It was quite an affair, this ball, with a transparency, “Welcome,” over
the door, and a cold supper at two crowns a plate, with the pastor’s
daughter and the curate to grace the table.
Miss Holm wore a barège gown much betrimmed, and Roman bands around her
head. Her fingers were full of keepsake rings from her ballet-school
friends. Between the dances she sprinkled lavender water about the
floor, and threatened the “ladies” with the bottle. Miss Holm never
felt so young again on any such festive occasion. The ball began with
a quadrille. The parents of the pupils and other older people stood
around the walls, each looking after his own young ones with secret
pride. The young dancers walked through the quadrille with faces set
as masks, placing their feet as carefully as if they were walking on
peas. Miss Holm was all encouraging smiles and nods as she murmured her
French commands. The music was furnished by Mr. Broderson and his son,
the latter maltreating the piano kindly lent for the occasion by the
pastor.
Then the round dances began, and the tone grew more free and easy. The
elder men discovered the punch bowl in the next room, and the gentlemen
pupils danced in turn with Miss Holm. She danced with her head on one
side, raising herself on her toes, and smiling with her faded grace of
sixteen years. After a while the other couples stopped dancing to watch
Miss Holm and her partner. The men came out of the other room, stood
in the doorway, and murmured admiration as Miss Holm passed, raising
her feet a little higher under her skirt, and rocking gracefully in
the hips. The pastor’s daughter was so amused that she pinched the
curate’s arm repeatedly. After the mazurka, the schoolteacher cried
out, “Bravo!” and they all clapped hands. Miss Holm bowed the elegant
ballet courtesy, laying two fingers on her heart.
When supper-time came, she arranged a polonaise and made them all join
in. The women giggled and nudged each other in their embarrassment,
and the men said: “Well--let’s get in line--” One couple began a march
song, beating time with their feet.
Miss Holm sat next the schoolteacher, in the place of honor under the
bust of his Majesty the King. They all grew solemn again at the table,
and Miss Holm was almost the only one who conversed. She spoke in the
high-pitched tone of the actors in the modern society dramas of Scribe.
After a while the company became more jovial, the men began to laugh
and drink toasts, touching glasses across the table. Things were very
lively at the end of the table where the young people sat, and it was
not easy to obtain quiet for the schoolmaster, who rose to make a
speech. He spoke at some length, mentioning Miss Holm and the nine
Muses, and ending up with a toast to “The Priestess of Art, Miss Irene
Holm!” All joined in the cheers, and everybody came up to touch glasses
with Miss Holm.
Miss Holm had understood very little of the long speech, but she
felt greatly flattered. She rose and bowed to the company, her glass
held high in her curved arm. Her face-powder, put on for the festive
occasion, had quite disappeared in the heat and exertion, and two deep
red spots shone on her cheeks.
The fun waxed fast and furious. The young people began to sing, the
old men drank a glass or two extra on the sly, and stood up from their
places to hit each other on the shoulder, amid shouts of laughter. The
women threw anxious glances at the sinners, fearing they might indulge
too deeply. Amid all the noise Miss Holm’s laugh rang out, a girlish
laugh, bright and merry as thirty years before in the ballet school.
Then the schoolmaster said that Miss Holm ought to dance. “But I have
danced.” Yes, but she should dance for them--a solo--that would be fine.
Miss Holm understood at once--and a great desire grew up in her
heart--she was to dance--a solo! But she pretended to laugh, and
smiling up at Peter Madsen’s wife, she said: “The gentleman says I
ought to dance,” as if it were the most absurd thing in the world.
Several heard it, and they all called out in answer, “Yes, yes, do
dance.”
Miss Holm blushed to the roots of her hair, and said that she thought
the fun was getting just a little too outspoken. “And, besides, there
was no music; and one couldn’t dance in long skirts.” A man somewhere
in the background called out: “You can lift them up, can’t you?” The
guests all laughed at this, and began to renew their entreaties.
“Well, yes, if the young lady from the rectory will play for me?--a
tarantella.” They surrounded the pastor’s daughter, and she consented
to lend her services. The schoolmaster rose and beat on his glass:
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he announced, “Miss Holm will do us the honor
to perform a solo dance for us.” The guests cheered, and the last
diners arose from the table. The curate’s arm was black and blue where
the young lady from the rectory had pinched him.
Miss Holm and the pastor’s daughter went to the piano to try the music.
Miss Holm was feverish with excitement, and tripped back and forth,
trying the muscles of her feet. She pointed to the humps and bumps in
the floor: “I’m not quite used to dancing in a circus.” Then again:
“Well, the fun can begin now;” her voice was hoarse with emotion. “I’ll
come in after the first ten bars,” she said to the pianist; “I’ll give
you a sign when to begin.” Then she went out into a little neighboring
room and waited there. The audience filed in and stood around in a
circle, whispering and very curious. The schoolmaster brought the
lights from the table, and stood them up in the windows. It was quite
an illumination. Then there came a light knock at the door of the
little room.
The rector’s daughter began to play, and the guests looked eagerly at
the closed door. At the tenth bar of the music it opened, and they all
clapped loudly. Miss Holm danced out, her skirt caught up with a Roman
scarf. It was to be “la grande Napolitaine.” She danced on toetips,
she twisted and turned. The audience gazed, dumbfounded, in admiration
at the little feet that moved up and down as rapidly as a couple of
drumsticks. They cheered and clapped wildly as she stood on one leg for
a moment.
She called out “Quicker,” and began to sway again. She smiled and
nodded and waved her arms. There was more and more motion of the body
from the waist up, more gestures with the arms; the dance became more
and more mimic. She could no longer see the faces of her audience; she
opened her mouth, smiling so that all her teeth, a few very bad teeth,
could be seen; she began to act in pantomime; she felt and knew only
that she was dancing a solo--at last a solo, the solo for which she
had waited so long. It was no longer the “grande Napolitaine.” It was
Fenella who knelt, Fenella who implored, Fenella who suffered, the
beautiful, tragic Fenella.
She hardly knew how she had risen from the floor, or how she had come
from the room. She heard only the sudden ceasing of the music, and
the laughter--the terrible laughter, the laughter she heard and the
laughter she saw on all these faces, to which she had suddenly become
alive again.
She had risen from her knees, raised her arms mechanically, from force
of habit, and bowed amid shouting. In there, in the little room, she
stood, supporting herself on the edge of the table. It was all so dark
around and in her--so empty. She loosened the scarf from her gown
with strangely stiff hands, smoothed her skirts, and went back again
to the room where the audience were now clapping politely. She bowed
her thanks, standing by the piano, but she did not raise her eyes.
The others began to dance again, eager to resume the fun. Miss Holm
went about among them, saying farewell. Her pupils pressed the paper
packages containing their money into her hands. Peter Madsen’s wife
helped her into her cloak, and at the door she was met by the pastor’s
daughter and the curate, ready to accompany her home.
They walked along in silence. The young lady from the rectory was
very unhappy about the evening’s occurrence, and wanted to excuse it
somehow, but didn’t know what to say. The little dancer walked along at
her side, pale and quiet.
Finally the curate, embarrassed at the silence, remarked hesitatingly:
“You see, miss--these people--they don’t understand tragic art.” Miss
Holm did not answer. When they came to her door she bowed and gave them
her hand in silence. The rector’s daughter caught her in her arms and
kissed her. “Good night, good night,” she said, her voice trembling.
Then she waited outside with the curate until they saw a light in the
little dancer’s room.
* * * * *
Miss Holm took off her barège gown and folded it carefully. She
unwrapped the money from the paper parcels, counted it, and sewed it
into a little pocket in her bodice. She handled the needle awkwardly,
sitting bowed over the tiny light.
The next morning her champagne basket was lifted onto a wagon of the
country post. It rained, and Miss Holm huddled down under a broken
umbrella. She drew her legs up under her, and sat on her basket like a
Turk. When it was time to leave, the driver ran alongside. The young
lady from the rectory came running up bareheaded. She had a white
basket in her hands, and said she had brought “just a little food for
the journey.”
She bent down under the umbrella, caught Miss Holm’s head in her hands,
and kissed her twice. The old dancer broke into sobs, and grasping the
young girl’s hand, she kissed it violently.
The rector’s daughter stood and looked for a long time after the old
umbrella swaying on top of the little cart.
Miss Irene Holm had announced a “spring course in modern society
dances” in a little town nearby. Six pupils were promised. It was
thither she was going now--to continue the thing we call Life.
THE OUTLAWS
BY SELMA LAGERLÖF
[Illustration]
_Selma Lagerlöf, at one time teacher at Landskrona, has just
recently been crowned the people’s favorite authoress at
the national Swedish festival held in 1907. She was born in
1858, on the ancestral estate of Wärmland, where she found
the material for her first stories, “Gösta Berling’s Saga,”
a fantastic collection of child-reminiscences modeled after
the problem-literature then in vogue, and rendered enormously
popular by reason of a happy linking of the old romanticism
with the new realistic truthfulness to nature._
_In 1895 she traveled abroad, and soon after produced her
famous Sicilian tales. Her “Memoirs of Madame Ristori,” the
great Italian tragic actress, containing important pictures of
Madame Ristori’s contemporaries, Tommaso Salvini, Dumas Père,
and others, have lately been translated into English._
_Selma Lagerlöf’s style, ideally represented in “The Outlaws,”
the best of her tales, is calm, sure, broad, and poetic._
[Illustration]
THE OUTLAWS
BY SELMA LAGERLÖF
Translated by Grace Isabel Colbron.
A peasant had killed a monk and fled to the woods. He became an
outlaw, upon whose head a price was set. In the forest he met another
fugitive, a young fisherman from one of the outermost islands, who had
been accused of the theft of a herring net. The two became companions,
cut themselves a home in a cave, laid their nets together, cooked
their food, made their arrows, and held watch one for the other. The
peasant could never leave the forest. But the fisherman, whose crime
was less serious, would now and then take upon his back the game they
had killed, and would creep down to the more isolated houses on the
outskirts of the village. In return for milk, butter, arrow-heads, and
clothing he would sell his game, the black mountain cock, the moor hen,
with her shining feathers, the toothsome doe, and the long-eared hare.
The cave which was their home cut down deep into a mountain-side. The
entrance was guarded by wide slabs of stone and ragged thorn-bushes.
High up on the hillside there stood a giant pine, and the chimney of
the fireplace nestled among its coiled roots. Thus the smoke could
draw up through the heavy hanging branches and fade unseen into the
air. To reach their cave the men had to wade through the stream that
sprang out from the hill slope. No pursuer thought of seeking their
trail in this merry brooklet. At first they were hunted as wild animals
are. The peasants of the district gathered to pursue them as if for a
baiting of wolf or bear. The bowmen surrounded the wood while the spear
carriers entered and left no thicket or ravine unsearched. The two
outlaws cowered in their gloomy cave, panting in terror and listening
breathlessly as the hunt passed on with noise and shouting over the
mountain ranges.
For one long day the young fisherman lay motionless, but the murderer
could stand it no longer, and went out into the open where he could
see his enemy. They discovered him and set after him, but this was far
more to his liking than lying quiet in impotent terror. He fled before
his pursuers, leaped the streams, slid down the precipices, climbed
up perpendicular walls of rock. All his remarkable strength and skill
awoke to energy under the spur of danger. His body became as elastic
as a steel spring, his foot held firm, his hand grasped sure, his eye
and ear were doubly sharp. He knew the meaning of every murmur in the
foliage; he could understand the warning in an upturned stone.
[Illustration: =Selma Lagerlöf=]
When he had clambered up the side of a precipice he would stop to look
down on his pursuers, greeting them with loud songs of scorn. When
their spears sang above him in the air, he would catch them and hurl
them back. As he crashed his way through tangled underbrush something
within him seemed to sing a wild song of rejoicing. A gaunt, bare
hilltop stretched itself through the forest, and all alone upon its
crest there stood a towering pine. The red brown trunk was bare, in
the thick grown boughs at the top a hawk’s nest rocked in the breeze.
So daring had the fugitive grown that on another day he climbed to
the nest while his pursuers sought him in the woody slopes below. He
sat there and twisted the necks of the young hawks as the hunt raged
far beneath him. The old birds flew screaming about him in anger.
They swooped past his face, they struck at his eyes with their beaks,
beat at him with their powerful wings, and clawed great scratches in
his weather-hardened skin. He battled with them laughing. He stood up
in the rocking nest as he lunged at the birds with his knife, and he
lost all thought of danger and pursuit in the joy of the battle. When
recollection came again and he turned to look for his enemies, the hunt
had gone off in another direction. Not one of the pursuers had thought
of raising his eyes to the clouds to see the prey hanging there, doing
schoolboy deeds of recklessness while his life hung in the balance.
But the man trembled from head to foot when he saw that he was safe.
He caught for a support with his shaking hands; he looked down giddily
from the height to which he had climbed. Groaning in fear of a fall,
afraid of the birds, afraid of the possibility of being seen, weakened
through terror of everything and anything, he slid back down the tree
trunk. He laid himself flat upon the earth and crawled over the loose
stones until he reached the underbrush. There he hid among the tangled
branches of the young pines, sinking down, weak and helpless, upon the
soft moss. A single man might have captured him.
* * * * *
Tord was the name of the fisherman. He was but sixteen years old, but
was strong and brave. He had now lived for a whole year in the wood.
The peasant’s name was Berg, and they had called him “The Giant.” He
was handsome and well-built, the tallest and strongest man in the
entire county. He was broad-shouldered and yet slender. His hands were
delicate in shape, as if they had never known hard work, his hair was
brown, his face soft-colored. When he had lived for some time in the
forest his look of strength was awe-inspiring. His eyes grew piercing
under bushy brows wrinkled by great muscles over the forehead. His lips
were more firmly set than before, his face more haggard, with deepened
hollows at the temples, and his strongly marked cheek-bones stood out
plainly. All the softer curves of his body disappeared, but the muscles
grew strong as steel. His hair turned gray rapidly.
Tord had never seen any one so magnificent and so mighty before. In his
imagination, his companion towered high as the forest, strong as the
raging surf. He served him humbly, as he would have served a master,
he revered him as he would have revered a god. It seemed quite natural
that Tord should carry the hunting spear, that he should drag the game
home, draw the water, and build the fire. Berg, the Giant, accepted all
these services, but scarce threw the boy a friendly word. He looked
upon him with contempt, as a common thief.
The outlaws did not live by pillage, but supported themselves by
hunting and fishing. Had not Berg killed a holy man, the peasants
would soon have tired of the pursuit and left them to themselves in
the mountains. But they feared disaster for the villages if he who had
laid hands upon a servant of God should go unpunished. When Tord took
his game down into the valley they would offer him money and a pardon
for himself if he would lead them to the cave of the Giant, that they
might catch the latter in his sleep. But the boy refused, and if they
followed him he would lead them astray until they gave up the pursuit.
Once Berg asked him whether the peasants had ever tried to persuade
him to betrayal. When he learned what reward they had promised he said
scornfully that Tord was a fool not to accept such offers. Tord looked
at him with something in his eyes that Berg, the Giant, had never seen
before. No beautiful woman whom he had loved in the days of his youth
had ever looked at him like that; not even in the eyes of his own
children, or of his wife, had he seen such affection. “You are my God,
the ruler I have chosen of my own free will.” This was what the eyes
said. “You may scorn me, or beat me, if you will, but I shall still
remain faithful.”
From this on Berg gave more heed to the boy and saw that he was brave
in action but shy in speech. Death seemed to have no terrors for him.
He would deliberately choose for his path the fresh formed ice on the
mountain pools, the treacherous surface of the morass in springtime.
He seemed to delight in danger. It gave him some compensation for the
wild ocean storms he could no longer go out to meet. He would tremble
in the night darkness of the wood, however, and even by day the gloom
of a thicket or a deeper shadow could frighten him. When Berg asked him
about this he was silent in embarrassment.
Tord did not sleep in the bed by the hearth at the back of the cave,
but every night, when Berg was asleep the boy would creep to the
entrance and lie there on one of the broad stones. Berg discovered
this, and although he guessed the reason he asked the boy about it.
Tord would not answer. To avoid further questions he slept in the bed
for two nights, then returned to his post at the door.
One night, when a snow-storm raged in the tree-tops, piling up drifts
even in the heart of the thickets, the flakes swirled into the cave of
the outlaws. Tord, lying by the entrance, awoke in the morning to find
himself wrapped in a blanket of melting snow. A day or two later he
fell ill. Sharp pains pierced his lungs when he tried to draw breath.
He endured the pain as long as his strength would stand it, but one
evening, when he stooped to blow up the fire, he fell down and could
not rise again. Berg came to his side and told him to lie in the warm
bed. Tord groaned in agony, but could not move. Berg put his arm under
the boy’s body and carried him to the bed. He had a feeling while doing
it as if he were touching a clammy snake; he had a taste in his mouth
as if he had eaten unclean horseflesh, so repulsive was it to him to
touch the person of this common thief. Berg covered the sick boy with
his own warm bear-skin rug and gave him water. This was all he could
do, but the illness was not dangerous, and Tord recovered quickly.
But now that Berg had had to do his companion’s work for a few days,
and had had to care for him, they seemed to have come nearer to one
another. Tord dared to speak to Berg sometimes, as they sat together by
the fire cutting their arrows.
“You come of good people, Berg,” Tord said one evening. “Your relatives
are the richest peasants in the valley. The men of your name have
served kings and fought in their castles.”
“They have more often fought with the rebels and done damage to the
king’s property,” answered Berg.
“Your forefathers held great banquets at Christmas time. And you held
banquets too, when you were at home in your house. Hundreds of men and
women could find place on the benches in your great hall, the hall
that was built in the days before St. Olaf came here to Viken for
christening. Great silver urns were there, and mighty horns, filled
with mead, went the rounds of your table.”
Berg looked at the boy again. He sat on the edge of the bed with his
head in his hands, pushing back the heavy tangled hair that hung over
his eyes. His face had become pale and refined through his illness.
His eyes still sparkled in fever. He smiled to himself at the pictures
called up by his fancy--pictures of the great hall and of the silver
urns, of the richly clad guests, and of Berg, the Giant, lording it in
the place of honor. The peasant knew that even in the days of his glory
no one had ever looked at him with eyes so shining in admiration, so
glowing in reverence, as this boy did now, as he sat by the fire in his
worn leather jacket. He was touched, and yet displeased. This common
thief had no right to admire him.
“Were there no banquets in your home?” he asked.
Tord laughed: “Out there on the rocks where father and mother live?
Father plunders the wrecks and mother is a witch. When the weather is
stormy she rides out to meet the ships on a seal’s back, and those who
are washed overboard from the wrecks belong to her.”
“What does she do with them?” asked Berg.
“Oh, a witch always needs corpses. She makes salves of them, or perhaps
she eats them. On moonlit nights she sits out in the wildest surf and
looks for the eyes and fingers of drowned children.”
“That is horrible!” said Berg.
The boy answered with calm confidence: “It would be for others, but not
for a witch. She can’t help it.”
This was an altogether new manner of looking at life for Berg. “Then
thieves have to steal, as witches have to make magic?” he questioned
sharply.
“Why, yes,” answered the boy. “Every one has to do the thing he was
born for.” But a smile of shy cunning curled his lips, as he added:
“There are thieves who have never stolen.”
“What do you mean by that?” spoke Berg.
The boy still smiled his mysterious smile and seemed happy to have
given his companion a riddle. “There are birds that do not fly; and
there are thieves who have not stolen,” he said.
Berg feigned stupidity, in order to trick the other’s meaning: “How can
any one be called a thief who has never stolen?” he said.
The boy’s lips closed tight as if to hold back the words. “But if one
has a father who steals--” he threw out after a short pause.
“A man may inherit house and money, but the name thief is given only to
him who earns it.”
Tord laughed gently. “But when one has a mother--and that mother comes
and cries, and begs one to take upon one’s self the father’s crime--and
then one can laugh at the hangman and run away into the woods. A man
may be outlawed for the sake of a fish net he has never seen.”
Berg beat his fist upon the stone table, in great anger. Here this
strong, beautiful boy had thrown away his whole life for another.
Neither love, nor riches, nor the respect of his fellow men could
ever be his again. The sordid care for food and clothing was all that
remained to him in life. And this fool had let him, Berg, despise an
innocent man. He scolded sternly, but Tord was not frightened any more
than a sick child is frightened at the scolding of his anxious mother.
* * * * *
High up on one of the broad wooded hills there lay a black swampy lake.
It was square in shape, and its banks were as straight, and their
corners as sharp as if it had been the work of human hands. On three
sides steep walls of rock rose up, with hardy mountain pines clinging
to the stones, their roots as thick as a man’s arm. At the surface of
the lake, where the few strips of grass had been washed away, these
naked roots twisted and coiled, rising out of the water like myriad
snakes that had tried to escape from the waves, but had been turned
to stone in their struggle. Or was it more like a mass of blackened
skeletons of long-drowned giants which the lake was trying to throw
off? The arms and legs were twisted in wild contortions, the long
fingers grasped deep into the rocks, the mighty ribs formed arches that
upheld ancient trees. But now and again these iron-hard arms, these
steel fingers with which the climbing pines supported themselves, would
loosen their hold, and then the strong north wind would hurl the tree
from the ridge far out into the swamp. There it would lie, its crown
burrowing deep in the muddy water. The fishes found good hiding places
amid its twigs, while the roots rose up over the water like the arms of
some hideous monster, giving the little lake a repulsive appearance.
The mountains sloped down on the fourth side of the little lake. A tiny
rivulet foamed out here; but before the stream could find its path it
twisted and turned among boulders and mounds of earth, forming a whole
colony of islands, some of which scarce offered foothold, while others
carried as many as twenty trees on their back.
Here, where the rocks were not high enough to shut out the sun, the
lighter foliaged trees could grow. Here were the timid, gray-green
alders, and the willows with their smooth leaves. Birches were here, as
they always are wherever there is a chance to shut out the evergreens,
and there were mountain ash and elder bushes, giving charm and
fragrance to the place.
At the entrance to the lake there was a forest of rushes as high as a
man’s head, through which the sunlight fell as green upon the water as
it falls on the moss in the true forest. There were little clearings
among the reeds, little round ponds where the water lilies slumbered.
The tall rushes looked down with gentle gravity upon these sensitive
beauties, who closed their white leaves and their yellow hearts so
quickly in their leather outer dress as soon as the sun withdrew his
rays.
One sunny day the outlaws came to one of these little ponds to fish.
They waded through the reeds to two high stones, and sat there throwing
out their bait for the big green, gleaming pike that slumbered
just below the surface of the water. These men, whose life was now
passed entirely among the mountains and the woods, had come to be as
completely under the control of the powers of nature as were the plants
or the animals. When the sun shone they were open-hearted and merry,
at evening they became silent, and the night, which seemed to them so
all-powerful, robbed them of their strength. And now the green light
that fell through the reeds and drew out from the water stripes of
gold, brown, and black-green, smoothed them into a sort of magic mood.
They were completely shut out from the outer world. The reeds swayed
gently in the soft wind, the rushes murmured and the long, ribbon-like
leaves struck them lightly in the face. They sat on the gray stones in
their gray leather garments, and the shaded tones of the leather melted
into the shades of the stones. Each saw his comrade sitting opposite
him as quietly as a stone statue. And among the reeds they saw giant
fish swimming, gleaming and glittering in all colors of the rainbow.
When the men threw out their lines and watched the rings on the water
widen amid the reeds, it seemed to them that the motion grew and grew
until they saw it was not they themselves alone that had occasioned it.
A Nixie, half human, half fish, lay sleeping deep down in the water.
She lay on her back, and the waves clung so closely to her body that
the men had not seen her before. It was her breath that stirred the
surface. But it did not seem to the watchers that there was anything
strange in the fact that she lay there. And when she had disappeared in
the next moment they did not know whether her appearance had been an
illusion or not.
The green light pierced through their eyes into their brains like a
mild intoxication. They saw visions among the reeds, visions which they
would not tell even to each other. There was not much fishing done. The
day was given up to dreams and visions.
A sound of oars came from among the reeds, and they started up out
of their dreaming. In a few moments a heavy boat, hewn out of a tree
trunk, came into sight, set in motion by oars not much broader than
walking sticks. The oars were in the hands of a young girl who had
been gathering water-lilies. She had long, dark brown braids of hair,
and great dark eyes, but she was strangely pale, a pallor that was not
gray, but softly pink tinted. Her cheeks were no deeper in color than
the rest of her face; her lips were scarce redder. She wore a bodice of
white linen and a leather belt with a golden clasp. Her skirt was of
blue with a broad red hem. She rowed past close by the outlaws without
seeing them. They sat absolutely quiet, less from fear of discovery
than from the desire to look at her undisturbed. When she had gone, the
stone statues became men again and smiled:
“She was as white as the water-lilies,” said one. “And her eyes were as
dark as the water back there under the roots of the pines.”
They were both so merry that they felt like laughing, like really
laughing as they had never laughed in this swamp before, a laugh that
would echo back from the wall of rock and loosen the roots of the pines.
“Did you think her beautiful?” asked the Giant.
“I do not know, she passed so quickly. Perhaps she was beautiful.”
“You probably did not dare to look at her. Did you think she was the
Nixie?”
And again they felt a strange desire to laugh.
* * * * *
While a child, Tord had once seen a drowned man. He had found the
corpse on the beach in broad daylight, and it had not frightened him,
but at night his dreams were terrifying. He had seemed to be looking
out over an ocean, every wave of which threw a dead body at his feet.
He saw all the rocks and islands covered with corpses of the drowned,
the drowned that were dead and belonged to the sea, but that could
move, and speak, and threaten him with their white stiffened fingers.
And so it was again. The girl whom he had seen in the reeds appeared
to him in his dreams. He met her again down at the bottom of the swamp
lake, where the light was greener even than in the reeds, and there
he had time enough to see that she was beautiful. He dreamed that he
sat on one of the great pine roots in the midst of the lake while the
tree rocked up and down, now under, now over the surface of the water.
Then he saw her on one of the smallest islands. She stood under the red
mountain ash and laughed at him. In his very last dream it had gone so
far that she had kissed him. But then it was morning, and he heard Berg
rising, but he kept his eyes stubbornly closed that he might continue
to dream. When he did awake he was dazed and giddy from what he had
seen during the night. He thought much more about the girl than he had
done the day before. Toward evening it occurred to him to ask Berg if
he knew her name.
Berg looked at him sharply. “It is better for you to know it at once,”
he said. “It was Unn. We are related to each other.”
And then Tord knew that it was this pale maiden who was the cause of
Berg’s wild hunted life in forest and mountain. He tried to search his
memory for what he had heard about her.
Unn was the daughter of a free peasant. Her mother was dead, and she
ruled in her father’s household. This was to her taste, for she was
independent by nature, and had no inclination to give herself to any
husband. Unn and Berg were cousins, and the rumor had long gone about
that Berg liked better to sit with Unn and her maids than to work at
home in his own house. One Christmas, when the great banquet was to be
given in Berg’s hall, his wife had invited a monk from Draksmark, who,
she hoped, would show Berg how wrong it was that he should neglect her
for another. Berg and others besides him hated this monk because of his
appearance. He was very stout and absolutely white. The ring of hair
around his bald head, the brows above his moist eyes, the color of his
skin, of his hands, and of his garments, were all white. Many found him
very repulsive to look at.
But the monk was fearless, and as he believed that his words would
have greater weight if many heard them, he rose at the table before
all the guests, and said: “Men call the cuckoo the vilest of birds
because he brings up his young in the nest of others. But here sits a
man who takes no care for his house and his children, and who seeks his
pleasure with a strange woman. Him I will call the vilest of men.” Unn
rose in her place. “Berg, this is said to you and to me,” she cried.
“Never have I been so shamed, but my father is not here to protect me.”
She turned to go, but Berg hurried after her. “Stay where you are,” she
said. “I do not wish to see you again.” He stopped her in the corridor,
and asked her what he should do that she might stay with him. Her eyes
glowed as she answered that he himself should know best what he must
do. Then Berg went into the hall again and slew the monk.
Berg and Tord thought on awhile with the same thoughts, then Berg said:
“You should have seen her when the white monk fell. My wife drew the
children about her and cursed Unn. She turned the faces of the children
toward her, that they might always remember the woman for whose sake
their father had become a murderer. But Unn stood there so quiet and
so beautiful that the men who saw her trembled. She thanked me for the
deed, and prayed me to flee to the woods at once. She told me never to
become a robber, and to use my knife only in some cause equally just.”
“Your deed had ennobled her,” said Tord.
And again Berg found himself astonished at the same thing that had
before now surprised him in the boy. Tord was a heathen, or worse than
a heathen; he never condemned that which was wrong. He seemed to know
no sense of responsibility. What had to come, came. He knew of God, of
Christ, and the Saints, but he knew them only by name, as one knows the
names of the gods of other nations. The ghosts of the Scheeren Islands
were his gods. His mother, learned in magic, had taught him to believe
in the spirits of the dead. And then it was that Berg undertook a task
which was as foolish as if he had woven a rope for his own neck. He
opened the eyes of this ignorant boy to the power of God, the Lord of
all justice, the avenger of wrong who condemned sinners to the pangs of
hell everlasting. And he taught him to love Christ and His Mother, and
all the saintly men and women who sit before the throne of God praying
that His anger may be turned away from sinners. He taught him all that
mankind has learned to do to soften the wrath of God. He told him of
the long trains of pilgrims journeying to the holy places; he told him
of those who scourged themselves in their remorse; and he told him of
the pious monks who flee the joys of this world.
The longer he spoke the paler grew the boy and the keener his attention
as his eyes widened at the visions. Berg would have stopped, but the
torrent of his own thoughts carried him away. Night sank down upon
them, the black forest night, where the scream of the owl shrills
ghostly through the stillness. God came so near to them that the
brightness of His throne dimmed the stars, and the angels of vengeance
descended upon the mountain heights. And below them the flames of the
underworld fluttered up to the outer curve of the earth and licked
greedily at this last refuge of a race crushed by sin and woe.
* * * * *
Autumn came, and with it came storm. Tord went out alone into the woods
to tend the traps and snares, while Berg remained at home to mend his
clothes. The boy’s path led him up a wooded height along which the
falling leaves danced in circles in the gust. Again and again the
feeling came to him that some one was walking behind him. He turned
several times, then went on again when he had seen that it was only
the wind and the leaves. He threatened the rustling circles with his
fist, and kept on his way. But he had not silenced the sounds of his
vision. At first it was the little dancing feet of elfin children; then
it was the hissing of a great snake moving up behind him. Beside the
snake there came a wolf, a tall, gray creature, waiting for the moment
when the adder should strike at his feet to spring upon his back. Tord
hastened his steps, but the visions hastened with him. When they seemed
but two steps behind him, ready for the spring, he turned. There was
nothing there, as he had known all the time. He sat down upon a stone
to rest. The dried leaves played about his feet. The leaves of all the
forest trees were there: the little yellow birch leaves, the red-tinged
mountain ash leaves, the dried, black-brown foliage of the elm, the
bright red aspen leaves, and the yellow-green fringes of the willows.
Faded and crumpled, broken and scarred, they were but little like the
soft, tender shoots of green that had unrolled from the buds a few
months ago.
“Ye are sinners,” said the boy. “All of us are sinners. Nothing is pure
in the eyes of God. Ye have already been shriveled up in the flame of
His wrath.”
Then he went on again, while the forest beneath him waved like a sea in
storm, although it was still and calm on the path around him. But he
heard something he had never heard before. The wood was full of voices.
Now it was like a whispering, now a gentle plaint, now a loud threat,
or a roaring curse. It laughed, and it moaned. It was as the voice of
hundreds. This unknown something that threatened and excited, that
whistled and hissed, a something that seemed to be, and yet was not,
almost drove him mad. He shivered in deadly terror, as he had shivered
before, the day that he lay on the floor of his cave, and heard his
pursuers rage over him through the forest. He seemed to hear again the
crashing of the branches, the heavy footsteps of the men, the clanking
of their arms, and their wild, bloodthirsty shouts.
It was not alone the storm that roared about him. There was something
else in it, something yet more terrible; there were voices he could not
understand, sounds as of a strange speech. He had heard many a mightier
storm than this roar through the rigging. But he had never heard the
wind playing on a harp of so many strings. Every tree seemed to have
its own voice, every ravine had another song, the loud echo from the
rocky wall shouted back in its own voice. He knew all these tones, but
there were other stranger noises with them. And it was these that awoke
a storm of voices within his own brain.
He had always been afraid when alone in the darkness of the wood. He
loved the open sea and the naked cliffs. Ghosts and spirits lurked here
in the shadows of the trees.
Then suddenly he knew who was speaking to him in the storm. It was God,
the Great Avenger, the Lord of all Justice. God pursued him because of
his comrade. God demanded that he should give up the murderer of the
monk to vengeance.
Tord began to speak aloud amid the storm. He told God what he wanted to
do, but that he could not do it. He had wanted to speak to the Giant
and to beg him make his peace with God. But he could not find the
words; embarrassment tied his tongue. “When I learned that the world is
ruled by a God of Justice,” he cried, “I knew that he was a lost man.
I have wept through the night for my friend. I know that God will find
him no matter where he may hide. But I could not speak to him; I could
not find the words because of my love for him. Do not ask that I shall
speak to him. Do not ask that the ocean shall rise to the height of the
mountains.”
He was silent again, and the deep voice of the storm, which he knew for
God’s voice, was silent also. There was a sudden pause in the wind, a
burst of sunshine, a sound as of oars, and the gentle rustling of stiff
reeds. These soft tones brought up the memory of Unn.
Then the storm began again, and he heard steps behind him, and a
breathless panting. He did not dare to turn this time, for he knew that
it was the white monk. He came from the banquet in Berg’s great hall,
covered with blood, and with an open ax cut in his forehead. And he
whispered: “Betray him. Give him up, that you may save his soul.”
Tord began to run. All this terror grew and grew in him, and he tried
to flee from it. But as he ran he heard behind him the deep, mighty
voice, which he knew was the voice of God. It was God himself pursuing
him, demanding that he should give up the murderer. Berg’s crime seemed
more horrible to him than ever it had seemed before. A weaponless man
had been murdered, a servant of God cut down by the steel. And the
murderer still dared to live. He dared to enjoy the light of the sun
and the fruits of the earth. Tord halted, clinched his fists, and
shrieked a threat. Then, like a madman, he ran from the forest, the
realm of terror, down into the valley.
* * * * *
When Tord entered the cave the outlaw sat upon the bench of stone,
sewing. The fire gave but a pale light, and the work did not seem to
progress satisfactorily. The boy’s heart swelled in pity. This superb
Giant seemed all at once so poor and so unhappy.
“What is the matter?” asked Berg. “Are you ill? Have you been afraid?”
Then for the first time Tord spoke of his fear. “It was so strange in
the forest. I heard the voices of spirits and I saw ghosts. I saw white
monks.”
“Boy!”
“They sang to me all the way up the slope to the hilltop. I ran from
them, but they ran after me, singing. Can I not lay the spirits? What
have I to do with them? There are others to whom their appearance is
more necessary.”
“Are you crazy to-night, Tord?”
Tord spoke without knowing what words he was using. His shyness had
left him all at once, speech seemed to flow from his lips. “They were
white monks, as pale as corpses. And their clothes are spotted with
blood. They draw their hoods down over their foreheads, but I can see
the wound shining there. The great, yawning, red wound from the ax.”
“Tord,” said the giant, pale and deeply grave, “the Saints alone know
why you see wounds of ax thrusts. I slew the monk with a knife.”
Tord stood before Berg trembling and wringing his hands. “They demand
you of me. They would compel me to betray you.”
“Who? The monks?”
“Yes, yes, the monks. They show me visions. They show me Unn. They show
me the open, sunny ocean. They show me the camps of the fishermen,
where there is dancing and merriment. I close my eyes, and yet I can
see it all. ‘Leave me,’ I say to them. ‘My friend has committed a
murder, but he is not bad. Leave me alone, and I will talk to him, that
he may repent and atone. He will see the wrong he has done, and he will
make a pilgrimage to the Holy Grave.’”
“And what do the monks answer?” asked Berg. “They do not want to pardon
me. They want to torture me and to burn me at the stake.”
“‘Shall I betray my best friend?’ I ask them. He is all that I have in
the world. He saved me from the bear when its claws were already at my
throat. We have suffered hunger and cold together. He covered me with
his own garments while I was ill. I have brought him wood and water,
I have watched over his sleep, and led his enemies off the trail. Why
should they think me a man who betrays his friend? My friend will go to
the priest himself, and will confess to him, and then together we will
seek absolution?”
Berg listened gravely, his keen eyes searching in Tord’s face. “Go to
the priest yourself, and tell him the truth. You must go back again
among mankind.”
“What does it help if I go alone? The spirits of the dead follow me
because of your sin. Do you not see how I tremble before you? You have
lifted your hand against God himself. What crime is like unto yours?
Why did you tell me about the just God? It is you yourself who compel
me to betray you. Spare me this sin. Go to the priest yourself.” He
sank down on his knees before Berg.
The murderer laid his hand on his head and looked at him. He measured
his sin by the terror of his comrade, and it grew and grew to monstrous
size. He saw himself in conflict with the Will that rules the world.
Remorse entered his heart.
“Wo unto me that I did what I did,” he said. “And is not this miserable
life, this life we lead here in terror, and in deprivation, is it not
atonement enough? Have I not lost home and fortune? Have I not lost
friends, and all the joys that make the life of a man? What more?”
As he heard him speak thus, Tord sprang up in wild terror. “You can
repent!” he cried. “My words move your heart? Oh, come with me, come at
once. Come, let us go while yet there is time.”
Berg the Giant sprang up also. “You--did it--?”
“Yes, yes, yes. I have betrayed you. But come quickly. Come now, now
that you can repent. We must escape. We will escape.”
The murderer stooped to the ground where the battle-ax of his fathers
lay at his feet. “Son of a thief,” he hissed. “I trusted you--I loved
you.”
But when Tord saw him stoop for the ax, he knew that it was his own
life that was in peril now. He tore his own ax from his girdle, and
thrust at Berg before the latter could rise. The Giant fell headlong to
the floor, the blood spurting out over the cave. Between the tangled
masses of hair Tord saw the great, yawning, red wound of an ax thrust.
Then the peasants stormed into the cave. They praised his deed and told
him that he should receive full pardon.
Tord looked down at his hands, as if he saw there the fetters that had
drawn him on to kill the man he loved. Like the chains of the Fenrir
wolf, they were woven out of empty air. They were woven out of the
green light amid the reeds, out of the play of shadows in the woods,
out of the song of the storm, out of the rustling of the leaves, out of
the magic vision of dreams. And he said aloud: “God is great.”
He crouched beside the body, spoke amid his tears to the dead, and
begged him to awake. The villagers made a litter of their spears, on
which to carry the body of the free peasant to his home. The dead man
aroused awe in their souls, they softened their voices in his presence.
When they raised him on to the bier, Tord stood up, shook the hair from
his eyes, and spoke in a voice that trembled:
“Tell Unn, for whose sake Berg the Giant became a murderer, that Tord
the fisherman, whose father plunders wrecks, and whose mother is a
witch--tell her that Tord slew Berg because Berg had taught him that
justice is the corner-stone of the world.”