Behind the town the mountain walls rise perpendicularly, but after one
has climbed up them by steep stone steps and slippery pine paths, one
finds that the mountain spreads out into a wide, undulating plateau.
And there lies an enchanted wood.
Over the whole stretch of the mountain stands a pine wood without
pine-needles; a wood which dies in the spring and grows green in the
autumn; a lifeless wood, which blossoms with the joy of life when other
trees are laying aside their green garments; a wood that grows without
any one knowing how, that stands green in winter frosts and brown in
summer dews.
It is a newly-planted wood. Young firs have been forced to take root in
the clefts between the granite blocks. Their tough roots have bored
down like sharp wedges into the fissures and crevices. It was very well
for a while; the young trees shot up like spires, and the roots bored
down into the granite. But at last they could go no further, and then
the wood was filled with an ill-concealed peevishness. It wished to go
high, but also deep. After the way down had been closed to it, it felt
that life was not worth living. Every spring it was ready to throw off
the burden of life in its discouragement. During the summer when Edith
was dying, the young wood was quite brown. High above the town of
flowers stood a gloomy row of dying trees.
But up on the mountain it is not all gloom and the agony of death. As
one walks between the brown trees, in such distress that one is ready
to die, one catches glimpses of green trees. The perfume of flowers
fills the air; the song of birds exults and calls. Then thoughts rise
of the sleeping forest and of the paradise of the fairy-tale, encircled
by thorny thickets. And when one comes at last to the green, to the
flower fragrance, to the song of the birds, one sees that it is the
hidden graveyard of the little town.
The home of the dead lies in an earth-filled hollow in the mountain
plateau. And there, within the grey stone walls, the knowledge and
weariness of life end. Lilacs stand at the entrance, bending under
heavy clusters. Lindens and beeches spread a lofty arch of luxuriant
growth over the whole place. Jasmines and roses blossom freely in that
consecrated earth. Over the big old tombstones creep vines of ivy and
periwinkle.
There is a corner where the pine-trees grow mast-high. Does it not seem
as if the young wood outside ought to be ashamed at the sight of them?
And there are hedges there, quite grown beyond their keeper’s hands,
blooming and sending forth shoots without thought of shears or knife.
The town now has a new burial-place, to which the dead can come without
special trouble. It was a weary way for them to be carried up in
winter, when the steep wood-paths are covered with ice, and the steps
slippery and covered with snow. The coffin creaked; the bearers panted;
the old clergyman leaned heavily on the sexton and the grave-digger.
Now no one has to be buried up there who does not ask it.
The graves are not beautiful. There are few who know how to make the
resting-place of the dead attractive. But the fresh green sheds its
peace and beauty over them all. It is strangely solemn to know that
those who are buried are glad to lie there. The living who go up after
a day hot with work, go there as among friends. Those who sleep have
also loved the lofty trees and the stillness.
If a stranger comes up there, they do not tell him of death and loss;
they sit down on the big slabs of stone, on the broad burgomaster
tombs, and tell him about Petter Nord, the Värmland boy, and of his
love. The story seems fitting to be told up here, where death has lost
its terrors. The consecrated earth seems to rejoice at having also been
the scene of awakened happiness and new-born life.
For it happened that after Petter Nord ran away from Halfvorson, he
sought refuge in the graveyard.
At first he ran towards the bridge over the river and turned his steps
towards the big town. But on the bridge the unfortunate fugitive
stopped. The kingly crown on his brow was quite gone. It had
disappeared as if it had been spun of sunbeams. He was deeply bent with
sorrow; his whole body shook; his heart throbbed; his brain burned like
fire.
Then he thought he saw the Spirit of Fasting coming towards him for the
third time. She was much more friendly, much more compassionate than
before; but she seemed to him only so much the more terrible.
“Alas, unhappy one,” she said, “surely this must be the last of your
pranks! You have wished to celebrate the festival of love during that
time of fasting which is called life; but you see what happens to you.
Come now and be faithful to me; you have tried everything and have only
me to whom to turn.”
He waved his arm to keep her off. “I know what you wish of me. You wish
to lead me back to work and renunciation, but I cannot. Not now, not
now!”
The pallid Spirit of Fasting smiled ever more mildly. “You are
innocent, Petter Nord. Do not grieve so over what you have not caused!
Was not Edith kind to you? Did you not see that she had forgiven you?
Come with me to your work! Live, as you have lived!”
The boy cried more vehemently. “Is it any better for me, do you think,
that I have killed just her who has been kind to me, her, who cares for
me? Had it not been better if I had murdered some one whom I wished to
murder. I must make amends. I must save her life. I cannot think of
work now.”
“Oh, you madman,” said the Spirit of Fasting, “the festival of
reparation which you wish to celebrate is the greatest audacity of
all.”
Then Petter Nord rebelled absolutely against his friend of many years.
He scoffed at her. “What have you made me believe?” he said. “That you
were a tiresome and peevish old woman with arms full of small, harmless
twigs. You are a sorceress of life. You are a monster. You are
beautiful, and you are terrible. You yourself know no bounds nor
limits; why should I know them? How can you preach fasting, you, who
wish to deluge me with such an overmeasure of sorrow? What are the
festivals I have celebrated compared to those you are continually
preparing for me! Begone with your pallid moderation! Now I wish to be
as mad as yourself.”
Not one step could he take towards the big town. Neither could he turn
directly round and again go the length of the one street in the
village; he took the path up the mountain, climbed to the enchanted
pine-wood, and wandered about among the stiff, prickly young trees,
until a friendly path led him to the graveyard. There he found a
hiding-place in a corner where the pines grew high as masts, and there
he threw himself weary unto death on the ground.
He almost lost consciousness. He did not know if time passed or if
everything stood still. But after a while steps were heard, and he woke
to a feeble consciousness. He seemed to have been far, far away. He saw
a funeral procession draw near, and instantly a confused thought rose
in him. How long had he lain there? Was Edith dead already? Was she
looking for him here? Was the corpse in the coffin hunting for its
murderer? He shook and sweated. He lay well hidden in the dark pine
thicket; but he trembled for what might happen if the corpse found him.
He bent aside the branches and looked out. A hunted deserter could not
have spied more wildly after his pursuers.
The funeral was that of a poor man. The attendance was small. The
coffin was lowered without wreaths into the grave. There was no sign of
tears on any of the faces. Petter Nord had still enough sense to see
that this could not be Edith Halfvorson’s funeral train.
But if this was not she, who knows if it was not a greeting from her.
Petter Nord felt that he had no right to escape. She had said that he
was to go up to the graveyard. She must have meant that he was to wait
for her there, so that she could find him to give him his punishment.
The funeral was a greeting, a token. She wished him to wait for her
there.
To his sick brain the low churchyard wall rose as high as a rampart. He
stared despairingly at the frail trellis-gate; it was like the most
solid door of oak. He was imprisoned. He could never get away, until
she herself came up and brought him his punishment.
What she was going to do with him he did not know. Only one thing was
distinct and clear; that he must wait here until she came for him.
Perhaps she would take him with her into the grave; perhaps she would
command him to throw himself from the mountain. He could not know—he
must wait for a while yet.
Reason fought a despairing struggle: “You are innocent, Petter Nord. Do
not grieve over what you have not caused! She has not sent you any
messages. Go down to your work! Lift your foot and you are over the
wall; push with one finger and the gate is open.”
No, he could not. Most of the time he was in a stupor, a trance. His
thoughts were indistinct, as when on the point of falling asleep. He
only knew one thing, that he must stay where he was.
The news came to her lying and fading in emulation with the rootless
birches. “Petter Nord, with whom you played one summer day, is in the
graveyard waiting for you. Petter Nord, whom your uncle has frightened
out of his senses, cannot leave the graveyard until your flower-decked
coffin comes to fetch him.”
The girl opened her eyes as if to look at the world once more. She sent
a message to Petter Nord. She was angry at his mad pranks. Why could
she not die in peace? She had never wished that he should have any
pangs of conscience for her sake.
The bearer of the message came back without Petter Nord. He could not
come. The wall was too high and the gate too strong. There was only one
who could free him.
During those days they thought of nothing else in the little town. “He
is there; he is there still,” they told one another every day. “Is he
mad?” they asked most often, and some who had talked with him answered
that he certainly would be when “she” came. But they were exceedingly
proud of that martyr to love who gave a glory to the town. The poor
took him food. The rich stole up on the mountain to catch a glimpse of
him.
But Edith, who could not move, who lay helpless and dying, she who had
so much time to think, with what was she occupying herself? What
thoughts revolved in her brain day and night? Oh, Petter Nord, Petter
Nord! Must she always see before her the man who loved her, who was
losing his mind for her sake, who really, actually was in the graveyard
waiting for her coffin.
See, that was something for the steel-spring in her nature. That was
something for her imagination, something for her benumbed senses. To
think what he meant to do when she should come! To imagine what he
would do if she should not come there as a corpse!
They talked of it in the whole town, talked of it and nothing else. As
the cities of ancient times had loved their martyrs, the little village
loved the unhappy Petter Nord; but no one liked to go into the
graveyard and talk to him. He looked wilder each day. The obscurity of
madness sank ever closer about him. “Why does she not try to get well?”
they said of Edith. “It is unjust of her to die.”
Edith was almost angry. She who was so tired of life, must she be
compelled to take up the heavy burden again? But nevertheless she began
an honest effort. She felt what a work of repairing and mending was
going on in her body with seething force during these weeks. And no
material was spared. She consumed incredible quantities of those things
which give strength and life, whatever they may be: malt extract or
codliver oil, fresh air or sunshine, dreams or love.
And what glorious days they were, long, warm, and sunny!
At last she got the doctor’s permission to be carried up there. The
whole town was in alarm when she undertook the journey. Would she come
down with a madman? Could the misery of those weeks be blotted out of
his brain? Would the exertions she had made to begin life again be
profitless? And if it were so, how would it go with her?
As she passed by, pale with excitement, but still full of hope, there
was cause enough for anxiety. No one concealed from themselves that
Petter Nord had taken quite too large a place in her imagination. She
was the most eager of all in the worship of that strange saint. All
restraints had fallen from her when she had heard what he suffered for
her sake. But how would the sight of him affect her enthusiasm? There
is nothing romantic in a madman.
When she had been carried up to the gate of the graveyard, she left her
bearers and walked alone up the broad middle path. Her gaze wandered
round the flowering spot, but she saw no one.
Suddenly she heard a faint rustle in a clump of fir-trees, and she saw
a wild, distorted face staring from it. Never had she seen terror so
plainly stamped on a face. She was frightened herself at the sight of
it, mortally frightened. She could hardly restrain herself from running
away.
Then a great, holy feeling welled up in her. There was no longer any
thought of love or enthusiasm, but only grief that a fellow-being, one
of the unhappy ones who passed through the vale of tears with her,
should be destroyed.
The girl remained. She did not give way a single step; she let him
slowly accustom himself to the sight of her. But she put all the
strength she possessed in her gaze. She drew the man to her with the
whole force of the will that had conquered the illness in herself.
He came forward out of his corner, pale, wild and unkempt. He advanced
towards her, but the terror never left his face. He looked as if he
were fascinated by a wild beast, which came to tear him to pieces. When
he was quite close to her, she put both her hands on his shoulders and
looked smiling into his face.
“Come, Petter Nord, what is the matter with you? You must go from here!
What do you mean by staying so long up here in the graveyard, Petter
Nord?”
He trembled and sank down. But she felt that she subdued him with her
eyes. Her words, on the other hand, seemed to have absolutely no
meaning to him.
She changed her tone a little. “Listen to what I say, Petter Nord. I am
not dead. I am not going to die. I have got well in order to come up
here and save you.”
He still stood in the same dull terror. Again there came a change in
her voice. “You have not caused my death,” she said more tenderly, “you
have given me life.”
She repeated it again and again. And her voice at last was trembling
with emotion, thick with weeping. But he did not understand anything of
what she said.
“Petter Nord, I love you so much, so much!” she burst out.
He was just as unmoved.
She knew nothing more to try with him. She would have to take him down
with her to the town and let time and care help.
It is not easy to say what the dreams she had taken up there with her
were and what she had expected from this meeting with the man who loved
her. Now, when she was to give it all up and treat him as a madman
only, she felt such pain, as if she was about to lose the dearest thing
life had given her. And in that bitterness of loss she drew him to her
and kissed him on the forehead.
It was meant as a farewell to both happiness and life. She felt her
strength fail her. A mortal weakness came over her.
But then she thought she saw a feeble sign of life in him. He was not
quite so limp and dull. His features were twitching. He trembled more
and more violently. She watched with ever-growing alarm. He was waking,
but to what? At last he began to weep.
She led him away to a tomb. She sat down on it, pulled him down in
front of her and laid his head on her lap. She sat and caressed him,
while he wept.
He was like some one waking from a nightmare.
“Why am I weeping?” he asked himself. “Oh, I know; I had such a
terrible dream. But it is not true. She is alive. I have not killed
her. So foolish to weep for a dream.”
Gradually everything grew clear to him; but his tears continued to
flow. She sat and caressed him, but he wept still for a long time.
“I feel such a need of weeping,” he said.
Then he looked up and smiled. “Is it Easter now?” he asked.
“What do you mean by now?”
“It can be called Easter, when the dead rise again,” he continued.
Thereupon, as if they had been intimate many years, he began to tell
her about the Spirit of Fasting and of his revolt against her rule.
“It is Easter now, and the end of her reign,” she said.
But when he realized that Edith was sitting there and caressing him, he
had to weep again. He needed so much to weep. All the distrust of life
which misfortunes had brought to the little Värmland boy needed tears
to wash it away. Distrust that love and joy, beauty and strength
blossomed on the earth, distrust in himself, all must go, all did go,
for it was Easter; the dead lived and the Spirit of Fasting would never
again _come into power_.