shore-meadow of a bay. His coat was a dapple gray, his mane so long it
swept the ground, and his tail, which was thick as a rye-sheaf, also
reached to the ground. The horse was broad across the hindquarters and
high at the withers; he had a small head, with fine, clear eyes, his
legs were slender, his hoofs a silvery white that glistened like
polished metal as he lifted them in the grass. His body bore no marks
of harness or saddle.
Lisa Maja had just walked her horse, Svarten, down a hillside, and was
now going at the same slow pace toward the meadow where the stallion
grazed. She went so close to him there was but the fence between them;
by putting out her hand she could have stroked his haunches.
The stallion seemed not to have noticed them before; but now he raised
his head and looked up at the young girl. And Lisa Maja was so pretty
that the young swains would drop axe, or scythe, or whatever they had
in hand, when she came riding, and hurry down to the roadside to hang
over the fence till she had gone by.
Fancy! When the beautiful stallion raised his eyes to her, there was
the same look of admiration in his gaze that the peasant lads sent her
from the roadside.
For a moment he stood regarding her, then quickly turned and galloped
off--his mane waving in the breeze, his tail standing straight out.
Like a streak, he darted across the meadow and down the bay. Near the
shore the bay was shallow and shelving, and as he dashed through the
shallows the water splashed round him in clouds of foam. Then, all of a
sudden, he disappeared.
Lisa Maja thought the horse in his wild flight had gone beyond his
depth, and was drowning. She hoped for a second that he would come
swimming to the surface again; but no, he did not reappear. And there
was not a ripple on the water where he had gone down.
Then Lisa Maja felt a wild desire to ride to the rescue. She could not
bear the thought of letting that glorious creature drown without making
some effort to save it. With a sharp pull at the bridle, she swung her
horse round toward the fence and gave him a dig with her spurs to make
him jump it. But Svarten being the kind of horse that knows more than
most humans, instead of taking the hurdle, turned and made for home at
full gallop. The young girl from her high mount in the side-saddle had
not much control over her determined steed; she soon realized that this
time it was useless to try to make him obey. Besides, Svarten probably
knew what sort of horse it was the girl wished to rescue from the
water. By the time Lisa Maja had come to the top of the next hill and
found herself in the darkness of a dense pine wood, she, too, knew what
it was she had seen.
The silver-gray stallion with the unshodden hoofs and trailing mane she
had often heard tell of. He was none other than the Neckan--the
River-god--himself.
When the girl came home to Mårbacka and told the serving-folk of her
adventure, they all thought as she did--that she had seen the Neckan and
that herself and all on her place had best be careful, or before very
long one among them would surely be drowned.
But there is no lake near Mårbacka and the old bottom lands to the west
of the estate were by then so well dried out that not a trace of swamp
or quagmire remained. Even the river, which had once been broad and
treacherous, was now so diminished that in summertime, at least, it was
scarcely more than a shallow creek.
However, in the month of August, when the days grew shorter and the
mists hovered over river and meadow, it happened that an old man from
Mårbacka was walking homeward one evening across the western meadows;
what he may have seen or encountered down among the mists no one ever
knew--but he did not return that night. The next morning his body was
found in the little river, which was so shallow the water scarcely
covered him. He had been a crabbed old man and there was perhaps no
great mourning for him; but they were all very certain now it was the
Neckan Lisa Maja had seen that time; had she followed him into the lake
he surely would have drawn her down to his Blue Mansions in the deep.
VII
THE PAYMASTER OF THE REGIMENT
FRU RAKLITZ’S reformation may not have been so complete after all, for
the old housekeeper could never sufficiently impress upon the little
Lagerlöf children what a fortunate thing it was for Mamselle Lisa Maja
that she got so good a husband as Paymaster Daniel Lagerlöf. He was no
rich man; but wise, and kindly, and honourable he had always been. In
him she had found just the protector she needed.
To be sure he was no priest, but his father and grandfather, his
great-grandfather and great-great-grandfather had all been clergymen
and married to daughters of clergymen, so that he could claim kinship
with all the old clerical families of Värmland. Any preaching or
speech-making gift he had not inherited from his forebears, but the
tendency to guide and govern a whole community was in his blood. The
Ämtervik peasants, who at first thought ill of him because he had
married the Mårbacka parson’s daughter--thereby upsetting the old
order--soon grew accustomed to having him run the important affairs of
the parish.
The children were astonished to hear the housekeeper speak in that way
of their grandfather. They had heard stories of him which were common
among the people. He was said to have been a great violinist, and in
his youth, at least, was so moody and high-strung that the humdrum of
home life wore on him and he had to go his own ways.
But that the old housekeeper denied most emphatically. No, indeed,
there was nothing queer about the Paymaster of the Regiment. She could
not imagine who had put such ideas into the children’s heads. It was
merely that his official duties forced him to live away on journeys
most of the time. As Paymaster of the Regiment once a year he had to
travel through the whole of Värmland, to collect the war tax. And not
only was he Paymaster of the Regiment, but Manager of the Kymsberg Iron
Works, far up by the Norwegian boundary; and all at once he had to be
up and off for there. Then, too, he had such a good name that people
were always asking him to serve as executor and administrator. Most
bothersome of all had been his trusteeship for Judge Sandelin’s wife,
who had inherited seven foundries from Iron Master Antonsson. He had to
spend months on end at these various foundries, straightening out the
tangled affairs.
But as soon as ever he could get away he hurried back to Mårbacka. If
he chanced to come home some morning, unobserved, he would hunt up his
violin and stand outside the bedroom window, and awaken his wife with
music.
Now that much may have been true, perhaps; but that he ran away from
home and was gone for long periods without letting anyone know his
whereabouts--that was just something folks imagined, because ’twas
always the wife who ruled at Mårbacka.
The children were very sorry to hear that their grandfather had been
such a sober, serious, matter-of-fact person. And of course they had to
believe what the old housekeeper told them.
Then, one evening, when their parents had gone to a party, the
housemaid, who was to sit up for them, had persuaded Maja, the new
nurse, who succeeded Back-Kaisa, to keep her company. They made a fire
in the tile-stove of the nursery, drew up the children’s little red
chairs, and sat talking in whispers so as not to disturb the three
little girls, who had gone to bed.
By and by the door creaked and in walked the old housekeeper. She had
been wondering where the housemaid had betaken herself, and had been
all through the house looking for her. She, too, drew up a chair.
Anyway, she declared she’d not be able to sleep till she knew the
master and mistress were safely home.
Now that the three of them were seated by the open fire so cosy and
intimate-like, the two maids seized the opportunity to ask the old
housekeeper’s advice in a weighty matter.
“We were just saying, Lina and I, that we ought to make
dream-porridge,” said Nurse Maja; “but we don’t know as ’twould do any
good.”
In that way they tempted the old housekeeper to tell what had happened
when Lisa Maja Wennervik made a dream-pancake.
On New Year’s Eve of the last Christmas Week that Pastor Wennervik was
alive Mamselle Lisa Maja, for fun, made a dream-pancake. She had just
turned seventeen, and ’twas time for her to be thinking of marriage. So
she measured out three spoonfuls of water, three spoonfuls of meal, and
three spoonfuls of salt, and stirred them together, then she poured the
mixture on a hot griddle, ate as much of the pancake as she could get
down, and went right to bed. She must have had some difficulty getting
to sleep, though, for the salty pancake had given her an awful thirst;
and to drink anything before sleeping would break the spell.
In the morning she couldn’t remember whether she had dreamt anything.
But later in the day, on going out on the front porch, she stopped in
amazement. All at once she remembered having dreamed in the night of
standing on that very spot. Two strange men--one old, one young--had
come up to her. The older man had said he was Dean Lagerlöf of Arvika,
and that he had come with his son to ask her if she were not thirsty
and would like a drink of water. With that, the younger man had
immediately stepped forward and offered her a glass of water. And she
was very glad when she saw the clear, fresh water, for even in her
sleep her throat felt parched.
There the dream ended. But from that moment she knew who was to be her
husband; for the one who comes in the dream and offers you water when
you have eaten dream-pancake, he is the one you will marry.
Mamselle Lisa Maja wondered how this could come about, for at that time
she did not know any one by the name of Lagerlöf. But one day, soon
after New Year’s, as she was standing at the window, a sledge came up
the driveway. Suddenly she gave a cry and nipped the housekeeper by the
sleeve.
“Here comes the one I saw in the dream,” she said. “You’ll find that
his name is Lagerlöf.”
And ’twas just as she had said. The man in the sledge was Daniel
Lagerlöf, manager of the Kymsberg Iron Works, who had come to buy hay.
The first sight of him must have been a disappointment. He was not
handsome and he looked so sombre she did not see how she could ever
like him.
He stayed the night at Mårbacka. In the morning the stableboy came in
and said that a fox and two wolves had fallen into the fox-pit. None of
the men on the place seemed to know what to do to get the trapped
animals out, but the Kymsberg manager jumped into the pit with no
weapon but a knotted stick. He dealt the wolves a couple of blows on
the head, stunning them, then slipped a noose round their necks by
which to draw them up.
Mamselle Lisa Maja was so taken by the courage of the man, she quite
lost her heart to him. She vowed to herself, then and there, that him
and none other would she have for a husband.
He, on his part, had fallen in love with her at this their first
meeting, though he would not let on. He had once been engaged, it
seemed, and although the betrothed was now dead, he felt that he must
be true to her memory, and have no thought for another.
At all events, he came to Mårbacka for hay several times that winter.
He soon saw that Lisa Maja had none too easy a time of it with that
stepmother of hers. He felt sorry for her and wanted to help her. But
Lord o’ mercy! he couldn’t court her himself on account of the dear
departed. But there was his brother Elof, who was a priest somewhere up
in the Finn-forests; now he might marry her, he thought.
He brought about a meeting between his brother and Lisa Maja--which was
the worst thing he could have done. The brother fell desperately in
love with the girl, and could think of none but her for the rest of his
life; while she loved the Kymsberg manager and had no eyes for his
brother.
Pastor Lagerlöf, however, never got so far as to propose. He was
commanded by his bishop to marry a person who had lived in his home
several years, and to whom he had promised marriage. Fru Raklitz had
played a hand in that game, which ended only in misery. For when Pastor
Lagerlöf could not have Lisa Maja he took to drink, and finally
became as dissolute and worthless as he had once been noble and
high-minded.
Now Daniel Lagerlöf had no one to put forward as substitute. If he
meant to help the Mårbacka parson’s daughter he must come to the
scratch himself. Besides, he probably felt now it was better to think
of the living than to mourn for the dead. So he actually plucked up
courage enough to propose.
Mamselle Lisa Maja was very happy, and thought her troubles would soon
be over. But before very long her betrothed began to act strangely, as
if he wished to avoid her. He seldom appeared at Mårbacka now, and when
he was there he would sit silent for hours and only gaze at her, or he
would take out his violin and play from the time he came until he left.
At last a whole year went by without her seeing him.
If she asked him when they were to be married he put her off with
excuses. Once he said they must wait until he had earned enough to buy
out the other heirs to Mårbacka. Another time he had to help put his
brothers through college; and again, he thought they had better wait
and see whether he’d succeed in getting the post of Paymaster of the
Regiment.
He kept postponing and postponing. Now he had too much writing to do,
and now too much travelling--till at last no one except Mamselle Lisa
Maja herself believed they would ever be married. That made it all the
harder for her. Eligible young gentlemen from Sunne--from Ämtervik--now
came a-courting. She let them all understand they had their trouble for
nothing. But some were so persistent they came again and again, and if
she forbade them the house they would lie in wait for her at the edge
of the woods, and pop out when she appeared in the road.
All the mean things they could say of Daniel Lagerlöf they took pains
to tell her. One time she heard that he consorted with the
disreputable, besotten cavaliers who drove about the countryside
harrying homesteads, and were the terror of all decent folk; another
time she was told that he ran about in the woods like a wild animal.
Some chaffed her, saying he had now got the post of Paymaster of the
Regiment and could jolly well marry her, unless he’d grown tired of his
bargain. Others tried to weaken her by hinting that he was after the
daughter of Finn-Eric, who was reputed to be the richest man in the
country.
None of that had any effect upon Lisa Maja; she was as happy and
confident as ever that it would be as foretold in the dream.
Then one day a rumour reached her ears to the effect that her betrothed
had said if he were only released from his engagement he would go
abroad, and learn to play the violin properly.
That impressed her as nothing else had. She went down to the stable at
once to find Long-Bengt.
She said: “Now, Bengt, you must get out the chaise and drive up to
Kymsberg, to fetch the Paymaster of the Regiment; for I wish to speak
with him.”
“Ay, be sure I’ll try, Mamselle,” said Long-Bengt. “But what shall I do
if he won’t come along willingly?”
“Tell him you dare not return without him,” she said.
And Long-Bengt went.
It was a day’s journey to Kymsberg, and Long-Bengt did not get back
until the evening of the second day; but in the chaise with him was the
Paymaster of the Regiment.
Mamselle Lisa Maja received him cordially, as usual. She asked him into
the living room, and bade him sit down and rest a bit after his long
journey. They would hurry with the supper, she said, as he must be
hungry.
He paced up and down the room impatiently; he seemed only to be waiting
for the moment when he could be off.
When they were seated at table--just they two--Lisa Maja turned to him
when the housekeeper came in with the food--as if she’d only been
waiting for her--and asked him whether it was true that he wanted to
break off with her.
“Oh, yes,” he answered, looking solemn as an owl. Such was his wish, of
course; she should have guessed that long ago.
The blood rushed to her face. If she had not questioned him about this
before, she said, it was because she firmly believed they were destined
for each other. Then, with a forced laugh, he asked her what she
meant by that. She flushed crimson. Now she told him in a few words
about the dream-pancake, of how in a dream she had seen him and his
father, and what the father had said to her.
He put down his knife and fork, and stared in amazement.
“This must be something you have just made up,” he said.
“You can ask Maja Persdotter if I did not recognize you and say who you
were before you were out of the sledge, the first time you came to buy
hay,” said Mamselle Lisa Maja, turning to the housekeeper, who was then
passing round the food.
“But why haven’t you spoken of this before?” he questioned her.
“That, I think, you must understand,” she answered. “I did not wish to
hold you by any bond but your own desire.”
For a long moment he sat silent--evidently much impressed by what he
had heard. Presently he asked:
“Can you tell me how the man looked who said he was Dean Lagerlöf of
Arvika?”
“Yes,” said she, and went on to describe him. Her description of the
father must have been accurate, feature for feature, for the son was so
startled he involuntarily jumped up from the table.
“But my father died the year I was born,” he said. “You may have heard
people speak of him, perhaps?”
“I had never seen a Lagerlöf nor heard of either you or your father
before I met you in a dream. Ask Maja Persdotter standing there beside
you if she hasn’t heard me describe your father many, many times.”
He went up close to her. “If only I dared believe this!” He walked
round the room and back to her.... “Why--then _you_ were the one my
dear father meant for me, and not----”
What Mamselle Lisa Maja replied the old housekeeper never heard, for
she saw ’twas time for her to be going.
The young lovers sat talking together till far into the night,
and--well--that autumn they were married.
Mamselle Lisa Maja afterwards told the old housekeeper it was only his
morbid conscience that had stood in the way. He had felt he would be
wronging the dead sweetheart, and he had brooded over his brother Elof,
and thought he had no right to happiness when the brother was so
unhappy--and all on account of him.
But in her dream he had found something to hold to, something to be
guided by, which gave him the courage to do what he wished above
everything.
From the day of his marriage he was a changed man, though during the
first years the old despondency came over him at times; but later he
was as tranquil and even-tempered as could be. A year after the wedding
at Mårbacka his brother was drowned, and then for a while it was pretty
hard; but that, too, passed over.
The old mistress and he were married six-and-forty years, and the
last thirty years of their union all was serene; there was no happier
couple in the world.
* * * * *
The little children lay in their beds listening and delighting. Until
then their grandfather had been to them no more than a wooden image,
and now all at once he had come alive.
VIII
THE MILITIA-MEN
IT HAPPENED in the year 1810, when Grandmother Lagerlöf was a young
wife and the mother of two little children. She sat one evening by the
east window of the kitchen-bedroom; dusk had fallen and ’twas too dark
to see to sew. Being well on in March the tallow dips were about used
up, so she had taken up her knitting, for her knitting needles she
could ply in the deepest darkness.
All at once something made her look out. She could hardly believe her
eyes! But a little while before it had been fine clear weather, and now
there was a blinding snowstorm. The air was so thick with snow she
could barely distinguish the firelight from the window of the
manservants’ hall directly opposite. The lashing wind swished the snow
against the house, and in just the short time she had been sitting
there the drifts had piled so high that bushes and fences were buried
under them.
Darkness had descended quickly with the coming of the storm, yet she
descried several large animals stalking through the drifts toward the
farmyard. “I hope the maids will be mindful, and not go out for
firewood,” she said to herself, “for the _graylegs_ are out to-night.”
Shortly afterwards she heard a piercing cry and saw a wolf lumber past
her window with something in its mouth that struggled and fought. She
thought it looked like a child. But whose child could it be? Her own
little ones were right beside her, and there were no other children on
the farm. Close behind the first wolf came another; it, too, had a
child in its gape.
Grandmother couldn’t sit still any longer. She jumped up so suddenly
she knocked over the chair, and rushed through the kitchen out into the
yard.... Then she stood stock still. Before her was the calm, beautiful
spring evening; not a sign of snow--not a wolf in sight.
She must have fallen asleep over her knitting, she thought, and been
dreaming. Yet she felt that back of it all lay something serious.
“We’ll have to take precious good care of the little ones,” she said to
the maids. “That was no dream, it was a warning.”
However, the children thrived and waxed fat and rosy. The dream, or
vision, or whatever it was, soon passed out of mind, like much else of
the same sort.
Along in August a company of poor soldiers came to Mårbacka. The men
were ragged, famished, and ill. Their bodies were nothing but
skin-and-bone and in their eyes was the look of the ravening wolf. The
mark of death was on them all.
They were from Fryksände and other parishes in the northern part of
Fryksdalen, they said. But now that they were nearing home they feared
their own people would not recognize them. Only two years before they
had gone forth as well, strong men. What would the folks at home think
of getting them back in such a state they were only fit to be put in
the ground. They had not been on the battle field, they had only
marched to and fro in cold and hunger. Their fight had been with
disease and neglect.
They were many thousand strong when they marched away, but one thousand
after another had succumbed. Great numbers had been sent out in open
barges on the raging sea in midwinter. How it had gone with those
voyagers none knew; but when the boats drifted ashore the crews sat at
their oars dead and literally encased in ice. These surviving
militia-men, now returning on their own, had often been stoned away
from farms and villages on their homeward tramp. What seemed to prey
upon them most was that they had not been sent into battle and shot to
death, but must still drag on in ceaseless misery. They knew the sort
they were--covered with vermin, reeking with filth, and horrible to
behold. They did not ask for a bed to lie on or the shelter of a roof;
they only begged a few armfuls of straw and a dry mound to rest on.
At Mårbacka the poor soldiers were not greeted with stones. The
Paymaster of the Regiment was away, but his wife gave them permission
to camp in the backyard, just inside the gates. Huge kettles of
porridge and gruel were prepared for the men, and all the clothing that
could be spared was turned over to them. The servants continually
gathered round their camp to listen to their tales of what they had
passed through. Not all could talk, however. Some were too listless to
answer when spoken to; they seemed hardly to know who they were or
where they were going.
There was great consternation and wonder over these men who had become
so changed. Reports of them spread far and wide, and people came long
distances to see them.
“That one, they tell me, is the son of Göran Persa,” said a stranger
who had stood a long while regarding the poor wretches. “But I knew
Göran Persa’s son; he was a fine lad; there’s not a feature the same.”
One day a poor widow came wandering to Mårbacka. She was from a little
backwoods croft away up north, where, in a perpetual struggle with
hunger and want, she managed to sustain life in her body.
“Is there any one among ye by the name of Börje Knutsson?” she
inquired, gazing anxiously at the sick yeomen.
No one answered. The men sat on the ground with their legs drawn up,
their chins resting on their knees. They would sit like that for hours
without moving.
“If there’s any one here named Börje Knutsson he must make himself
known,” said the widow, “for he’s my son.”
None moved or said a word, none so much as raised his eyes.