the Lagerlöf girls. They curtsied, shook hands, wished them _bon
voyage_, slipped Anna and Selma each a parcel, then hurried ashore.
They were the daughters of the confectioner with whom Anna had played
all summer. Selma hardly knew them at all, and was quite overwhelmed by
their kindness in giving her, too, a parting gift.
Unfolding the wrapper, she found something very pretty--a strip of
bright red satin ribbon, pasted on a bit of cardboard, on which there
were some letters embroidered in black silk.
“It’s a bookmark,” Back-Kaisa said; “and that you should lay in the
prayer book.”
“‘Remembrance’ it says there,” her mother explained. “That means you
must never forget the little girl who worked it for you.”
The red satin ribbon with the black embroidered letters nestled between
the covers of her prayer book for many, many years. When on a Sunday at
church she would open the book and let her eyes rest on the bit of
ribbon, it carried her back in memory to days long gone by.
She sensed the odours of the sea and before her eyes rose a vision of
boats and sea-faring folk--hardly the sea itself, but sea-shells and
jelly-fish and crabs and star-fish and weakfish and mackerel. Then from
some obscure recess of memory emerged the little red house in
Karlagatan. She saw the bird of paradise, Fru Strömberg, the _Jacob_,
Gray Island, Östra Hamngatan, the _Uddeholm_, and the three horses that
drew the big carriage. And last, she saw the horses turn in on a large
sward, surrounded by low red buildings and enclosed by a white fence.
They stopped before a wide red house, with small windows and a little
porch, and she heard all in the carriage cry as with one voice: “Thank
God we’re home again!”
The others, she remembered, recognized the place at once as Mårbacka,
but not she. Had she been alone she would not have known what place it
was. To be sure, she remembered her home, though until then she had
never seen how it looked.
On the porch stood a little sweet-faced, slightly bent, white-haired
old lady in a striped skirt and black jacket. That was her grandmother.
Her she remembered quite well, though she had never before noticed her
appearance.
It was the same with her brother Daniel and the baby, the housekeeper
and Othello the spaniel--they were all quite new to her. True, she
remembered them in a way; but this was the first time she had actually
seen them.
Moreover, sitting in the little church, her head bowed over the prayer
book, she knew that on that Strömstad visit she had not only learned to
walk but to see.
It was thanks to that journey that she remembered her nearest and
dearest as they were in their prime, when life was a joy to them. But
for that, everything relating to those times would have faded out of
mind. But with the help of the little red ribbon they lived on. “Let
not forgetfulness grow over all this,” the ribbon said to her.
“Remember your parents, who gave themselves no rest till they had found
a cure for you. Remember Back-Kaisa, her great love and patience, how
she braved the terrors of land and sea for your sake.”
THE OLD HOUSEKEEPER’S TALES
I
GRANDMOTHER
THE year after the Strömstad visit the little Mårbacka children had a
great sorrow. They lost their dear grandmother.
Almost up to the very last they had sat with her on the corner sofa in
the bedroom and listened to her stories and songs. They could not
remember a time when their grandmother had not sung and narrated to
them. It had been a glorious life. Never were children so favoured.
Where their grandmother had learned her stories and ballads they did
not know, but she herself believed every word of them. When she had
told something very wonderful, she would look deep into the eyes of the
little children and say, with the utmost conviction: “All this is as
true as that I see you and you see me.”
One morning when the children came down to breakfast they were not
allowed to go into the kitchen-bedroom as usual to say good-morning to
grandmother, because she was ill. All that day the corner sofa stood
empty and it seemed as if the long storyless hours would never end.
A few days later the children were told their grandmother was dead, and
when she lay shrouded they were brought in to kiss her hand. But they
were afraid. Then some one said it was the last time they might thank
Grandmother for all the pleasure she had given them. And then came the
day when the stories and songs were borne away, shut up in a long black
box, never to come again.
It was a sad loss to the little ones. It seemed as if the door to a
beautiful, enchanted world, where they had freely passed in and out,
had been closed. Now there was no one who knew how to open that door.
But after a while they learned to play with dolls and toys like other
children, and then it may have appeared as if they no longer missed
their grandmother or remembered her. But indeed she lived on in their
hearts. They never tired of listening to the stories of her the old
housekeeper told; they prized them as treasures they wanted to keep
always.
II
THE GHOST OF VILARSTENSBACKEN
THE old housekeeper used to say it could not have been so very long ago
that Mårbacka was first laid under the plow and became a regular
homestead. In the old mistress’s youth it was still within man’s memory
that the place had been a summer _säter_ belonging to one of the old
peasant farms to the west of the dale, nearer the Fryken.
But when in the world it was that the first herd of cattle grazed there
and the first cattle-sheds were built, who could say? Herdsmen can hold
to a place for thousands of years without leaving a trace after them.
And indeed there was not much here at Mårbacka that had come down from
their time.
The name Mårbacka, the old mistress believed, one of the herdsmen had
given to the hilly moors below Åsberget, where they drove their horses
and cattle to grass. She also thought they and their animals had beaten
the roads.
That the herdsmen had broken the south road, along Åsberget, was clear,
because from that direction they would have had to come with their
cattle. The steep road to the east, which went straight down the
mountain, was probably their work. By that they must have gone when
they wished to visit _säter_ folk on the other side of the mountain.
The wretched road running northwest, toward Sunne, must once have been
an old goat-path, and westward they could hardly have had any passage
at all. To the west lay swampy bottomlands, through which ran a
tortuous river. When the shepherdess stood upon the flat stone outside
her _säter_ cabin, she could see her home-farm on the other side of the
dale; but to get there, she had to go a long way round, to north or
southward.
The herdsmen must have wandered up from the south mostly, for
Vilarsten, or Resting-stone, where they were wont to rest after their
long tramp, still lay at the roadside, just south of the farm. But
there was something about that road that made people afraid to venture
out on it after dark.
At the time that Mårbacka was a summer _säter_ there lived in the
parish of Sunne a priest who was so harsh and exacting that a man who
had been a servant in his home a few months went and hanged himself.
The priest, when he learned what had happened, without stopping to
think, cut the body down and carried it out into the yard. Then,
because he had touched a suicide, and for no other reason, he was
regarded as polluted and disgraced. The people of Sunne would not allow
him to set foot in the church, which remained closed until another
clergyman was called.
The Sunne priest used also to officiate at Ämtervik, where they had
a church and a little parish house but no resident clergyman. He
probably thought that in an out-of-the-way place like Ämtervik no one
would know of his being “unclean”; there, surely, he might celebrate
the Mass, as usual. So he rode down to Ämtervik. But the evil report
was there before him. As he stood at the altar intoning the Mass,
murmurs ran through the congregation; the people thought him unworthy
to stand in the House of God. Nor did it end there. The Ämtervik
peasants felt that he had shown them great disrespect. They were as
good men as the Sunne folk, they said, and would not have a priest
others had repudiated.
A few among the younger peasants got together and planned to give him
something to remember. But knowing it was dangerous to lay violent
hands on a priest, they decided to wait till he set out for home. He
rode alone, and there were many lonely spots along the bridle-paths
between Ämtervik and Sunne where the men could lie in wait for him.
The priest must have sensed danger, for instead of taking the usual
road to Sunne to the west of the dale, he took the _säter_ paths to
eastward past Mårbacka--thinking to find his way home.
The men, ambushed at the roadside, seeing no sign of the priest, knew
of course that he had eluded them, and thought they would have to go
home without carrying out their purpose. But it happened that one of
the men was a brother to the servant who had taken his own life on
account of the priest and he was not going to let him escape so easily.
He seized a long stackpole which had been left standing in the field
since haying time, and set off toward the marshes; the others
did likewise--running and leaping across the bogs. Just below
Mårbacka-säter they touched firm ground; then, hurrying southward to
intercept the priest, they came upon him in the road near the
Resting-stone.
It may have been their intention merely to give him a sound thrashing;
but, unluckily, there was the man who had a brother to avenge. He had a
sword concealed under his cloak, and when the others had pulled the
priest off the horse and thrown him to the ground, the man drew his
sword and cut off the priest’s head.
The moment the deed was done they were filled with terror of discovery,
and thought only of escape. They let the horse run loose and left the
corpse lying at the roadside, to make it appear that the murder had
been committed by wild robbers. Running for home by the way they had
come, over the bogs, they hoped no one had seen them. They had not been
on any passable road, and their venturing across the marshes would not
have aroused suspicion.
Things went better than they expected. Inasmuch as the priest had been
at odds with his parishioners, there was no eager search for him. When
at last his body was found the crime was attributed to robbers and
outlaws. Even in death he was regarded as unclean. No one would
touch the body. Since the people deemed him unfit to rest in
consecrated ground, they let him lie where he was, merely covering him
with sod, over which they built a cairn of large stones to prevent wild
beasts digging him out.
But the priest could not find rest in the grave thus prepared for him.
On moonlight nights he would appear in the road near the Resting-stone
in his long cassock, holding his head between his hands. Horses saw him
plainer than humans did, and would shy and rear so that riders were
frequently obliged to make a long detour through the wild forest.
So long as there were only cowherds and shepherds at Mårbacka, these
ghostly appearances meant very little. It was quite another matter when
Mårbacka became a regular farmstead. How to lay the ghost none knew,
and year after year folk had to take care not to be out on the road
near the Resting-stone along about midnight.
The old mistress, however, had assured the housekeeper that nowadays
none need fear the headless priest. A housewife at Mårbacka--a
strong-minded, determined woman, who knew a little more than the common
run of folk--had laid the ghost.
That farm mistress happened to be out riding late one evening along
Vilarstensbacken when--just as she expected--the ghost appeared in the
road near the cairn, and made as if to bar her way.
The woman was neither awed nor frightened and her horse was as calm
and fearless as herself. She rode right up to the “spook,” and began to
admonish it.