The Story of Gösta Berling
The
Story of Gösta Berling
_Translated from the Swedish of_
Selma Lagerlöf
by
Pauline Bancroft Flach
[Illustration]
Boston
Little, Brown, and Company
1898
_Copyright, 1898_,
BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY.
_All rights reserved._
University Press:
JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A.
TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE
“The Story of Gösta Berling” was published in Sweden in 1894 and
immediately brought its author into prominence.
The tales are founded on actual occurrences and depict the life in the
province of Värmland at the beginning of this century. Värmland is a
lonely tract in the southern part of Sweden, and has retained many of
its old customs, while mining is the principal industry of its sparse
population. It consists of great stretches of forest, sloping down to
long, narrow lakes, connected by rivers.
Miss Lagerlöf has grown up in the midst of the wild legends of her
country, and, deeply imbued with their spirit, interprets them with a
living force all her own.
Her efforts have been materially encouraged by the Crown Prince of
Sweden, and there is every reason to expect that her genius has not
reached its fullest development.
STOCKHOLM, May, 1898.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
INTRODUCTION:
I THE PRIEST 1
II THE BEGGAR 12
PART I
I THE LANDSCAPE 29
II CHRISTMAS EVE 34
III CHRISTMAS DAY 49
IV GÖSTA BERLING, POET 63
V LA CACHUCHA 79
VI THE BALL AT EKEBY 84
VII THE OLD VEHICLES 106
VIII THE GREAT BEAR IN GURLITTA CLIFF 122
IX THE AUCTION AT BJÖRNE 138
X THE YOUNG COUNTESS 170
XI GHOST-STORIES 199
XII EBBA DOHNA’S STORY 214
XIII MAMSELLE MARIE 236
PART II
I COUSIN CHRISTOPHER 247
II THE PATHS OF LIFE 253
III PENITENCE 268
IV THE IRON FROM EKEBY 280
V LILLIECRONA’S HOME 291
VI THE WITCH OF DOVRE 298
VII MIDSUMMER 304
VIII MADAME MUSICA 309
IX THE BROBY CLERGYMAN 315
X PATRON JULIUS 321
XI THE PLASTER SAINTS 329
XII GOD’S WAYFARER 337
XIII THE CHURCHYARD 350
XIV OLD SONGS 355
XV DEATH, THE DELIVERER 367
XVI THE DROUGHT 374
XVII THE CHILD’S MOTHER 386
XVIII AMOR VINCIT OMNIA 396
XIX THE BROOM-GIRL 403
XX KEVENHÜLLER 417
XXI THE BROBY FAIR 429
XXII THE FOREST COTTAGE 438
XXIII MARGARETA CELSING 456
The Story of Gösta Berling
INTRODUCTION
I
THE PRIEST
At last the minister stood in the pulpit. The heads of the congregation
were lifted. Well, there he finally was. There would be no default this
Sunday, as on the last and on many other Sundays before.
The minister was young, tall, slender, and strikingly handsome. With a
helmet on his head, and girt with sword and shirt of mail, he could have
been cut in marble and taken for an ideal of Grecian beauty.
He had a poet’s deep eyes, and a general’s firm, rounded chin; everything
about him was beautiful, noble, full of feeling, glowing with genius and
spiritual life.
The people in the church felt themselves strangely subdued to see him
so. They were more used to see him come reeling out of the public house
with his good friends, Beerencreutz, the Colonel with the thick, white
moustaches, and the stalwart Captain Christian Bergh.
He had drunk so deeply that he had not been able to attend to his duties
for many weeks, and the congregation had been obliged to complain, first
to the dean, and then to the bishop and the chapters. Now the bishop had
come to the parish to make a strict inquiry. He sat in the choir with the
gold cross on his breast; the clergymen of the neighboring parishes sat
round about him.
There was no doubt that the minister’s conduct had gone beyond the
permissible limit. At that time, in the twenties, much in the matter of
drinking was overlooked, but this man had deserted his post for the sake
of drink, and now must lose it.
He stood in the pulpit and waited while the last verse of the psalm was
sung.
A feeling came over him as he stood there, that he had only enemies in
the church, enemies in all the seats. Among the gentry in the pews,
among the peasants in the farther seats, among the little boys in the
choir, he had enemies, none but enemies. It was an enemy who worked the
organ-bellows, an enemy who played. In the churchwardens’ pews he had
enemies. They all hated him, every one,—from the children in arms, who
were carried into the church, to the sexton, a formal and stiff old
soldier, who had been at Leipsic.
He longed to throw himself on his knees and to beg for mercy.
But a moment after, a dull rage came over him. He remembered well what he
had been when, a year ago, he first stood in this pulpit. He was then a
blameless man, and now he stood there and looked down on the man with the
gold cross on his breast, who had come to pass sentence on him.
While he read the introduction, wave after wave of blood surged up in his
face,—it was rage.
It was true enough that he had drunk, but who had a right to blame him
for that? Had they seen the vicarage where he had to live? Pine forests
grew dark and gloomy close up to his windows. The dampness dripped from
the black roofs and ran down the mouldy walls. Was not brandy needed to
keep the spirits up when rain and driving snow streamed in through the
broken panes, when the neglected earth would not give bread enough to
keep hunger away?
He thought that he was just such a minister as they deserved. For they
all drank. Why should he alone control himself? The man who had buried
his wife got drunk at the funeral feast; the father who had baptized his
child had a carouse afterwards. The congregation drank on the way back
from church, so that most of them were drunk when they reached home. A
drunken priest was good enough for them.
It was on his pastoral visits, when he drove in his thin cloak over miles
of frozen seas, where all the icy winds met, it was when his boat was
tossed about on these same seas in storm and pouring rain, it was when he
must climb out of his sledge in blinding snow to clear the way for his
horse through drifts high as houses, or when he waded through the forest
swamps,—it was then that he learned to love brandy.
The year had dragged itself out in heavy gloom. Peasant and master had
passed their days with their thoughts on the soil, but at evening their
spirits cast off their yokes, freed by brandy. Inspiration came, the
heart grew warm, life became glowing, the song rang out, roses shed their
perfume. The public-house bar-room seemed to him a tropical garden:
grapes and olives hung down over his head, marble statues shone among
dark leaves, songsters and poets wandered under the palms and plane-trees.
No, he, the priest, up there in the pulpit, knew that without brandy life
could not be borne in this end of the world; all his congregation knew
that, and yet they wished to judge him.
They wished to tear his vestments from him, because he had come drunken
into God’s house. Oh, all these people, had they believed, did they want
to believe, that they had any other God than brandy?
He had finished the exordium, and he kneeled to say the Lord’s Prayer.
There was a breathless silence in the church during the prayer. But
suddenly the minister with both hands caught hold of the ribbons which
held his surplice. It seemed to him as if the whole congregation, with
the bishop at the head, were stealing up the pulpit steps to take his
bands from him. He was kneeling and his head was turned away, but he
could feel how they were dragging, and he saw them so plainly, the
bishop and the deans, the clergymen, the churchwardens, the sexton, and
the whole assemblage in a long line, tearing and straining to get his
surplice off. And he could picture to himself how all these people who
were dragging so eagerly would fall over one another down the steps when
the bands gave way, and the whole row of them below, who had not got up
as far as his cape, but only to the skirts of his coat, would also fall.
He saw it all so plainly that he had to smile as he knelt, but at the
same time a cold sweat broke out on his forehead. The whole thing was too
horrible.
That he should now become a dishonored man for the sake of brandy. A
clergyman, dismissed! Was there anything on God’s earth more wretched?
He should be one of the beggars at the roadside, lie drunk at the edge of
a ditch, go dressed in rags, with vagrants for companions.
The prayer was ended. He should read his sermon. Then a thought came to
him and checked the words on his lips. He thought that it was the last
time he should stand in the pulpit and proclaim the glory of God.
For the last time—that took hold of him. He forgot the brandy and the
bishop. He thought that he must use the chance, and testify to the glory
of God.
He thought that the floor of the church with all his hearers sank deep,
deep down, and the roof was lifted off, so that he saw far into the sky.
He stood alone, quite alone in his pulpit; his spirit took its flight to
the heavens opened above him; his voice became strong and powerful, and
he proclaimed the glory of God.
He was inspired. He left what he had written; thoughts came to him like a
flock of tame doves. He felt, as if it were not he who spoke, but he felt
too that it was the best earth had to give, and that no one could reach
a greater height of brilliancy and splendor than he who stood there and
proclaimed the glory of God.
As long as the flame of inspiration burned in him he continued to speak,
but when it died out, and the roof sank down over the church, and the
floor came up again from far, far below, he bowed his head and wept, for
he thought that the best of life, for him, was now over.
After the service came the inspection and the vestry meeting. The bishop
asked if the congregation had any complaints to make against their
clergyman.
The minister was no longer angry and defiant as before the sermon. Now
he was ashamed and hung his head. Oh, all the miserable brandy stories,
which were coming now!
But none came. There was a deep silence about the long table in the
parish-hall.
The minister looked first at the sexton,—no, he was silent; then at the
churchwardens, then at the powerful peasants and mine-owners; they were
all silent. They sat with their lips pressed close together and looked
embarrassed down on the table.
“They are waiting for somebody to begin,” thought the minister.
One of the churchwardens cleared his throat.
“I think we’ve got a fine minister,” he said.
“Your Reverence has heard how he preaches,” interrupted the sexton.
The bishop spoke of repeated absences.
“The minister has the right to be ill, as well as another,” was the
peasants’ opinion.
The bishop hinted at their dissatisfaction with the minister’s mode of
life.
They defended him with one voice. He was so young, their minister; there
was nothing wrong with him. No; if he would only always preach as he had
done to-day they would not exchange him for the bishop himself.
There were no accusers; there could be no judge.
The minister felt how his heart swelled and how swiftly the blood flew
through his veins. Could it be that he was no longer among enemies; that
he had won them over when he had least thought of it; that he should
still be their priest?
After the inspection the bishop and the clergymen of the neighborhood and
the deans and the chief men of the parish dined at the vicarage. The wife
of one of the neighbors had taken charge of the dinner; for the minister
was not married. She had arranged it all so well that it made him open
his eyes, for the vicarage was not so dreadful. The long dining-table was
spread out under the pines and shone with its white cloth, with its blue
and white china, its glittering glass and folded napkins. Two birches
bent over the door, the floor of the entry was strewn with rushes, a
wreath of flowers hung from the rafters, there were flowers in all the
rooms; the mouldy smell was gone, and the green window-panes shone
bravely in the sunshine.
He was glad to the bottom of his heart, the minister; he thought that he
would never drink again.
There was not one who was not glad at that dinner-table. Those who had
been generous and had forgiven were glad, and the priests in authority
were glad because they had escaped a scandal.
The good bishop raised his glass and said that he had started on this
journey with a heavy heart, for he had heard many evil rumors. He had
gone forth to meet Saul, but lo, Saul was already changed to a Paul, who
should accomplish more than any of them. And the worthy man spoke of the
rich gifts which their young brother possessed, and praised them. Not
that he should be proud, but that he should strain every nerve and keep
a close watch over himself, as he must do who bears an exceedingly heavy
and costly burden on his shoulders.
The minister was not drunk at that dinner, but he was intoxicated. All
this great unlooked-for happiness went to his head. Heaven had let the
flame of inspiration burn in him, and these people had given him their
love. His blood was at fever heat, and at raging speed rushed through
his veins still when the evening came and his guests departed. Far into
the night he sat awake in his room, and let the night air stream in
through the open window to cool this fever of happiness, this pleasant
restlessness which would not let him sleep.
He heard a voice.
“Are you awake?”
A man came over the lawn up to the window. The minister looked out and
recognized Captain Christian Bergh, one of his trusty boon-companions. He
was a wayfarer without house or land, this Captain Bergh, and a giant in
stature and strength; big was he as Goliath, malicious and stupid as a
mountain goblin.
“Of course I am up, Captain Christian,” answered the minister. “Do you
think I could sleep to-night?”
And hear now what this Captain Bergh says to him! The giant had guessed,
he had understood, that the minister would now be afraid to drink. He
would never have any peace, thought Captain Christian; for those priests
from Karlstad, who had been here once, could come again and take his
surplice from him if he drank.
But now Captain Christian had put his heavy hand to the good work; now he
had arranged that those priests never should come again, neither they nor
the bishop. Henceforth the minister and his friends could drink as much
as they liked at the vicarage.
Hear what a deed he had done, he, Christian Bergh, the mighty Captain.
When the bishop and the two deans had climbed into their closed carriage,
and the doors had been shut tight on them, then he had mounted on the box
and driven them ten miles or so in the light summer night.
And then had Christian Bergh taught the reverend gentlemen how loose life
sits in the human body. He had let the horses run at the maddest pace.
That was because they would not let an honorable man get drunk in peace.
Do you suppose he followed the road with them; do you believe he saved
them from jolts? He drove over ditches and ploughed fields; he drove in
a dizzy gallop down the hills; he drove along the water’s edge, till the
waves covered the wheels; he almost stuck in a bog; he drove down over
bare rocks, where the horses slid with legs held stiff.
And all the time the bishop and the priests sat with blanched faces
behind the leather curtains and murmured prayers. It was the worst
journey they had ever made.
And think how they must have looked when they came to Rissäter’s inn,
living, but shaken like shot in a leather pouch.
“What does this mean, Captain Christian?” says the bishop, as he opens
the door for them.
“It means that you shall think twice, bishop, before you make a new
journey of inspection to Gösta Berling,” says Captain Christian; and he
had thought that sentence well out beforehand, so as not to get it wrong.
“Tell Gösta Berling,” says the bishop, “that to him neither I nor any
other bishop will ever come again.”
This exploit the mighty Captain Christian stands and relates at the open
window in the summer night. For Captain Christian has only just left the
horses at the inn, and has come directly to the minister with his news.
“Now you can be at rest, comrade,” he says.
Ah, Captain Christian, the clergymen sat with pale faces behind the
leather curtains, but the priest at the window looks in the bright summer
night far, far paler. Ah, Captain Christian!
The minister raised his arm and measured a terrible blow at the giant’s
coarse, stupid face, but checked himself. He shut the window with a bang,
and stood in the middle of the room, shaking his clenched fist on high.
He in whom the fire of inspiration had flamed, he who had been able to
proclaim the glory of God, stood there and thought that God had made a
fool of him.
Would not the bishop believe that Captain Christian had been sent by the
minister? Would he not believe that he had dissembled and lied the whole
day? Now he would investigate everything about him in earnest; now he
would suspend him and dismiss him.
When the dawn broke the minister was far from his home. He did not care
to stay and defend himself. God had mocked at him. God would not help
him. He knew that he would be dismissed. God would have it. He might as
well go at once.
All this happened in the beginning of the twenties in a far-a-way parish
in Western Värmland.
It was the first misfortune which befell Gösta Berling; it was not the
last.
For colts who cannot bear spur or whips find life hard. For every pain
which comes to them they bolt down wild ways to yawning chasms. As soon
as the road is stony and the way hard they know no other remedy than to
cast off their load and rush away in frenzy.
II
THE BEGGAR
One cold December day a beggar came wandering up the slopes of Broby. He
was dressed in the most miserable rags, and his shoes were so worn that
the cold snow wet his feet.
Löfven is a long, narrow lake in Värmland, intersected in several places
by long narrow sounds. In the north it stretches up to the Finn forests,
in the south down to the lake Väner. There are many parishes along its
shores, but the parish of Bro is the largest and richest. It takes up a
large part of the lake’s shores both on the east and west sides, but on
the west side are the largest estates, such as Ekeby and Björne, known
far and wide for wealth and beauty, and Broby, with its large village and
inn, courthouse, sheriff-quarters, vicarage, and market-place.
Broby lies on a steep slope. The beggar had come past the inn, which lies
at the foot of the hill, and was struggling up towards the parsonage,
which lies at the top.
A little girl went in front of him up the hill; she dragged a sledge
laden with a bag of meal. The beggar caught up with the child and began
to talk to her.
“A little horse for such a heavy load,” he said.
The child turned and looked at him. She was a little creature about
twelve years old, with sharp, suspicious eyes, and lips pressed together.
“Would to God the horse was smaller and the load larger; it might last
longer,” answered the girl.
“Is it then your own food you are dragging home?”
“By God’s grace it is; I have to get my own food, although I am so
little.”
The beggar seized the sled rope to drag it up.
The girl turned and looked at him.
“You needn’t think that you will get anything for this,” she said.
The beggar laughed.
“You must be the daughter of the Broby clergyman.”
“Yes, yes, I am indeed. Many have poorer fathers, but none have worse.
That’s the Lord’s truth, although it’s a shame that his own child should
have to say it.”
“I hear he is mean and ill-natured, your father.”
“Mean he is, and ill-natured he is, but they say his daughter will be
worse if she lives so long; that’s what people say.”
“I fancy people are right. What I would like to know is, where you found
this meal-bag.”
“It makes no difference if I tell you. I took the grain out of father’s
store-house this morning, and now I have been to the mill.”
“May he not see you when you come dragging it behind you?”
“You have left school too early. Father is away on his parish visits,
can’t you see?”
“Somebody is driving up the hill behind us; I hear the creaking of the
runners. Think if it were he who is coming!”
The girl listened and peered down, then she burst into tears.
“It is father,” she sobbed. “He will kill me! He will kill me!”
“Yes, good advice is now precious, and prompt advice better than silver
and gold,” said the beggar.
“Look here,” said the child, “you can help me. Take the rope and drag the
sledge; then father will believe it is yours.”
“What shall I do with it afterwards?” asked the beggar, and put the rope
round his shoulders.
“Take it where you like for the moment, but come up to the parsonage with
it when it is dark. I shall be looking out for you. You are to come with
the bag and the sledge, you understand.”
“I shall try.”
“God help you if you don’t come!” called the girl, while she ran,
hurrying to get home before her father.
The beggar turned the sledge with a heavy heart and dragged it down to
the inn.
The poor fellow had had his dream, as he went in the snow with half-naked
feet. He had thought of the great woods north of lake Löfven, of the
great Finn forests.
Here in the parish of Bro, where he was now wandering along the sound
which connects the upper and lower Löfven,—in this rich and smiling
country, where one estate joins another, factory lies near factory—here
all the roads seemed to him too heavy, the rooms too small, the beds too
hard. Here he longed for the peace of the great, eternal forests.
Here he heard the blows echoing in all the barns as they threshed out
the grain. Loads of timber and charcoal-vans kept coming down from the
inexhaustible forests. Endless loads of metal followed the deep ruts
which the hundreds gone before had cut. Here he saw sleighs filled with
travellers speed from house to house, and it seemed to him as if pleasure
held the reins, and beauty and love stood on the runners. Oh, how he
longed for the peace of the forest.
There the trees rise straight and pillarlike from the even ground, there
the snow rests in heavy layers on the motionless pines, there the wind
is powerless and only plays softly in the topmost leaves, there he would
wander deeper and still farther in, until at last his strength would fail
him, and he would drop under the great trees, dying of hunger and cold.
He longed for the great murmuring grave above the Löfven, where he would
be overcome by the powers of annihilation, where at last hunger, cold,
fatigue, and brandy should succeed in destroying his poor body, which had
endured everything.
He came down to the inn to await the evening. He went into the bar-room
and threw himself down on a bench by the door, dreaming of the eternal
forests.
The innkeeper’s wife felt sorry for him and gave him a glass of brandy.
She even gave him another, he implored her so eagerly.
But more she would not give him, and the beggar was in despair. He must
have more of the strong, sweet brandy. He must once again feel his heart
dance in his body and his thoughts flame up in intoxication. Oh, that
sweet spirit of the corn!
The summer sun, the song of the birds, perfume and beauty floated in
its white wave. Once more, before he disappears into the night and the
darkness, let him drink sunshine and happiness.
So he bartered first the meal, then the meal-sack, and last the sledge,
for brandy. On it he got thoroughly drunk, and slept the greater part of
the afternoon on a bench in the bar-room.
When he awoke he understood that there was left for him only one thing to
do. Since his miserable body had taken possession of his soul, since he
had been capable of drinking up what a child had confided to him, since
he was a disgrace to the earth, he must free it of the burden of such
wretchedness. He must give his soul its liberty, let it go to its God.
He lay on the bench in the bar-room and passed sentence on himself:
“Gösta Berling, dismissed priest, accused of having drunk up the food
of a hungry child, is condemned to death. What death? Death in the
snow-drifts.”
He seized his cap and reeled out. He was neither quite awake nor quite
sober. He wept in pity for himself, for his poor, soiled soul, which he
must set free.
He did not go far, and did not turn from the road. At the very roadside
lay a deep drift, and there he threw himself down to die. He closed his
eyes and tried to sleep.
No one knows how long he lay there; but there was still life in him when
the daughter of the minister of Broby came running along the road with a
lantern in her hand, and found him in the drift by the roadside. She had
stood for hours and waited for him; now she had run down Broby hill to
look for him.
She recognized him instantly, and she began to shake him and to scream
with all her might to get him awake.
She must know what he had done with her meal-bag.
She must call him back to life, at least for so long a time that he could
tell her what had become of her sledge and her meal-bag. Her father would
kill her if she had lost his sledge. She bit the beggar’s finger and
scratched his face, and at the same time she screamed madly.
Then some one came driving along the road.
“Who the devil is screaming so?” asked a harsh voice.
“I want to know what this fellow has done with my meal-bag and my
sledge,” sobbed the child, and beat with clenched fists on the beggar’s
breast.
“Are you clawing a frozen man? Away with you, wild-cat!”
The traveller was a large and coarse woman. She got out of the sleigh and
came over to the drift. She took the child by the back of the neck and
threw her on one side. Then she leaned over, thrust her arms under the
beggar’s body, and lifted him up. Then she carried him to the sleigh and
laid him in it.
“Come with me to the inn, wild-cat,” she called to the child, “that we
may hear what you know of all this.”
* * * * *
An hour later the beggar sat on a chair by the door in the best room of
the inn, and in front of him stood the powerful woman who had rescued him
from the drift.
Just as Gösta Berling now saw her, on her way home from the charcoal
kilns, with sooty hands, and a clay-pipe in her mouth, dressed in a
short, unlined sheepskin jacket and striped homespun skirt, with tarred
shoes on her feet and a sheath-knife in her bosom, as he saw her with
gray hair combed back from an old, beautiful face, so had he heard her
described a thousand times, and he knew that he had come across the
far-famed major’s wife of Ekeby.
She was the most influential woman in all Värmland, mistress of seven
iron-works, accustomed to command and to be obeyed; and he was only a
poor, condemned man, stripped of everything, knowing that every road was
too heavy for him, every room too crowded. His body shook with terror,
while her glance rested on him.
She stood silent and looked at the human wretchedness before her, the
red, swollen hands, the emaciated form, and the splendid head, which even
in its ruin and neglect shone in wild beauty.
“You are Gösta Berling, the mad priest?” she said, peering at him.
The beggar sat motionless.
“I am the mistress of Ekeby.”
A shudder passed over the beggar’s body. He clasped his hands and raised
his eyes with a longing glance. What would she do with him? Would she
force him to live? He shook before her strength. And yet he had so nearly
reached the peace of the eternal forests.
She began the struggle by telling him the minister’s daughter had got her
sledge and her meal-sack again, and that she, the major’s wife, had a
shelter for him as for so many other homeless wretches in the bachelor’s
wing at Ekeby.
She offered him a life of idleness and pleasure, but he answered he must
die.
Then she struck the table with her clenched fist and let him hear what
she thought of him.
“So you want to die, that’s what you want. That would not surprise me,
if you were alive. Look, such a wasted body and such powerless limbs and
such dull eyes, and you think that there is something left of you to
die. Do you think that you have to lie stiff and stark with a coffin-lid
nailed down over you to be dead? Don’t you believe that I stand here and
see how dead you are, Gösta Berling?
“I see that you have a skull for a head, and it seems to me as if the
worms were creeping out of the sockets of your eyes. Do you not feel that
your mouth is full of dust? Do you not hear how your bones rattle when
you move?
“You have drowned yourself in brandy, Gösta Berling, and you are dead.
“That which now moves in you is only death spasms, and you will not allow
them to live, if you call that life. It is just as if you grudged the
dead a dance over the graves in the starlight.
“Are you ashamed that you were dismissed, since you wish to die now? It
would have been more to your honor had you made use of your gifts and
been of some use on God’s green earth, I tell you. Why did you not come
directly to me? I should have arranged everything for you. Yes, now you
expect much glory from being wrapped in a winding-sheet and laid on
saw-dust and called a beautiful corpse.”
The beggar sat calm, almost smiling, while she thundered out her angry
words. There was no danger, he rejoiced, no danger. The eternal forests
wait, and she has no power to turn thy soul from them.
But the major’s wife was silent and walked a couple of times up and down
the room; then she took a seat before the fire, put her feet on the
fender, and leaned her elbows on her knees.
“Thousand devils!” she said, and laughed softly to herself. “It is
truer, what I am saying, than I myself thought. Don’t you believe, Gösta
Berling, that most of the people in this world are dead or half-dead? Do
you think that I am alive? No! No, indeed!
“Yes, look at me! I am the mistress of Ekeby, and I am the most powerful
in Värmland. If I wave one finger the governor comes, if I wave with
two the bishop comes, and if I wave with three all the chapter and the
aldermen and mine-owners in Värmland dance to my music in Karlstad’s
market-place. A thousand devils! Boy, I tell you that I am only a
dressed-up corpse. God knows how little life there is in me.”
The beggar leaned forward on his chair and listened with strained
attention. The old woman sat and rocked before the fire. She did not look
at him while she talked.
“Don’t you know,” she continued, “that if I were a living being, and saw
you sitting there, wretched and deplorable with suicidal thoughts, don’t
you believe that I should take them out of you in a second? I should have
tears for you and prayers, which would turn you upside down, and I should
save your soul; but now I am dead.
“Have you heard that I once was the beautiful Margareta Celsing? That was
not yesterday, but I can still sit and weep my old eyes red for her. Why
shall Margareta Celsing be dead, and Margareta Samzelius live? Why shall
the major’s wife at Ekeby live?—tell me that, Gösta Berling.
“Do you know what Margareta Celsing was like? She was slender and
delicate and modest and innocent, Gösta Berling. She was one over whose
grave angels weep.
“She knew nothing of evil, no one had ever given her pain, she was good
to all. And she was beautiful, really beautiful.
“There was a man, his name was Altringer. God knows how he happened to be
travelling up there in Älfdal wildernesses, where her parents had their
iron-works. Margareta Celsing saw him; he was a handsome man, and she
loved him.
“But he was poor, and they agreed to wait for one another five years, as
it is in the legend. When three years had passed another suitor came. He
was ugly and bad, but her parents believed that he was rich, and they
forced Margareta Celsing, by fair means and foul, by blows and hard
words, to take him for her husband. And that day, you see, Margareta
Celsing died.
“After that there was no Margareta Celsing, only Major Samzelius’s wife,
and she was not good nor modest; she believed in much evil and never
thought of the good.
“You know well enough what happened afterwards. We lived at Sjö by the
Lake Löfven, the major and I. But he was not rich, as people had said. I
often had hard days.
“Then Altringer came again, and now he was rich. He became master of
Ekeby, which lies next to Sjö; he made himself master of six other
estates by Lake Löfven. He was able, thrifty; he was a man of mark.
“He helped us in our poverty; we drove in his carriages; he sent food
to our kitchen, wine to our cellar. He filled my life with feasting and
pleasure. The major went off to the wars, but what did we care for that?
One day I was a guest at Ekeby, the next he came to Sjö. Oh, it was like
a long dance of delight on Löfven’s shores.
“But there was evil talk of Altringer and me. If Margareta Celsing had
been living, it would have given her much pain, but it made no difference
to me. But as yet I did not understand that it was because I was dead
that I had no feeling.
“At last the tales of us reached my father and mother, as they went among
the charcoal kilns up in Älfdal’s forest. My mother did not stop to
think; she travelled hither to talk to me.
“One day, when the major was away and I sat dining with Altringer and
several others, she arrived. I saw her come into the room, but I could
not feel that she was my mother, Gösta Berling. I greeted her as a
stranger, and invited her to sit down at my table and take part in the
meal.
“She wished to talk with me, as if I had been her daughter, but I said to
her that she was mistaken, that my parents were dead, they had both died
on my wedding day.
“Then she agreed to the comedy. She was sixty years old; a hundred and
twenty miles had she driven in three days. Now she sat without ceremony
at the dinner-table and ate her food; she was a strong and capable woman.
“She said that it was very sad that I had had such a loss just on that
day.
“‘The saddest thing was,’ I said, ‘that my parents did not die a day
sooner; then the wedding would never have taken place.’
“‘Is not the gracious lady pleased with her marriage?’ she then asked.
“‘Oh, yes,’ said I, ‘I am pleased. I shall always be pleased to obey my
dear parents’ wish!’
“She asked if it had been my parents’ wish that I should heap shame upon
myself and them and deceive my husband. I did my parents little honor by
making myself a byword in every man’s mouth.
“‘They must lie as they have made their bed,’ I answered her. And
moreover I wished her to understand, that I did not intend to allow any
one to calumniate my parents’ daughter.
“We ate, we two. The men about us sat silent and could not lift knife nor
fork.
“She stayed a day to rest, then she went. But all the time I saw her, I
could not understand that she was my mother. I only knew that my mother
was dead.
“When she was ready to leave, Gösta Berling, and I stood beside her on
the steps, and the carriage was before the door, she said to me:—
“‘Twenty-four hours have I been here, without your greeting me as your
mother. By lonely roads I came here, a hundred and twenty miles in
three days. And for shame for you my body is trembling, as if it had
been beaten with rods. May you be disowned, as I have been disowned,
repudiated as I have been repudiated! May the highway be your home, the
hay-stack your bed, the charcoal-kiln your stove! May shame and dishonor
be your reward; may others strike you, as I strike you!’
“And she gave me a heavy blow on the cheek.
“But I lifted her up, carried her down the steps, and put her in her
carriage.
“‘Who are you, that you curse me?’ I asked; ‘who are you that you strike
me? That I will suffer from no one.’
“And I gave her the blow again.
“The carriage drove away, but then, at that moment, Gösta Berling, I knew
that Margareta Celsing was dead.
“She was good and innocent; she knew no evil. Angels had wept at her
grave. If she had lived, she would not have struck her mother.”
The beggar by the door had listened, and the words for a moment had
drowned the sound of the eternal forests’ alluring murmur. For see, this
great lady, she made herself his equal in sin, his sister in perdition,
to give him courage to live. For he should learn that sorrow and
wrong-doing weighed down other heads than his. He rose and went over to
the major’s wife.
“Will you live now? Gösta Berling?” she asked with a voice which broke
with tears. “Why should you die? You could have been such a good priest,
but it was never Gösta Berling whom you drowned in brandy, he as
gleamingly innocent-white as that Margareta Celsing I suffocated in hate.
Will you live?”
Gösta fell on his knees before her.
“Forgive me,” he said, “I cannot.”
“I am an old woman, hardened by much sorrow,” answered the major’s wife,
“and I sit here and give myself as a prize to a beggar, whom I have found
half-frozen in a snow-drift by the roadside. It serves me right. Let him
go and kill himself; then at least he won’t be able to tell of my folly.”
“I am no suicide, I am condemned to die. Do not make the struggle too
hard for me! I may not live. My body has taken possession of my soul,
therefore I must let it escape and go to God.”
“And so you believe you will get there?”
“Farewell, and thank you!”
“Farewell, Gösta Berling.”
The beggar rose and walked with hanging head and dragging step to the
door. This woman made the way up to the great forests heavy for him.
When he came to the door, he had to look back. Then he met her glance, as
she sat still and looked after him. He had never seen such a change in
any face, and he stood and stared at her. She, who had just been angry
and threatening, sat transfigured, and her eyes shone with a pitying,
compassionate love.
There was something in him, in his own wild heart, which burst before
that glance; he leaned his forehead against the door-post, stretched his
arms up over his head, and wept as if his heart would break.
The major’s wife tossed her clay-pipe into the fire and came over to
Gösta. Her movements were as tender as a mother’s.
“There, there, my boy!”
And she got him down beside her on the bench by the door, so that he wept
with his head on her knees.
“Will you still die?”
Then he wished to rush away. She had to hold him back by force.
“Now I tell you that you may do as you please. But I promise you that, if
you will live, I will take to me the daughter of the Broby minister and
make a human being of her, so that she can thank her God that you stole
her meal. Now will you?”
He raised his head and looked her right in the eyes.
“Do you mean it?”
“I do, Gösta Berling.”
Then he wrung his hands in anguish. He saw before him the peering eyes,
the compressed lips, the wasted little hands. This young creature would
get protection and care, and the marks of degradation be effaced from
her body, anger from her soul. Now the way up to the eternal forests was
closed to him.
“I shall not kill myself as long as she is under your care,” he said. “I
knew well enough that you would force me to live. I felt that you were
stronger than I.”
“Gösta Berling,” she said solemnly, “I have fought for you as for myself.
I said to God: ‘If there is anything of Margareta Celsing living in me,
let her come forward and show herself, so that this man may not go and
kill himself.’ And He granted it, and you saw her, and therefore you
could not go. And she whispered to me that for that poor child’s sake you
would give up your plan of dying. Ah, you fly, you wild birds, but our
Lord knows the net which will catch you.”
“He is a great and wonderful God,” said Gösta Berling. “He has mocked me
and cast me out, but He will not let me die. May His will be done!”
From that day Gösta Berling became a guest at Ekeby. Twice he tried to
leave and make himself a way to live by his own work. The first time the
major’s wife gave him a cottage near Ekeby; he moved thither and meant to
live as a laborer. This succeeded for a while, but he soon wearied of the
loneliness and the daily labor, and again returned as a guest. There was
another time, when he became tutor at Borg for Count Henry Dohna. During
this time he fell in love with the young Ebba Dohna, the count’s sister;
but when she died, just as he thought he had nearly won her, he gave up
every thought of being anything but guest at Ekeby. It seemed to him that
for a dismissed priest all ways to make amends were closed.
PART I
CHAPTER I
THE LANDSCAPE
I must now describe the long lake, the rich plains and the blue
mountains, since they were the scene where Gösta Berling and the other
knights of Ekeby passed their joyous existence.
The lake has its sources far up in the north, and it is a perfect country
for a lake. The forest and the mountains never cease to collect water for
it; rivulets and brooks stream into it the whole year round. It has fine
white sand to stretch itself over, headlands and islands to mirror and to
look at, river sprites and sea nymphs have free play room there, and it
quickly grows large and beautiful. There, in the north, it is smiling and
friendly; one needs but to see it on a summer morning, when it lies half
awake under a veil of mist, to perceive how gay it is. It plays first for
a while, creeps softly, softly, out of its light covering, so magically
beautiful that one can hardly recognize it; but then it casts from it,
suddenly, the whole covering, and lies there bare and uncovered and rosy,
shining in the morning light.
But the lake is not content with this life of play; it draws itself
together to a narrow strait, breaks its way out through the sand-hills to
the south, and seeks out a new kingdom for itself. And such a one it also
finds; it gets larger and more powerful, has bottomless depths to fill,
and a busy landscape to adorn. And now its water is darker, its shores
less varying, its winds sharper, its whole character more severe. It has
become a stately and magnificent lake. Many are the ships and the rafts
of timber which pass there; late in the year it finds time to take its
winter rest, rarely before Christmas. Often is it in peevish mood, when
it grows white with wrath and drags down sailing-boats; but it can also
lie in a dreamy calm and reflect the heavens.
But still farther out into the world will the lake go, although the
mountains become bolder and space narrower; still farther down it comes,
so that it once again must creep as a narrow strait between sand-bound
shores. Then it broadens out for the third time, but no longer with the
same beauty and might.
The shores sink down and become tame, gentler winds blow, the lake takes
its winter rest early. It is still beautiful, but it has lost youth’s
giddiness and manhood’s strength—it is now a lake like any other. With
two arms it gropes after a way to Lake Vänern, and when that is found it
throws itself with the feebleness of old age over the slopes and goes
with a last thundering leap to rest.
The plain is as long as the lake; but it has no easy time to find a place
between sea and mountain, all the way from the valley of the basin at the
lake’s northern end, where it first dares to spread itself out, till it
lays itself to easy rest by the Vänern’s shore. There is no doubt that
the plain would rather follow the shore of the lake, long as it is, but
the mountains give it no peace. The mountains are mighty granite walls,
covered with woods, full of cliffs difficult to cross, rich in moss and
lichen,—in those old days the home of many wild things.
On the far-stretching ridges one often comes upon a wet swamp or a pool
with dark water. Here and there is a charcoal kiln or an open patch where
timber and wood have been cut, or a burnt clearing, and these all bear
witness that there is work going on on the mountains; but as a rule they
lie in careless peace and amuse themselves with watching the lights and
shadows play over their slopes.
And with these mountains the plain, which is peaceful and rich, and loves
work, wages a perpetual war, in a friendly spirit, however.
“It is quite enough,” says the plain to the mountains; “if you set up
your walls about me, that is safety enough for me.”
But the mountains will not listen. They send out long rows of hills and
barren table-lands way down to the lake. They raise great look-out towers
on every promontory, and leave the shores of the lake so seldom that the
plain can but rarely stretch itself out by the soft, broad sands. But it
does not help to complain.
“You ought to be glad that we stand here,” the mountains say. “Think of
that time before Christmas, when the icy fogs, day after day, rolled up
from the Löfven. We do you good service.”
The plain complains that it has no space and an ugly view.
“You are so stupid,” answer the mountains; “if you could only feel how it
is blowing down here by the lake. One needs at least a granite back and a
fir-tree jacket to withstand it. And, besides, you can be glad to have us
to look at.”
Yes, looking at the mountains, that is just what the plain is doing. It
knows so well all the wonderful shiftings of light and shade, which pass
over them. It knows how they sink down in the noon-day heat towards the
horizon, low and a dim light-blue, and in the morning or evening light
raise their venerable heights, clear blue as the sky at noon.
Sometimes the light falls so sharply over them that they look green or
dark-blue, and every separate fir-tree, each path and cleft, is visible
miles away.
There are places where the mountains draw back and allow the plain to
come forward and gaze at the lake. But when it sees the lake in its
anger, hissing and spitting like a wild-cat, or sees it covered with
that cold mist which happens when the sea-sprite is busy with brewing or
washing, then it agrees that the mountains were right, and draws back to
its narrow prison again.
Men have cultivated the beautiful plain time out of mind, and have built
much there. Wherever a stream in white foaming falls throws itself down
the slope, rose up factories and mills. On the bright, open places, where
the plain came down to the lake, churches and vicarages were built; but
on the edges of the valley, half-way up the slope, on stony grounds,
where grain would not grow, lie farm-houses and officers’ quarters, and
here and there a manor.
Still, in the twenties, this district was not nearly so much cultivated
as now. Many were the woods and lakes and swamps which now can be tilled.
There were not so many people either, and they earned their living partly
by carting and day labor at the many factories, partly by working at
neighboring places; agriculture could not feed them. At that time they
went dressed in homespun, ate oatcakes, and were satisfied with a wage of
ten cents a day. Many were in great want; but life was often made easier
for them by a light and glad temper, and by an inborn handiness and
capability.
And all those three, the long lake, the rich plain, and the blue
mountains, made the most beautiful scenery, and still do, just as the
people are still to this day, strong, brave and intelligent. Great
progress has been made, however, in prosperity and culture.
May everything go well with those who live far away by the long lake and
the blue mountains! I shall now recall some of their memories.
CHAPTER II
CHRISTMAS EVE
Sintram is the name of the wicked master of the works at Fors, with his
clumsy ape-body, and his long arms, with his bald head and ugly, grinning
face,—he whose delight is to make mischief.
Sintram it is who takes only vagrants and bullies for workmen, and has
only quarrelsome, lying maids in his service; he who excites dogs to
madness by sticking pins in their noses, and lives happiest among evil
people and fierce beasts.
It is Sintram whose greatest pleasure is to dress himself up in the foul
fiend’s likeness, with horns, and tail, and cloven hoof, and hairy body,
and suddenly appearing from dark corners, from behind the stove or the
wood-pile, to frighten timid children and superstitious women.
It is Sintram who delights to change old friendship to new hate, and to
poison the heart with lies.
Sintram is his name—and one day he came to Ekeby.
Drag the great wood-sledge into the smithy, put it in the middle of the
floor, and lay a cart-bottom on the frame! There we have a table. Hurrah
for the table; the table is ready!
Come now with chairs, with everything which will serve for a seat!
Come with three-legged stools and empty boxes! Come with ragged old
arm-chairs without any backs, and push up the runnerless sleigh and the
old coach! Ha, ha, ha, up with the old coach; it shall be the speaker’s
chair!
Just look; one wheel gone, and the whole bottom out! Only the coach-box
is left. The cushion is thin and worn, its moss stuffing coming through,
the leather is red with age. High as a house is the old wreck. Prop it
up, prop it up, or down it will come!
Hurrah! Hurrah! It is Christmas eve at Ekeby.
Behind the broad bed’s silken curtains sleep the major and the major’s
wife, sleep and believe that the bachelors’ wing sleeps. The men-servants
and maids can sleep, heavy with feasting and the bitter Christmas ale;
but not their masters in the bachelors’ wing. How can any one think that
the bachelors’ wing sleeps?
Sleeps, sleeps (oh, child of man, sleeps!), when the pensioners are
awake. The long tongs stand upright on the floor, with tallow candles in
their claws. From the mammoth kettle of shining copper flames the blue
fire of the burning brandy, high up to the dark roof. Beerencreutz’s
horn-lantern hangs on the forge-hammer. The yellow punch glows in the
bowl like a bright sun. The pensioners are celebrating Christmas eve in
the smithy.
There is mirth and bustle. Fancy, if the major’s wife should see them!
What then? Probably she would sit down with them and empty a bumper. She
is a doughty woman; she’s not afraid of a thundering drinking-song or to
take a hand at _kille_.[1] The richest woman in Värmland, as bold as a
man, proud as a queen. Songs she loves, and sounding fiddles, and the
hunting-horn. She likes wine and games of cards, and tables surrounded
by merry guests are her delight. She likes to see the larder emptied, to
have dancing and merry-making in chamber and hall, and the bachelors’
wing full of pensioners.
See them round about the bowl! Twelve are they, twelve men. Not
butterflies nor dandies, but men whose fame will not soon die out in
Värmland; brave men and strong.
Not dried-up parchment, nor close-fisted money-bags; poor men, without a
care, gentlemen the whole day long.
No mother’s darlings, no sleepy masters on their own estates. Wayfaring
men, cheerful men, knights of a hundred adventures.
Now for many years the bachelors’ wing has stood empty. Ekeby is no
longer the chosen refuge of homeless gentlemen. Pensioned officers and
impoverished noblemen no longer drive about Värmland in shaky one-horse
vehicles. But let the dead live, let them rise up in their glad,
careless, eternal youth!
All these notorious men could play on one or several instruments. All
were as full of wit and humor and conceits and songs as an ant-hill is
full of ants; but each one had his particular great quality, his much
esteemed merit which distinguished him from the others.
First of all who sit about the bowl will I name Beerencreutz, the colonel
with the great white moustaches, player of cards, singer of songs; and
next to him, his friend and brother in arms, the silent major, the great
bear hunter, Anders Fuchs; and, as the third in order, little Ruster,
the drummer, who had been for many years the colonel’s servant, but had
won the rank of pensioner through his skill in brewing punch and his
knowledge of thorough-bass. Then may be mentioned the old ensign, Rutger
von Örneclou, lady-killer, dressed in stock and wig and ruffles, and
painted like a woman,—he was one of the most important pensioners; also
Christian Bergh, the mighty captain, who was a stalwart hero, but as
easy to outwit as a giant in the fairy story. In these two men’s company
one often saw the little, round Master Julius, witty, merry, and gifted,
speaker, painter, songster, and storyteller. He often had his joke with
the gout-crippled ensign and the dull giant.
There was also the big German Kevenhüller, inventor of the automatic
carriage and the flying-machine, he whose name still echoes in the
murmuring forests,—a nobleman by birth and in appearance, with great
curled moustaches, a pointed beard, aquiline nose, and narrow, squinting
eyes in a net of intersecting wrinkles. There sat the great warrior
cousin, Christopher, who never went outside the walls of the bachelors’
wing unless there was to be a bear-hunt or some foolhardy adventure; and
beside him Uncle Eberhard, the philosopher, who had not come to Ekeby for
pleasure and play, but in order to be able, undisturbed by concern for
daily bread, to complete his great work in the science of sciences.
Last of all, and the best, the gentle Löwenborg, who sought the good in
the world, and understood little of its ways, and Lilliecrona, the great
musician, who had a good home, and was always longing to be there, but
still remained at Ekeby, for his soul needed riches and variety to be
able to bear life.
These eleven men had all left youth behind them, and several were in old
age; but in the midst of them was one who was not more than thirty years
old, and still possessed the full, undiminished strength of his mind and
body. It was Gösta Berling, the Knight of Knights, who alone in himself
was a better speaker, singer, musician, hunter, drinking companion and
card-player than all of the others together. He possessed all gifts. What
a man the major’s wife had made of him!
Look at him now in the speaker’s chair! The darkness sinks from the black
roof in great festoons over him. His blond head shines through it like a
young god’s. Slender, beautiful, eager for adventure, he stands there.
But he is speaking very seriously.
“Gentlemen and brothers, the time passes, the feast is far advanced, it
is time to drink a toast to the thirteenth at the table!”
“Little brother Gösta,” cries Master Julius, “there is no thirteenth; we
are only twelve.”
“At Ekeby a man dies every year,” continues Gösta with a more and more
gloomy voice. “One of the guests of the bachelors’ wing dies, one of
the glad, the careless, the eternal youth dies. What of that? Gentlemen
should never be old. Could our trembling hands not lift a glass, could
our quenched eyes not distinguish the cards, what has life for us,
and what are we for life? One must die of the thirteen who celebrate
Christmas eve in the smithy at Ekeby; but every year a new one comes to
complete our number; a man, experienced in pleasure, one who can handle
violin and card, must come and make our company complete. Old butterflies
should know how to die while the summer sun is shining. A toast to the
thirteenth!”
“But, Gösta, we are only twelve,” remonstrate the pensioners, and do not
touch their glasses.
Gösta Berling, whom they called the poet, although he never wrote
verses, continues with unaltered calmness: “Gentlemen and brothers! Have
you forgotten who you are? You are they who hold pleasure by force in
Värmland. You are they who set the fiddle-bows going, keep up the dance,
make song and music resound through the land. You know how to keep your
hearts from the love of gold, your hands from work. If you did not exist
the dance would die, summer die, the roses die, card-playing die, song
die, and in this whole blessed land there would be nothing but iron and
owners of iron-works. Pleasure lives while you live. For six years have
I celebrated Christmas eve in the Ekeby smithy, and never before has any
one refused to drink to the thirteenth?”
“But, Gösta,” cry they all, “when we are only twelve how can we drink to
the thirteenth?”
“Are we only twelve?” he says. “Why must we die out from the earth? Shall
we be but eleven next year, but ten the year after. Shall our name become
a legend, our company destroyed? I call upon him, the thirteenth, for
I have stood up to drink his toast. From the ocean’s depths, from the
bowels of the earth, from heaven, from hell I call him who shall complete
our number.”
Then it rattled in the chimney, then the furnace-door opened, then the
thirteenth came.
He was hairy, with tail and cloven-hoof, with horns and a pointed beard,
and at the sight of him the pensioners start up with a cry.
But in uncontrollable joy Gösta Berling cries, “The thirteenth has come—a
toast to the thirteenth!”
Yes, he has come, the old enemy of mankind, come to these foolhardy men
who trouble the peace of the Holy Night. The friend of witches on their
way to hell, who signs his bargains in blood on coal-black paper, he who
danced with the countess at Ivarsnäs for seven days, and could not be
exorcized by seven priests,—he has come.
In stormy haste thoughts fly through the heads of the old adventurers at
the sight of him. They wonder for whose sake he is out this night.
Many of them were ready to hurry away in terror, but they soon saw that
the horned one had not come to carry them down to his dark kingdom, but
that the ring of the cups and their songs had attracted him. He wished
to enjoy a little human pleasure in this holy night, and cast aside his
burden during this glad time.
Oh, pensioners, pensioners, who of you now remembers it is the night
before Christmas; that even now angels are singing for the shepherds in
the fields? Children are lying anxious lest they sleep too soundly, that
they may not wake in time for the beautiful morning worship. Soon it will
be time to light the Christmas candles in the church at Bro, and far away
in the forest homes the young man in the evening has prepared a resin
torch to light his girl to church. In all the houses the mistress has
placed dip-lights in the windows, ready to light as the people go by to
church. The sexton takes up the Christmas psalm in his sleep, and the old
minister lies and tries if he has enough voice left to sing: “Glory be to
God on high, on earth peace, good-will towards men!”
Oh, pensioners, better had it been for you if you had spent this peaceful
night quietly in your beds than to trouble the company with the Prince of
Darkness.
But they greet him with cries of welcome, as Gösta had done. A goblet
filled with burning brandy is placed in his hand. They give him the place
of honor at the table, and they look upon him with gladness, as if his
ugly satyr face wore the delicate features of their youth’s first love.
Beerencreutz invites him to a game of cards, Master Julius sings his best
songs for him, and Örneclou talks to him of lovely women, those beautiful
creatures who make life sweet.
He enjoys everything, the devil, as with princely bearing he leans back
on the old coach-box, and with clawed hand lifts the brimming goblet to
his smiling mouth.
But Gösta Berling of course must make a speech in his honor.
“Your Grace,” he says, “we have long awaited you here at Ekeby, for you
have little access, we suppose, to any other paradise. Here one can
live without toiling or spinning, as your Grace perhaps knows. Here
roasted ortolans fly into one’s mouth, and the bitter ale and the sweet
brandy flow in brooks and rivulets. This is a good place, your Grace!
We pensioners have waited for you, I tell you, for we have never been
complete before. See, we are something finer than we seem; we are the
mighty twelve of the poet, who are of all time. We were twelve when we
steered the world, up there on Olympus’s cloud-veiled top, and twelve
when we lived like birds in Ygdrasil’s green crown. Wherever there has
been poetry there have we followed. Did we not sit twelve men strong
about King Arthur’s Round Table, and were there not twelve paladins at
Charlemagne’s court? One of us has been a Thor, a Jupiter; any one can
see that in us now. They can perceive the divine splendor under our rags,
the lion’s mane under the ass’s head. Times are bad with us, but if we
are there a smithy becomes Olympus and the bachelors’ wing Valhalla.
“But, your Grace, our number has not been complete. Every one knows that
in the poet’s twelve there must always be a Loki, a Prometheus. Him have
we been without.”
“Your Grace, I wish you welcome!”
“Hear, hear, hear!” says the evil one; “such a fine speech, a fine speech
indeed! And I, who have no time to answer. Business, boys, business.
I must be off, otherwise I should so gladly be at your service in any
rôle you like. Thanks for a pleasant evening, old gossips. We shall meet
again.”
Then the pensioners demand where he is going; and he answers that the
noble major’s wife, mistress of Ekeby, is waiting for him to get her
contract renewed.
Great wonder seizes upon the pensioners.
A harsh and capable woman is she, the major’s wife at Ekeby. She can
lift a barrel of flour on her broad shoulders. She follows the loads of
ore from the Bergslagen mines, on the long road to Ekeby. She sleeps
like a waggoner on the stable floor, with a meal-bag under her head.
In the winter she will watch by a charcoal kiln, in the summer follow
a timber-raft down to the Löfven. She is a powerful woman. She swears
like a trooper, and rules over her seven estates like a king; rules her
own parish and all the neighboring parishes; yes, the whole of lovely
Värmland. But for the homeless gentlemen she had been like a mother, and
therefore they had closed their ears when slander had whispered to them
that she was in league with the devil.
So they ask him with wonder what kind of a contract she has made with him.
And he answers them, the black one, that he had given the major’s wife
her seven estates on the condition that she should send him every year a
human soul.
Oh, the horror which compresses the pensioners’ hearts!
Of course they knew it, but they had not understood before.
At Ekeby every year, a man dies, one of the guests in the bachelors’
wing dies, one of the glad, the careless, the ever young dies. What of
that?—gentlemen may not be old! If their trembling fingers cannot lift
the glass, if their dulled eyes cannot see the cards, what has life for
them, and what are they to life? Butterflies should know how to die while
the sun is shining.
But now, now for the first time, they grasp its real meaning.
Woe to that woman! That is why she had given them so many good meals, why
she had let them drink her bitter ale and her sweet brandy, that they
might reel from the drinking-halls and the card-tables at Ekeby down to
the king of hell,—one a year, one for each passing year.
Woe to the woman, the witch! Strong men had come to this Ekeby, had come
hither to perish. For she had destroyed them here. Their brains were as
sponges, dry ashes their lungs, and darkness their spirit, as they sank
back on their death-beds and were ready for their long journey, hopeless,
soulless, virtueless.
Woe to the woman! So had those died who had been better men than they,
and so should they die.
But not long are they paralyzed by weight of terror.
“You king of perdition!” they cry, “never again shall you make a
blood-signed contract with that witch; she shall die! Christian
Bergh, the mighty captain, has thrown over his shoulder the heaviest
sledge-hammer in the smithy. He will bury it to the handle in the hag’s
head. No more souls shall she sacrifice to you.
“And you, you horned thing, we shall lay you on the anvil and let the
forge-hammer loose. We shall hold you quiet with tongs under the hammer’s
blows and teach you to go a-hunting for gentlemen’s souls.”
He is a coward, the devil, as every one knows of old, and all this talk
of the forge-hammer does not please him at all. He calls Christian Bergh
back and begins to bargain with the pensioners.
“Take the seven estates; take them yourselves, gentlemen, and give me the
major’s wife!”
“Do you think we are as base as she?” cries Master Julius. “We will
have Ekeby and all the rest, but you must look after the major’s wife
yourself.”
“What does Gösta say? what does Gösta say?” asks the gentle Löwenborg.
“Gösta Berling must speak. We must hear what he thinks of this important
matter.”
“It is madness,” says Gösta Berling. “Gentlemen, don’t let him make fools
of you! What are you all against the major’s wife? It may fare as it
will with our souls, but with my consent we will not be such ungrateful
wretches as to act like rascals and traitors. I have eaten her food for
too many years to deceive her now.”
“Yes, you can go to hell, Gösta, if you wish! We would rather rule at
Ekeby.”
“But are you all raving, or have you drunk away your wits? Do you believe
it is true? Do you believe that that thing is the devil? Don’t you see
that it’s all a confounded lie?”
“Tut, tut, tut,” says the black one; “he does not see that he will soon
be ready, and yet he has been seven years at Ekeby. He does not see how
far advanced he is.”
“Begone, man! I myself have helped to shove you into the oven there.”
“As if that made any difference; as if I were not as good a devil as
another. Yes, yes, Gösta Berling, you are in for it. You have improved,
indeed, under her treatment.”
“It was she who saved me,” says Gösta. “What had I been without her?”
“As if she did not know what she was about when she kept you here at
Ekeby. You can lure others to the trap; you have great gifts. Once you
tried to get away from her; you let her give you a cottage, and you
became a laborer; you wished to earn your bread. Every day she passed
your cottage, and she had lovely young girls with her. Once it was
Marianne Sinclair; then you threw aside your spade and apron, Gösta
Berling, and came back as pensioner.”
“It lay on the highway, you fool.”
“Yes, yes, of course; it lay on the highway. Then you came to Borg,
were tutor there to Henrik Dohna, and might have been Countess Märta’s
son-in-law. Who was it who managed that the young Ebba Dohna should hear
that you were only a dismissed priest, so that she refused you? It was
the major’s wife, Gösta Berling. She wanted you back again.”
“Great matter!” says Gösta. “Ebba Dohna died soon afterwards. I would
never have got her anyway.”
Then the devil came close up to him and hissed right in his face: “Died!
yes, of course she died. Killed herself for your sake, did she? But they
never told you that.”
“You are not such a bad devil,” says Gösta.
“It was the major’s wife who arranged it all, I tell you. She wanted to
have you back in the bachelors’ wing.”
Gösta burst out laughing.
“You are not such a bad devil,” he cried wildly. “Why should we not make
a contract with you? I’m sure you can get us the seven estates if you
like.”
“It is well that you do not longer withstand your fate.”
The pensioners drew a sigh of relief. It had gone so far with them
that they could do nothing without Gösta. If he had not agreed to the
arrangement it could never have come to anything. And it was no small
matter for destitute gentlemen to get seven estates for their own.
“Remember, now,” says Gösta, “that we take the seven estates in order to
save our souls, but not to be iron-work owners who count their money and
weigh their iron. No dried-up parchments, no purse-proud money-bags will
we become, but gentlemen will we be and remain.”
“The very words of wisdom,” murmurs the black one.
“If you, therefore, will give us the seven estates for one year we will
accept them; but remember that if we do anything during that time which
is not worthy of a gentleman, if we do anything which is sensible, or
useful, or effeminate, then you may take the whole twelve of us when the
year is out, and give the estates to whom you will.”
The devil rubbed his hands with delight.
“But if we always behave like true gentlemen,” continues Gösta, “then you
may never again make any contract about Ekeby, and no pay do you get for
this year either from us or from the major’s wife.”
“That is hard,” says the devil. “Oh, dear Gösta, I must have one soul,
just one little, poor soul. Couldn’t I have the major’s wife? Why should
you spare the major’s wife?”
“I do not drive any bargains with such wares,” roars Gösta; “but if you
must have some one, you can take old Sintram at Fors; he is ready, I can
answer for that.”
“Well, well, that will do,” says the devil, without blinking. “The
pensioners or Sintram, they can balance one another. This will be a good
year.”
And so the contract was written, with blood from Gösta’s little finger,
on the devil’s black paper and with his quill-pen.
And when it was done the pensioners rejoiced. Now the world should belong
to them for a whole year, and afterwards there would always be some way.
They push aside the chairs, make a ring about the kettle, which stands in
the middle of the black floor, and whirl in a wild dance. Innermost in
the circle dances the devil, with wild bounds; and at last he falls flat
beside the kettle, rolls it over, and drinks.
Then Beerencreutz throws himself down beside him, and also Gösta Berling;
and after them all the others lay themselves in a circle round the
kettle, which is rolled from mouth to mouth. At last it is tipped over by
a push, and the hot, sticky drink pours over them.
When they rise up, swearing, the devil is gone; but his golden promises
float like shining crowns over the pensioners’ heads.
CHAPTER III
CHRISTMAS DAY
On Christmas day the major’s wife gives a great dinner at Ekeby.
She sits as hostess at a table laid for fifty guests. She sits there in
splendor and magnificence; here her short sheepskin jacket, her striped
woollen skirt, and clay-pipe do not follow her. She rustles in silk, gold
weighs on her bare arms, pearls cool her white neck.
Where are the pensioners? Where are they who on the black floor of the
smithy, out of the polished copper kettle, drank a toast to the new
masters of Ekeby?
In the corner by the stove the pensioners are sitting at a separate
table; to-day there is no room for them at the big table. To them the
food comes late, the wine sparingly; to them are sent no glances from
beautiful women, no one listens to Gösta’s jokes.
But the pensioners are like tamed birds, like satiated wild beasts. They
had had scarcely an hour’s sleep that night; then they had driven to
morning worship, lighted by torches and the stars. They saw the Christmas
candles, they heard the Christmas hymns, their faces were like smiling
children’s. They forgot the night in the smithy as one forgets an evil
dream.
Great and powerful is the major’s wife at Ekeby. Who dares lift his arm
to strike her; who his voice to give evidence against her? Certainly not
poor gentlemen who for many years have eaten her bread and slept under
her roof. She can put them where she will, she can shut her door to them
when she will, and they have not the power to fly from her might. God be
merciful to their souls! Far from Ekeby they cannot live.
At the big table there was rejoicing: there shone Marianne Sinclair’s
beautiful eyes; there rang the gay Countess Dohna’s low laugh.
But the pensioners are gloomy. Was it not just as easy to have put them
at the same table with the other guests? What a lowering position there
in the corner by the stove. As if pensioners were not fit to associate
with fine people!
The major’s wife is proud to sit between the Count at Borg and the Bro
clergyman. The pensioners hang their heads like shame-faced children, and
by degrees awake in them thoughts of the night.
Like shy guests the gay sallies, the merry stories come to the table in
the corner by the stove. There the rage of the night and its promises
enter into their minds. Master Julius makes the mighty captain, Christian
Bergh, believe that the roasted grouse, which are being served at the big
table, will not go round for all the guests; but it amuses no one.
“They won’t go round,” he says. “I know how many there are. But they’ll
manage in spite of it, Captain Christian; they have some roasted crows
for us here at the little table.”
But Colonel Beerencreutz’s lips are curved by only a very feeble smile,
under the fierce moustaches, and Gösta has looked the whole day as if he
was meditating somebody’s death.
“Any food is good enough for pensioners,” he says.
At last the dish heaped up with magnificent grouse reaches the little
table.
But Captain Christian is angry. Has he not had a life-long hate of
crows,—those odious, cawing, winged things?
He hated them so bitterly that last autumn he had put on a woman’s
trailing dress, and had fastened a cloth on his head and made himself a
laughing-stock for all men, only to get in range when they ate the grain
in the fields.
He sought them out at their caucuses on the bare fields in the spring and
killed them. He looked for their nests in the summer, and threw out the
screaming, featherless young ones, or smashed the half-hatched eggs.
Now he seizes the dish of grouse.
“Do you think I don’t know them?” he cries to the servant. “Do I need to
hear them caw to recognize them? Shame on you, to offer Christian Bergh
crows! Shame on you!”
Thereupon he takes the grouse, one by one, and throws them against the
wall.
“Shame, shame!” he reiterates, so that the whole room rings,—“to offer
Christian Bergh crows! Shame!”
And just as he used to hurl the helpless young crows against the cliffs,
so now he sends grouse after grouse whizzing against the wall.
Sauce and grease spatter about him, the crushed birds rebound to the
floor.
And the bachelors’ wing rejoices.
Then the angry voice of the major’s wife penetrates to the pensioners’
ears.
“Turn him out!” she calls to the servants.
But they do not dare to touch him. He is still Christian Bergh, the
mighty captain.
“Turn him out!”
He hears the command, and, terrible in his rage, he now turns upon the
major’s wife as a bear turns from a fallen enemy to meet a new attack. He
marches up to the horse-shoe table. His heavy tread resounds through the
hall. He stands opposite her, with the table between them.
“Turn him out!” cries the major’s wife again.
But he is raging; none dare to face his frowning brow and great clenched
hand. He is big as a giant, and as strong. The guests and servants
tremble, and dare not approach him. Who would dare to touch him now, when
rage has taken away his reason?
He stands opposite the major’s wife and threatens her.
“I took the crow and threw it against the wall. And I did right.”
“Out with you, captain!”
“Shame, woman! Offer Christian Bergh crows! If I did right I would take
you and your seven hell’s—”
“Thousand devils, Christian Bergh! don’t swear. Nobody but I swears here.”
“Do you think I am afraid of you, hag? Don’t you think I know how you got
your seven estates?”
“Silence, captain!”
“When Altringer died he gave them to your husband because you had been
his mistress.”
“Will you be silent?”
“Because you had been such a faithful wife, Margareta Samzelius. And the
major took the seven estates and let you manage them and pretended not to
know. And the devil arranged it all; but now comes the end for you.”
The major’s wife sits down; she is pale and trembling. She assents in a
strange, low voice.
“Yes, now it is the end for me, and it is your doing, Christian Bergh.”
At her voice Captain Christian trembles, his face works, and his eyes are
filled with tears of anguish.
“I am drunk,” he cries. “I don’t know what I am saying; I haven’t said
anything. Dog and slave, dog and slave, and nothing more have I been for
her for forty years. She is Margareta Celsing, whom I have served my
whole life. I say nothing against her. What should I have to say against
the beautiful Margareta Celsing! I am the dog which guards her door, the
slave who bears her burdens. She may strike me, she may kick me! You see
how I hold my tongue and bear it. I have loved her for forty years. How
could I say anything against her?”
And a wonderful sight it is to see how he kneels and begs for
forgiveness. And as she is sitting on the other side of the table, he
goes on his knees round the table till he comes to her; then he bends
down and kisses the hem of her dress, and the floor is wet with his tears.
But not far from the major’s wife sits a small, strong man. He has shaggy
hair, small, squinting eyes, and a protruding under-jaw. He looks like a
bear. He is a man of few words, who likes to go his own quiet way and
let the world take care of itself. He is Major Samzelius.
He rises when he hears Captain Christian’s accusing words, and the
major’s wife rises, and all the fifty guests. The women are weeping in
terror of what is coming, the men stand dejected, and at the feet of
the major’s wife lies Captain Christian, kissing the hem of her dress,
wetting the floor with his tears.
The major slowly clenches his broad, hairy hands, and lifts his arm.
But the woman speaks first. Her voice sounds hollow and unfamiliar.
“You stole me,” she cried. “You came like a thief and took me. They
forced me, in my home, by blows, by hunger, and hard words to be your
wife. I have treated you as you deserved.”
The major’s broad fist is clenched. His wife gives way a couple of steps.
Then she speaks again.
“Living eels twist under the knife; an unwilling wife takes a lover. Will
you strike me now for what happened twenty years ago? Do you not remember
how he lived at Ekeby, we at Sjö? Do you not remember how he helped us
in our poverty? We drove in his carriages, we drank his wine. Did we
hide anything from you? Were not his servants your servants? Did not his
gold weigh heavy in your pocket? Did you not accept the seven estates?
You held your tongue and took them; then you should have struck, Berndt
Samzelius,—then you should have struck.”
The man turns from her and looks on all those present. He reads in their
faces that they think she is right, that they all believe he took the
estates in return for his silence.
“I never knew it!” he says, and stamps on the floor.
“It is well that you know it now!” she cries, in a shrill, ringing voice.
“Was I not afraid lest you should die without knowing it? It is well that
you know it now, so that I can speak out to you who have been my master
and jailer. You know now that I, in spite of all, was his from whom you
stole me. I tell you all now, you who have slandered me!”
It is the old love which exults in her voice and shines from her eyes.
Her husband stands before her with lifted hand. She reads horror and
scorn on the fifty faces about her. She feels that it is the last hour of
her power. But she cannot help rejoicing that she may speak openly of the
tenderest memory of her life.
“He was a man, a man indeed. Who were you, to come between us? I have
never seen his equal. He gave me happiness, he gave me riches. Blessed be
his memory!”
Then the major lets his lifted arm fall without striking her; now he
knows how he shall punish her.
“Away!” he cries; “out of my house!”
She stands motionless.
But the pensioners stand with pale faces and stare at one another.
Everything was going as the devil had prophesied. They now saw the
consequences of the non-renewal of the contract. If that is true, so is
it also true that she for more than twenty years had sent pensioners
to perdition, and that they too were destined for the journey. Oh, the
witch!
“Out with you!” continues the major. “Beg your bread on the highway! You
shall have no pleasure of his money, you shall not live on his lands.
There is no more a mistress of Ekeby. The day you set your foot in my
house I will kill you.”
“Do you drive me from my home?”
“You have no home. Ekeby is mine.”
A feeling of despair comes over the major’s wife. She retreats to the
door, he following close after her.
“You who have been my life’s curse,” she laments, “shall you also now
have power to do this to me?”
“Out, out!”
She leans against the door-post, clasps her hands, and holds them before
her face. She thinks of her mother and murmurs to herself:—
“‘May you be disowned, as I have been disowned; may the highway be your
home, the hay-stack your bed!’ It is all coming true.”
The good old clergyman from Bro and the judge from Munkerud came forward
now to Major Samzelius and tried to calm him. They said to him that it
would be best to let all those old stories rest, to let everything be as
it was, to forget and forgive.
He shakes the mild old hands from his shoulder. He is terrible to
approach, just as Christian Bergh had been.
“It is no old story,” he cries. “I never knew anything till to-day. I
have never been able before to punish the adulteress.”
At that word the major’s wife lifts her head and regains her old courage.
“You shall go out before I do. Do you think that I shall give in to
you?” she says. And she comes forward from the door.
The major does not answer, but he watches her every movement, ready to
strike if he finds no better way to revenge himself.
“Help me, good gentlemen,” she cries, “to get this man bound and carried
out, until he gets back the use of his senses. Remember who I am and who
he is! Think of it, before I must give in to him! I arrange all the work
at Ekeby, and he sits the whole day long and feeds his bears. Help me,
good friends and neighbors! There will be a boundless misery if I am no
longer here. The peasant gets his living by cutting my wood and carting
my iron. The charcoal burner lives by getting me charcoal, the lumber man
by bringing down my timber. It is I who give out the work which brings
prosperity. Smiths, mechanics, and carpenters live by serving me. Do you
think that man can keep my work going? I tell you that if you drive me
away you let famine in.”
Again are many hands lifted to help the major’s wife; again mild,
persuading hands are laid on the major’s shoulders.
“No,” he says, “away with you. Who will defend an adulteress? I tell you
that if she does not go of her own will I shall take her in my arms and
carry her down to my bears.”
At these words the raised hands are lowered.
Then, as a last resource, she turns to the pensioners.
“Will you also allow me to be driven from my home? Have I let you freeze
out in the snow in winter? Have I denied you bitter ale and sweet
brandy? Did I take any pay or any work from you because I gave you
food and clothes? Have you not played at my feet, safe as children at
their mother’s side? Has not the dance gone through my halls? Have not
merriment and laughter been your daily bread? Do not let this man, who
has been my life’s misfortune, drive me from my home, gentlemen! Do not
let me become a beggar on the highway!”
At these words Gösta Berling had stolen away to a beautiful dark-haired
girl who sat at the big table.
“You were much at Borg five years ago, Anna,” he says. “Do you know if it
was the major’s wife who told Ebba Dohna that I was a dismissed priest?”
“Help her, Gösta!” is the girl’s only answer.
“You must know that I will first hear if she has made me a murderer.”
“Oh, Gösta, what a thought! Help her, Gösta!”
“You won’t answer, I see. Then Sintram told the truth.” And Gösta goes
back to the other pensioners. He does not lift a finger to help the
major’s wife.
Oh, if only she had not put the pensioners at a separate table off there
in the corner by the stove! Now the thoughts of the night awake in their
minds, and a rage burns in their faces which is not less than the major’s
own.
In pitiless hardness they stand, unmoved by her prayers.
Did not everything they saw confirm the events of the night?
“One can see that she did not get her contract renewed,” murmurs one.
“Go to hell, hag!” screams another. “By rights we ought to hunt you from
the door.”
“Fools,” cries the gentle old Uncle Eberhard to the pensioners. “Don’t
you understand it was Sintram?”
“Of course we understand; of course we know it,” answers Julius; “but
what of that? May it not be true, at any rate? Does not Sintram go on the
devil’s errands? Don’t they understand one another?”
“Go yourself, Eberhard; go and help her!” they mock. “You don’t believe
in hell. You can go!”
And Gösta Berling stands, without a word, motionless.
No, from the threatening, murmuring, struggling bachelors’ wing she will
get no help.
Then once again she retreats to the door and raises her clasped hands to
her eyes.
“‘May you be disowned, as I have been disowned,’” she cries to herself
in her bitter sorrow. “‘May the highway be your home, the hay-stack your
bed!’”
Then she lays one hand on the door latch, but the other she stretches on
high.
“Know you all, who now let me fall, know that your hour is soon coming!
You shall be scattered, and your place shall stand empty. How can you
stand when I do not hold you up? You, Melchior Sinclair, who have a heavy
hand and let your wife feel it, beware! You, minister at Broby, your
punishment is coming! Madame Uggla, look after your house; poverty is
coming! You young, beautiful women—Elizabeth Dohna, Marianne Sinclair,
Anna Stjärnhök—do not think that I am the only one who must flee from
her home. And beware, pensioners, a storm is coming over the land. You
will be swept away from the earth; your day is over, it is verily over! I
do not lament for myself, but for you; for the storm shall pass over your
heads, and who shall stand when I have fallen? And my heart bleeds for my
poor people. Who will give them work when I am gone?”
She opens the door; but then Captain Christian lifts his head and says:—
“How long must I lie here at your feet, Margareta Celsing? Will you not
forgive me, so that I may stand up and fight for you?”
Then the major’s wife fights a hard battle with herself; but she sees
that if she forgives him he will rise up and attack her husband; and this
man, who has loved her faithfully for forty years will become a murderer.
“Must I forgive, too?” she says. “Are you not the cause of all my
misfortune, Christian Bergh? Go to the pensioners and rejoice over your
work.”
So she went. She went calmly, leaving terror and dismay behind her. She
fell, but she was not without greatness in her fall.
She did not lower herself to grieving weakly, but in her old age she
still exulted over the love of her youth. She did not lower herself to
lamenting and pitiable weeping when she left everything; she did not
shrink from wandering about the land with beggar’s bag and crutch. She
pitied only the poor peasants and the happy, careless people on the
shores of the Löfven, the penniless pensioners,—all those whom she had
taken in and cared for.
She was abandoned by all, and yet she had strength to turn away her last
friend that he should not be a murderer.
She was a woman great in strength and love of action. We shall not soon
see her like again.
The next day Major Samzelius moved from Ekeby to his own farm of Sjö,
which lies next to the large estate.
In Altringer’s will, by which the major had got the estates, it was
clearly stated that none of them should be sold or given away, but that
after the death of the major his wife and her heirs should inherit them
all. So, as he could not dissipate the hated inheritance, he placed the
pensioners to reign over it, thinking that he, by so doing, most injured
Ekeby and the other six estates.
As no one in all the country round now doubted that the wicked Sintram
went on the devil’s errands, and as everything he had promised had been
so brilliantly fulfilled the pensioners were quite sure that the contract
would be carried out in every point, and they were entirely decided not
to do, during the year, anything sensible, or useful, or effeminate,
convinced that the major’s wife was an abominable witch who sought their
ruin.
The old philosopher, Eberhard, ridiculed their belief. But who paid any
attention to such a man, who was so obstinate in his unbelief that if he
had lain in the midst of the fires of hell and had seen all the devils
standing and grinning at him, would still have insisted that they did
not exist, because they could not exist?—for Uncle Eberhard was a great
philosopher.
Gösta Berling told no one what he thought. It is certain that he
considered he owed the major’s wife little thanks because she had made
him a pensioner at Ekeby; it seemed better to him to be dead than to have
on his conscience the guilt of Ebba Dohna’s suicide.
He did not lift his hand to be revenged on the major’s wife, but neither
did he to help her. He could not. But the pensioners had attained great
power and magnificence. Christmas was at hand, with its feasts and
pleasures. The hearts of the pensioners were filled with rejoicing; and
whatever sorrow weighed on Gösta Berling’s heart he did not show in face
or speech.
CHAPTER IV
GÖSTA BERLING, POET
It was Christmas, and there was to be a ball at Borg.
At that time, and it is soon sixty years ago, a young Count Dohna lived
at Borg; he was newly married, and he had a young, beautiful countess. It
was sure to be gay at the old castle.
An invitation had come to Ekeby, but it so happened that of them all who
were there that year, Gösta Berling, whom they called “the poet,” was the
only one who wished to go.
Borg and Ekeby both lie by the Löfven, but on opposite shores. Borg is in
Svartsjö parish, Ekeby in Bro. When the lake is impassable it is a ten or
twelve miles’ journey from Ekeby to Borg.
The pauper, Gösta Berling, was fitted out for the festival by the old
men, as if he had been a king’s son, and had the honor of a kingdom to
keep up.
His coat with the glittering buttons was new, his ruffles were stiff, and
his buckled shoes shining. He wore a cloak of the finest beaver, and a
cap of sable on his yellow, curling hair. They spread a bear-skin with
silver claws over his sledge, and gave him black Don Juan, the pride of
the stable, to drive.
He whistled to his white Tancred, and seized the braided reins. He
started rejoicing, surrounded by the glitter of riches and splendor,
he who shone so by his own beauty and by the playful brilliancy of his
genius.
He left early in the forenoon. It was Sunday, and he heard the organ in
the church at Bro as he drove by. He followed the lonely forest road
which led to Berga, where Captain Uggla then lived. There he meant to
stop for dinner.
Berga was no rich man’s home. Hunger knew the way to that turf-roofed
house; but he was met with jests, charmed with song and games like other
guests, and went as unwillingly as they.
The old Mamselle Ulrika Dillner, who looked after everything at Berga,
stood on the steps and wished Gösta Berling welcome. She courtesied to
him, and the false curls, which hung down over her brown face with its
thousand wrinkles, danced with joy. She led him into the dining-room, and
then she began to tell him about the family, and their changing fortunes.
Distress stood at the door, she said; it was hard times at Berga. They
would not even have had any horse-radish for dinner, with their corned
beef, if Ferdinand and the girls had not put Disa before a sledge and
driven down to Munkerud to borrow some.
The captain was off in the woods again, and would of course come home
with a tough old hare, on which one had to use more butter in cooking
it than it was worth itself. That’s what he called getting food for the
house. Still, it would do, if only he did not come with a miserable fox,
the worst beast our Lord ever made; no use, whether dead or alive.
And the captain’s wife, yes, she was not up yet. She lay abed and read
novels, just as she had always done. She was not made for work, that
God’s angel.
No, that could be done by some one who was old and gray like Ulrika
Dillner, working night and day to keep the whole miserable affair
together. And it wasn’t always so easy; for it was the truth that for
one whole winter they had not had in that house any other meat than
bear-hams. And big wages she did not expect; so far she had never seen
any; but they would not turn her out on the roadside either, when
she couldn’t work any longer in return for her food. They treated a
house-maid like a human being in that house, and they would one of these
days give old Ulrika a good burial if they had anything to buy the coffin
with.
“For who knows how it will be?” she bursts out, and wipes her eyes, which
are always so quick to tears. “We have debts to the wicked Sintram, and
he can take everything from us. Of course Ferdinand is engaged to the
rich Anna Stjärnhök; but she is tired,—she is tired of him. And what will
become of us, of our three cows, and our nine horses, of our gay young
ladies who want to go from one ball to another, of our dry fields where
nothing grows, of our mild Ferdinand, who will never be a real man? What
will become of the whole blessed house, where everything thrives except
work?”
But dinner-time came, and the family gathered. The good Ferdinand, the
gentle son of the house, and the lively daughters came home with the
borrowed horse-radish. The captain came, fortified by a bath in a hole
in the ice and a tramp through the woods. He threw up the window to get
more air, and shook Gösta’s hand with a strong grip. And his wife came,
dressed in silk, with wide laces hanging over her white hands, which
Gösta was allowed to kiss.
They all greeted Gösta with joy; jests flew about the circle; gayly they
asked him:—
“How are you all at Ekeby; how is it in that promised land?”
“Milk and honey flow there,” he answered. “We empty the mountains of iron
and fill our cellar with wine. The fields bear gold, with which we gild
life’s misery, and we cut down our woods to build bowling-alleys and
summer houses.”
The captain’s wife sighed and smiled at his answer, and her lips murmured
the word,—
“Poet!”
“Many sins have I on my conscience,” answered Gösta, “but I have never
written a line of poetry.”
“You are nevertheless a poet, Gösta; that name you must put up with. You
have lived through more poems than all our poets have written.”
Then she spoke, tenderly as a mother, of his wasted life. “I shall live
to see you become a man,” she said. And he felt it sweet to be urged on
by this gentle woman, who was such a faithful friend, and whose romantic
heart burned with the love of great deeds.
But just as they had finished the gay meal and had enjoyed the corned
beef and horse-radish and cabbage and apple fritters and Christmas ale,
and Gösta had made them laugh and cry by telling them of the major and
his wife and the Broby clergyman, they heard sleigh-bells outside, and
immediately afterward the wicked Sintram walked in.
He beamed with satisfaction, from the top of his bald head down to his
long, flat feet. He swung his long arms, and his face was twisted. It was
easy to see that he brought bad news.
“Have you heard,” he asked,—“have you heard that the banns have been
called to-day for Anna Stjärnhök and the rich Dahlberg in the Svartsjö
church? She must have forgotten that she was engaged to Ferdinand.”
They had not heard a word of it. They were amazed and grieved.
Already they fancied the home pillaged to pay the debt to this wicked
man; the beloved horses sold, as well as the worn furniture which had
come from the home of the captain’s wife. They saw an end to the gay life
with feasts and journeyings from ball to ball. Bear-hams would again
adorn the board, and the young people must go out into the world and work
for strangers.
The captain’s wife caressed her son, and let him feel the comfort of a
never-failing love.
But—there sat Gösta Berling in the midst of them, and, unconquerable,
turned over a thousand plans in his head.
“Listen,” he cried, “it is not yet time to think of grieving. It is the
minister’s wife at Svartsjö who has arranged all this. She has got a
hold on Anna, since she has been living with her at the vicarage. It is
she who has persuaded her to forsake Ferdinand and take old Dahlberg;
but they’re not married yet, and will never be either. I am on my way to
Borg, and shall meet Anna there. I shall talk to her; I shall get her
away from the clergyman’s, from her fiancé,—I shall bring her with me
here to-night. And afterwards old Dahlberg shall never get any good of
her.”
And so it was arranged. Gösta started for Borg alone, without taking any
of the gay young ladies, but with warm good wishes for his return. And
Sintram, who rejoiced that old Dahlberg should be cheated, decided to
stop at Berga to see Gösta come back with the faithless girl. In a burst
of good-will he even wrapt round him his green plaid, a present from
Mamselle Ulrika.
The captain’s wife came out on the steps with three little books, bound
in red leather, in her hand.
“Take them,” she said to Gösta, who already sat in the sledge; “take
them, if you fail! It is ‘Corinne,’ Madame de Staël’s ‘Corinne.’ I do not
want them to go by auction.”
“I shall not fail.”
“Ah, Gösta, Gösta,” she said, and passed her hand over his bared head,
“strongest and weakest of men! How long will you remember that a few poor
people’s happiness lies in your hand?”
Once more Gösta flew along the road, drawn by the black Don Juan,
followed by the white Tancred, and the joy of adventure filled his soul.
He felt like a young conqueror, the spirit was in him.
His way took him past the vicarage at Svartsjö. He turned in there and
asked if he might drive Anna Stjärnhök to the ball. And that he was
permitted.
A beautiful, self-willed girl it was who sat in his sledge. Who would not
want to drive behind the black Don Juan?
The young people were silent at first, but then she began the
conversation, audaciousness itself.
“Have you heard what the minister read out in church to-day?”
“Did he say that you were the prettiest girl between the Löfven and the
Klar River?”
“How stupid you are! but every one knows that. He called the banns for me
and old Dahlberg.”
“Never would I have let you sit in my sledge nor sat here myself, if I
had known that. Never would I have wished to drive you at all.”
And the proud heiress answered:—
“I could have got there well enough without you, Gösta Berling.”
“It is a pity for you, Anna,” said Gösta, thoughtfully, “that your father
and mother are not alive. You are your own mistress, and no one can hold
you to account.”
“It is a much greater pity that you had not said that before, so that I
might have driven with some one else.”
“The minister’s wife thinks as I do, that you need some one to take your
father’s place; else she had never put you to pull in harness with such
an old nag.”
“It is not she who has decided it.”
“Ah, Heaven preserve us!—have you yourself chosen such a fine man?”
“He does not take me for my money.”
“No, the old ones, they only run after blue eyes and red cheeks; and
awfully nice they are, when they do that.”
“Oh, Gösta, are you not ashamed?”
“But remember that you are not to play with young men any longer. No more
dancing and games. Your place is in the corner of the sofa—or perhaps
you mean to play cribbage with old Dahlberg?”
They were silent, till they drove up the steep hill to Borg.
“Thanks for the drive! It will be long before I drive again with you,
Gösta Berling.”
“Thanks for the promise! I know many who will be sorry to-day they ever
drove you to a party.”
Little pleased was the haughty beauty when she entered the ball-room and
looked over the guests gathered there.
First of all she saw the little, bald Dahlberg beside the tall, slender,
golden-haired Gösta Berling. She wished she could have driven them both
out of the room.
Her fiancé came to ask her to dance, but she received him with crushing
astonishment.
“Are you going to dance? You never do!”
And the girls came to wish her joy.
“Don’t give yourselves the trouble, girls. You don’t suppose that any
one could be in love with old Dahlberg. But he is rich, and I am rich,
therefore we go well together.”
The old ladies went up to her, pressed her white hand, and spoke of
life’s greatest happiness.
“Congratulate the minister’s wife,” she said. “She is gladder about it
than I.”
But there stood Gösta Berling, the gay cavalier, greeted with joy for his
cheerful smile and his pleasant words, which sifted gold-dust over life’s
gray web. Never before had she seen him as he was that night. He was no
outcast, no homeless jester; no, a king among men, a born king.
He and the other young men conspired against her. She should think over
how badly she had behaved when she gave herself with her lovely face and
her great fortune to an old man. And they let her sit out ten dances.
She was boiling with rage.
At the eleventh dance came a man, the most insignificant of all, a poor
thing, whom nobody would dance with, and asked her for a turn.
“There is no more bread, bring on the crusts,” she said.
They played a game of forfeits. The fair-haired girls put their heads
together and condemned her to kiss the one she loved best. And with
smiling lips they waited to see the proud beauty kiss old Dahlberg.
But she rose, stately in her anger, and said:—
“May I not just as well give a blow to the one I like the least!”
The moment after Gösta’s cheek burned under her firm hand. He flushed a
flaming red, but he conquered himself, seized her hand, held it fast a
second, and whispered:—
“Meet me in half an hour in the red drawing-room on the lower floor!”
His blue eyes flashed on her, and encompassed her with magical waves. She
felt that she must obey.
* * * * *
She met him with proud and angry words.
“How does it concern you whom I marry?”
He was not ready to speak gently to her, nor did it seem to him best to
speak yet of Ferdinand.
“I thought it was not too severe a punishment for you to sit out ten
dances. But you want to be allowed unpunished to break vows and promises.
If a better man than I had taken your sentence in his hand, he could
have made it harder.”
“What have I done to you and all the others, that I may not be in peace?
It is for my money’s sake you persecute me. I shall throw it into the
Löfven, and any one who wants it can fish it up.”
She put her hands before her eyes and wept from anger.
That moved the poet’s heart. He was ashamed of his harshness. He spoke in
caressing tones.
“Ah, child, child, forgive me! Forgive poor Gösta Berling! Nobody cares
what such a poor wretch says or does, you know that. Nobody weeps for
his anger, one might just as well weep over a mosquito’s bite. It was
madness in me to hope that I could prevent our loveliest and richest girl
marrying that old man. And now I have only distressed you.”
He sat down on the sofa beside her. Gently he put his arm about her
waist, with caressing tenderness, to support and raise her.
She did not move away. She pressed closer to him, threw her arms round
his neck, and wept with her beautiful head on his shoulder.
O poet, strongest and weakest of men, it was not about your neck those
white arms should rest.
“If I had known that,” she whispered, “never would I have taken the old
man. I have watched you this evening; there is no one like you.”
From between pale lips Gösta forced out,—
“Ferdinand.”
She silenced him with a kiss.
“He is nothing; no one but you is anything. To you will I be faithful.”
“I am Gösta Berling,” he said gloomily; “you cannot marry me.”
“You are the man I love, the noblest of men. You need do nothing, be
nothing. You are born a king.”
Then the poet’s blood seethed. She was beautiful and tender in her love.
He took her in his arms.
“If you will be mine, you cannot remain at the vicarage. Let me drive you
to Ekeby to-night; there I shall know how to defend you till we can be
married.”
* * * * *
That was a wild drive through the night. Absorbed in their love, they
let Don Juan take his own pace. The noise of the runners was like the
lamentations of those they had deceived. What did they care for that? She
hung on his neck, and he leaned forward and whispered in her ear.
“Can any happiness be compared in sweetness to stolen pleasures?”
What did the banns matter? They had love. And the anger of men! Gösta
Berling believed in fate; fate had mastered them: no one can resist fate.
If the stars had been the candles which had been lighted for her wedding,
if Don Juan’s bells had been the church chimes, calling the people to
witness her marriage to old Dahlberg, still she must have fled with Gösta
Berling. So powerful is fate.
They had passed the vicarage and Munkerud. They had three miles to Berga
and three miles more to Ekeby. The road skirted the edge of the wood; on
their right lay dark hills, on their left a long, white valley.
Tancred came rushing. He ran so fast that he seemed to lie along the
ground. Howling with fright, he sprang up in the sledge and crept under
Anna’s feet.
Don Juan shied and bolted.
“Wolves!” said Gösta Berling.
They saw a long, gray line running by the fence. There were at least a
dozen of them.
Anna was not afraid. The day had been richly blessed with adventure,
and the night promised to be equally so. It was life,—to speed over the
sparkling snow, defying wild beasts and men.
Gösta uttered an oath, leaned forward, and struck Don Juan a heavy blow
with the whip.
“Are you afraid?” he asked. “They mean to cut us off there, where the
road turns.”
Don Juan ran, racing with the wild beasts of the forest, and Tancred
howled in rage and terror. They reached the turn of the road at the same
time as the wolves, and Gösta drove back the foremost with the whip.
“Ah, Don Juan, my boy, how easily you could get away from twelve wolves,
if you did not have us to drag.”
They tied the green plaid behind them. The wolves were afraid of it, and
fell back for a while. But when they had overcome their fright, one of
them ran, panting, with hanging tongue and open mouth up to the sledge.
Then Gösta took Madame de Staël’s “Corinne” and threw it into his mouth.
Once more they had breathing-space for a time, while the brutes tore
their booty to pieces, and then again they felt the dragging as the
wolves seized the green plaid, and heard their panting breath. They knew
that they should not pass any human dwelling before Berga, but worse
than death it seemed to Gösta to see those he had deceived. But he knew
that the horse would tire, and what should become of them then?
They saw the house at Berga at the edge of the forest. Candles burned in
the windows. Gösta knew too well for whose sake.
But now the wolves drew back, fearing the neighborhood of man, and Gösta
drove past Berga. He came no further than to the place where the road
once again buried itself in the wood; there he saw a dark group before
him,—the wolves were waiting for him.
“Let us turn back to the vicarage and say that we took a little pleasure
trip in the starlight. We can’t go on.”
They turned, but in the next moment the sledge was surrounded by wolves.
Gray forms brushed by them, their white teeth glittered in gaping mouths,
and their glowing eyes shone. They howled with hunger and thirst for
blood. The glittering teeth were ready to seize the soft human flesh.
The wolves leaped up on Don Juan, and hung on the saddle-cloth. Anna sat
and wondered if they would eat them entirely up, or if there would be
something left, so that people the next morning would find their mangled
limbs on the trampled, bloody snow.
“It’s a question of our lives,” she said, and leaned down and seized
Tancred by the nape of the neck.
“Don’t,—that will not help! It is not for the dog’s sake the wolves are
out to-night.”
Thereupon Gösta drove into the yard at Berga, but the wolves hunted him
up to the very steps. He had to beat them off with the whip.
“Anna,” he said, as they drew up, “God would not have it. Keep a
good countenance; if you are the woman I take you for, keep a good
countenance!”
They had heard the sleigh-bells in the house, and came out.
“He has her!” they cried, “he has her! Long live Gösta Berling!” and the
new-comers were embraced by one after another.
Few questions were asked. The night was far advanced, the travellers were
agitated by their terrible drive and needed rest. It was enough that Anna
had come.
All was well. Only “Corinne” and the green plaid, Mamselle Ulrika’s
prized gift, were destroyed.
* * * * *
The whole house slept. But Gösta rose, dressed himself, and stole out.
Unnoticed he led Don Juan out of the stable, harnessed him to the sledge,
and meant to set out. But Anna Stjärnhök came out from the house.
“I heard you go out,” she said. “So I got up, too. I am ready to go with
you.”
He went up to her and took her hand.
“Don’t you understand it yet? It cannot be. God does not wish it. Listen
now and try to understand. I was here to dinner and saw their grief over
your faithlessness. I went to Borg to bring you back to Ferdinand. But
I have always been a good-for-nothing, and will never be anything else.
I betrayed him, and kept you for myself. There is an old woman here who
believes that I shall become a man. I betrayed her. And another poor old
thing will freeze and starve here for the sake of dying among friends,
but I was ready to let the wicked Sintram take her home. You were
beautiful, and sin is sweet. It is so easy to tempt Gösta Berling. Oh,
what a miserable wretch I am! I know how they love their home, all those
in there, but I was ready just now to leave it to be pillaged. I forgot
everything for your sake, you were so sweet in your love. But now, Anna,
now since I have seen their joy, I will not keep you; no, I will not. You
could have made a man of me, but I may not keep you. Oh, my beloved! He
there above mocks at our desires. We must bow under His chastising hand.
Tell me that you from this day will take up your burden! All of them rely
upon you. Say that you will stay with them and be their prop and help!
If you love me, if you will lighten my deep sorrow, promise me this! My
beloved, is your heart so great that you can conquer yourself, and smile
in doing it?”
She accepted the renunciation in a sort of ecstasy.
“I shall do as you wish,—sacrifice myself and smile.”
“And not hate my poor friends?”
She smiled sadly.
“As long as I love you, I shall love them.”
“Now for the first time I know what you are. It is hard to leave you.”
“Farewell, Gösta! Go, and God be with you! My love shall not tempt you to
sin.”
She turned to go in. He followed her.
“Will you soon forget me?”
“Go, Gösta! We are only human.”
He threw himself down in the sledge, but then she came back again.
“Do you not think of the wolves?”
“Just of them I am thinking, but they have done their work. From me they
have nothing more to get this night.”
Once more he stretched his arms towards her, but Don Juan became
impatient and set off. He did not take the reins. He sat backwards and
looked after her. Then he leaned against the seat and wept despairingly.
“I have possessed happiness and driven her from me; I myself drove her
from me. Why did I not keep her?”
Ah, Gösta Berling, strongest and weakest of men!
CHAPTER V
LA CACHUCHA
War-horse! war-horse! Old friend, who now stand tethered in the pasture,
do you remember your youth?
Do you remember the day of the battle? You sprang forward, as if you had
been borne on wings, your mane fluttered about you like waving flames, on
your black haunches shone drops of blood and frothy foam. In harness of
gold you bounded forward; the ground thundered under you. You trembled
with joy. Ah, how beautiful you were!
It is the gray hour of twilight in the pensioners’ wing. In the big room
the pensioners’ red-painted chests stand against the walls, and their
holiday clothes hang on hooks in the corner. The firelight plays on the
whitewashed walls and on the yellow-striped curtains which conceal the
beds. The pensioners’ wing is not a kingly dwelling,—no seraglio with
cushioned divans and soft pillows.
But there Lilliecrona’s violin is heard. He is playing the cachucha in
the dusk of the evening. And he plays it over and over again.
Cut the strings, break his bow! Why does he play that cursed dance? Why
does he play it, when Örneclou, the ensign, is lying sick with the pains
of gout, so severe that he cannot move in his bed? No; snatch the violin
away and throw it against the wall if he will not stop.
La cachucha, is it for us, master? Shall it be danced over the shaking
floor of the pensioners’ wing, between the narrow walls, black with smoke
and greasy with dirt, under that low ceiling? Woe to you, to play so.
La cachucha, is it for us,—for us pensioners? Without the snow-storm
howls. Do you think to teach the snow-flakes to dance in time? Are you
playing for the light-footed children of the storm?
Maiden forms, which tremble with the throbbing of hot blood, small sooty
hands, which have thrown aside the pot to seize the castanets, bare feet
under tucked-up skirts, courts paved with marble slabs, crouching gypsies
with bagpipe and tambourine, Moorish arcades, moonlight, and black
eyes,—have you these, master? If not, let the violin rest.
The pensioners are drying their wet clothes by the fire. Shall they swing
in high boots with iron-shod heels and inch-thick soles? Through snow
yards deep they have waded the whole day to reach the bear’s lair. Do you
think they will dance in wet, reeking homespun clothes, with shaggy bruin
as a partner?
An evening sky glittering with stars, red roses in dark hair, troublous
tenderness in the air, untutored grace in their movements, love rising
from the ground, raining from the sky, floating in the air,—have you all
that, master? If not, why do you force us to long for such things?
Most cruel of men, are you summoning the tethered war-horse to the
combat? Rutger von Örneclou is lying in his bed, a prisoner to the gout.
Spare him the pain of tender memories, master! He too has worn sombrero
and bright-colored hair-net; he too has owned velvet jacket and belted
poniard. Spare old Örneclou, master!
But Lilliecrona plays the cachucha, always the cachucha, and Örneclou
is tortured like the lover when he sees the swallow fly away to his
beloved’s distant dwelling, like the hart when he is driven by the
hurrying chase past the cooling spring.
Lilliecrona takes the violin for a second from his chin.
“Ensign, do you remember Rosalie von Berger?”
Örneclou swears a solemn oath.
“She was light as a candle-flame. She sparkled and danced like the
diamond in the end of the fiddle-bow. You must remember her in the
theatre at Karlstad. We saw her when we were young; do you remember?”
And the ensign remembered. She was small and ardent. She was like a
sparkling flame. She could dance la cachucha. She taught all the young
men in Karlstad to dance cachucha and to play the castanets. At the
governor’s ball a _pas de deux_ was danced by the ensign and Mlle. von
Berger, dressed as Spaniards.
And he had danced as one dances under fig-trees and magnolias, like a
Spaniard,—a real Spaniard.
No one in the whole of Värmland could dance cachucha like him. No one
could dance it so that it was worth speaking of it, but he.
What a cavalier Värmland lost when the gout stiffened his legs and great
lumps grew out on his joints! What a cavalier he had been, so slender,
so handsome, so courtly! “The handsome Örneclou” he was called by those
young girls, who were ready to come to blows over a dance with him.
Then Lilliecrona begins the cachucha again, always the cachucha, and
Örneclou is taken back to old times.
There he stands, and there she stands, Rosalie von Berger. Just now they
were alone in the dressing-room. She was a Spaniard, he too. He was
allowed to kiss her, but carefully, for she was afraid of his blackened
moustache. Now they dance. Ah, as one dances under fig-trees and
magnolias! She draws away, he follows; he is bold, she proud; he wounded,
she conciliatory. When he at the end falls on his knees and receives her
in his outstretched arms, a sigh goes through the ball-room, a sigh of
rapture.
He had been like a Spaniard, a real Spaniard.
Just at that stroke had he bent so, stretched his arms so, and put out
his foot to glide forward. What grace! He might have been hewn in marble.
He does not know how it happened, but he has got his foot over the edge
of the bed, he stands upright, he bends, he raises his arms, snaps his
fingers, and wishes to glide forward over the floor in the same way as
long ago, when he wore so tight patent leather shoes the stocking feet
had to be cut away.
“Bravo, Örneclou! Bravo, Lilliecrona, play life into him!”
His foot gives way; he cannot rise on his toe. He kicks a couple of times
with one leg; he can do no more, he falls back on the bed.
Handsome señor, you have grown old.
Perhaps the señorita has too.
It is only under the plane-trees of Granada that the cachucha is danced
by eternally young gitanas. Eternally young, because, like the roses,
each spring brings new ones.
So now the time has come to cut the strings.
No, play on, Lilliecrona, play the cachucha, always the cachucha!
Teach us that, although we have got slow bodies and stiff joints, in our
feelings we are always the same, always Spaniards.
War-horse, war-horse!
Say that you love the trumpet-blast, which decoys you into a gallop, even
if you also cut your foot to the bone on the steel-link of the tether.
CHAPTER VI
THE BALL AT EKEBY
Ah, women of the olden times!
To speak of you is to speak of the kingdom of heaven; you were all
beauties, ever bright, ever young, ever lovely and gentle as a mother’s
eyes when she looks down on her child. Soft as young squirrels you hung
on your husband’s neck. Your voice never trembled with anger, no frowns
ruffled your brow, your white hand was never harsh and hard. You, sweet
saints, like adored images stood in the temple of home. Incense and
prayers were offered you, through you love worked its wonders, and round
your temples poetry wreathed its gold, gleaming glory.
Ah, women of the past, this is the story of how one of you gave Gösta
Berling her love.
Two weeks after the ball at Borg there was one at Ekeby.
What a feast it was! Old men and women become young again, smile and
rejoice, only in speaking of it.
The pensioners were masters at Ekeby at that time. The major’s wife went
about the country with beggar’s wallet and crutch, and the major lived at
Sjö. He could not even be present at the ball, for at Sjö small-pox had
broken out, and he was afraid to spread the infection.
What pleasures those twelve hours contained, from the pop of the first
cork at the dinner-table to the last wail of the violins, long after
midnight.
They have sunk into the background of time, those crowned hours, made
magical by the most fiery wines, by the most delicate food, by the most
inspiring music, by the wittiest of theatricals, by the most beautiful
tableaux. They have sunk away, dizzy with the dizziest dance. Where are
to be found such polished floors, such courtly knights, such lovely women?
Ah, women of the olden days, you knew well how to adorn a ball. Streams
of fire, of genius, and youthful vigor thrilled each and all who
approached you. It was worth wasting one’s gold on wax-candles to light
up your loveliness, on wine to instil gayety into your hearts; it was
worth dancing soles to dust and rubbing stiff arms which had drawn the
fiddle-bow, for your sakes.
Ah, women of the olden days, it was you who owned the key to the door of
Paradise.
The halls of Ekeby are crowded with the loveliest of your lovely throng.
There is the young Countess Dohna, sparklingly gay and eager for game and
dance, as befits her twenty years; there are the lovely daughters of the
judge of Munkerud, and the lively young ladies from Berga; there is Anna
Stjärnhök, a thousand times more beautiful than ever before, with that
gentle dreaminess which had come over her ever since the night she had
been hunted by wolves; there are many more, who are not yet forgotten but
soon will be; and there is the beautiful Marianne Sinclair.
She, the famed queen of beauty, who had shone at royal courts, who had
travelled the land over and received homage everywhere, she who lighted
the spark of love wherever she showed herself,—she had deigned to come to
the pensioners’ ball.
At that time Värmland’s glory was at its height, borne up by many proud
names. Much had the beautiful land’s happy children to be proud of, but
when they named their glories they never neglected to speak of Marianne
Sinclair.
The tales of her conquests filled the land.
They spoke of the coronets which had floated over her head, of the
millions which had been laid at her feet, of the warriors’ swords and
poets’ wreaths whose splendor had tempted her.
And she possessed not only beauty. She was witty and learned. The
cleverest men of the day were glad to talk with her. She was not an
author herself, but many of her ideas, which she had put into the souls
of her poet-friends, lived again in song.
In Värmland, in the land of the bear, she seldom stayed. Her life was
spent in perpetual journeyings. Her father, the rich Melchior Sinclair,
remained at home at Björne and let Marianne go to her noble friends in
the large towns or at the great country-seats. He had his pleasure in
telling of all the money she wasted, and both the old people lived happy
in the splendor of Marianne’s glowing existence.
Her life was a life of pleasures and homage. The air about her was
love—love her light and lamp, love her daily bread.
She, too, had often loved, often, often; but never had that fire lasted
long enough to forge the chains which bind for life.
“I wait for him, the irresistible,” she used to say of love. “Hitherto he
has not climbed over several ramparts, nor swum through several trenches.
He has come tamely, without wildness in his eye and madness in his heart.
I wait for the conqueror, who shall take me out of myself. I will feel
love so strong within me that I must tremble before him; now I know only
the love at which my good sense laughs.”
Her presence gave fire to talk, life to the wine. Her glowing spirit
set the fiddle-bows going, and the dance floated in sweeter giddiness
than before over the floor which she had touched with her feet. She was
radiant in the tableaux, she gave genius to the comedy, her lovely lips—
Ah, hush, it was not her fault, she never meant to do it! It was the
balcony, it was the moonlight, the lace veil, the knightly dress, the
song, which were to blame. The poor young creatures were innocent.
All that which led to so much unhappiness was with the best intentions.
Master Julius, who could do anything, had arranged a tableau especially
that Marianne might shine in full glory.
In the theatre, which was set up in the great drawing-room at Ekeby,
sat the hundred guests and looked at the picture, Spain’s yellow moon
wandering through a dark night sky. A Don Juan came stealing along
Sevilla’s street and stopped under an ivy-clad balcony. He was disguised
as a monk, but one could see an embroidered cuff under the sleeve, and a
gleaming sword-point under the mantle’s hem.
He raised his voice in song:—
“I kiss the lips of no fair maid,
Nor wet mine with the foaming wine
Within the beaker’s gold.
A cheek upon whose rose-leaf shade
Mine eyes have lit a glow divine,
A look which shyly seeketh mine,—
These leave me still and cold.
“Ah, come not in thy beauty’s glow,
Señora, through yon terrace-door;
I fear when thou art nigh!
Cope and stole my shoulders know,
The Virgin only I adore,
And water-jugs hold comfort’s store;
For ease to them I fly.”
As he finished, Marianne came out on the balcony, dressed in black
velvet and lace veil. She leaned over the balustrade and sang slowly and
ironically:
“Why tarry thus, thou holy man
Beneath my window late or long?
Dost pray for my soul’s weal?”
Then suddenly, warmly and eagerly:—
“Ah, flee, begone while yet you can!
Your gleaming sword sticks forth so long.
And plainly, spite your holy song,
The spurs clank on your heel.”
At these words the monk cast off his disguise, and Gösta Berling stood
under the balcony in a knight’s dress of silk and gold. He heeded not
the beauty’s warning, but climbed up one of the balcony supports, swung
himself over the balustrade, and, just as Master Julius had arranged it,
fell on his knees at the lovely Marianne’s feet.
Graciously she smiled on him, and gave him her hand to kiss, and while
the two young people gazed at one another, absorbed in their love, the
curtain fell.
And before her knelt Gösta Berling, with a face tender as a poet’s and
bold as a soldier’s, with deep eyes, which glowed with wit and genius,
which implored and constrained. Supple and full of strength was he, fiery
and captivating.
While the curtain went up and down, the two stood always in the same
position. Gösta’s eyes held the lovely Marianne fast; they implored; they
constrained.
Then the applause ceased; the curtain hung quiet; no one saw them.
Then the beautiful Marianne bent down and kissed Gösta Berling. She did
not know why,—she had to. He stretched up his arms about her head and
held her fast. She kissed him again and again.
But it was the balcony, it was the moonlight, it was the lace veil, the
knightly dress, the song, the applause, which were to blame. They had not
wished it. She had not thrust aside the crowns which had hovered over her
head, and spurned the millions which lay at her feet, out of love for
Gösta Berling; nor had he already forgotten Anna Stjärnhök. No; they were
blameless; neither of them had wished it.
It was the gentle Löwenborg,—he with the fear in his eye and the smile
on his lips,—who that day was curtain-raiser. Distracted by the memory
of many sorrows, he noticed little of the things of this world, and had
never learned to look after them rightly. When he now saw that Gösta and
Marianne had taken a new position, he thought that it also belonged to
the tableau, and so he began to drag on the curtain string.
The two on the balcony observed nothing until a thunder of applause
greeted them.
Marianne started back and wished to flee, but Gösta held her fast,
whispering:—
“Stand still; they think it belongs to the tableau.”
He felt how her body shook with shuddering, and how the fire of her
kisses died out on her lips.
“Do not be afraid,” he whispered; “lovely lips have a right to kiss.”
They had to stand while the curtain went up and went down, and each time
the hundreds of eyes saw them, hundreds of hands thundered out a stormy
applause.
For it was beautiful to see two fair young people represent love’s
happiness. No one could think that those kisses were anything but stage
delusion. No one guessed that the señora shook with embarrassment and the
knight with uneasiness. No one could think that it did not all belong to
the tableau.
At last Marianne and Gösta stood behind the scenes.
She pushed her hair back from her forehead.
“I don’t understand myself,” she said.
“Fie! for shame, Miss Marianne,” said he, grimacing, and stretched out
his hands. “To kiss Gösta Berling; shame on you!”
Marianne had to laugh.
“Everyone knows that Gösta Berling is irresistible. My fault is no
greater than others’.”
And they agreed to put a good face on it, so that no one should suspect
the truth.
“Can I be sure that the truth will never come out, _Herr_ Gösta?” she
asked, before they went out among the guests.
“That you can. Gentlemen can hold their tongues. I promise you that.”
She dropped her eyes. A strange smile curved her lips.
“If the truth should come out, what would people think of me, Herr Gösta?”
“They would not think anything. They would know that it meant nothing.
They would think that we entered into our parts and were going on with
the play.”
Yet another question, with lowered lids and with the same forced smile,—
“But you yourself? What do you think about it, Herr Gösta?”
“I think that you are in love with me,” he jested.
“Think no such thing,” she smiled, “for then I must run you through with
my stiletto to show you that you are wrong.”
“Women’s kisses are precious,” said Gösta. “Does it cost one’s life to be
kissed by Marianne Sinclair?”
A glance flashed on him from Marianne’s eyes, so sharp that it felt like
a blow.
“I could wish to see you dead, Gösta Berling! dead! dead!”
These words revived the old longing in the poet’s blood.
“Ah,” he said, “would that those words were more than words!—that they
were arrows which came whistling from some dark ambush; that they were
daggers or poison, and had the power to destroy this wretched body and
set my soul free!”
She was calm and smiling now.
“Childishness!” she said, and took his arm to join the guests.
They kept their costumes, and their triumphs were renewed when they
showed themselves in front of the scenes. Every one complimented them. No
one suspected anything.
The ball began again, but Gösta escaped from the ball-room.
His heart ached from Marianne’s glance, as if it had been wounded by
sharp steel. He understood too well the meaning of her words.
It was a disgrace to love him; it was a disgrace to be loved by him, a
shame worse than death.
He would never dance again. He wished never to see them again, those
lovely women.
He knew it too well. Those beautiful eyes, those red cheeks burned not
for him. Not for him floated those light feet, nor rung that low laugh.
Yes, dance with him, flirt with him, that they could do, but not one of
them would be his in earnest.
The poet went into the smoking-room to the old men, and sat down by one
of the card-tables. He happened to throw himself down by the same table
where the powerful master of Björne sat and played “baccarat” holding the
bank with a great pile of silver in front of him.
The play was already high. Gösta gave it an even greater impulse. Green
bank-notes appeared, and always the pile of money grew in front of the
powerful Melchior Sinclair.
But before Gösta also gathered both coins and notes, and soon he was the
only one who held out in the struggle against the great land-owner at
Björne. Soon the great pile of money changed over from Melchior Sinclair
to Gösta Berling.
“Gösta, my boy,” cried the land-owner, laughing, when he had played away
everything he had in his pocket-book and purse, “what shall we do now?
I am bankrupt, and I never play with borrowed money. I promised my wife
that.”
He discovered a way. He played away his watch and his beaver coat, and
was just going to stake his horse and sledge when Sintram checked him.
“Stake something to win on,” he advised him. “Stake something to turn the
luck.”
“What the devil have I got?”
“Play your reddest heart’s blood, brother Melchior. Stake your daughter!”
“You would never venture that,” said Gösta, laughing. “That prize I would
never get under my roof.”
Melchior could not help laughing also. He could not endure that
Marianne’s name should be mentioned at the card-tables, but this was so
insanely ridiculous that he could not be angry. To play away Marianne to
Gösta, yes, that he certainly could venture.
“That is to say,” he explained, “that if you can win her consent, Gösta,
I will stake my blessing to the marriage on this card.”
Gösta staked all his winnings and the play began. He won, and Sinclair
stopped playing. He could not fight against such bad luck; he saw that.
The night slipped by; it was past midnight. The lovely women’s cheeks
began to grow pale; curls hung straight, ruffles were crumpled. The old
ladies rose up from the sofa-corners and said that as they had been
there twelve hours, it was about time for them to be thinking of home.
And the beautiful ball should be over, but then Lilliecrona himself
seized the fiddle and struck up the last polka. The horses stood at the
door; the old ladies were dressed in their cloaks and shawls; the old men
wound their plaids about them and buckled their galoshes.
But the young people could not tear themselves from the dance. They
danced in their out-door wraps, and a mad dance it was. As soon as a girl
stopped dancing with one partner, another came and dragged her away with
him.
And even the sorrowful Gösta was dragged into the whirl. He hoped to
dance away grief and humiliation; he wished to have the love of life in
his blood again; he longed to be gay, he as well as the others. And he
danced till the walls went round, and he no longer knew what he was doing.
Who was it he had got hold of in the crowd? She was light and supple, and
he felt that streams of fire went from one to the other. Ah, Marianne!
While Gösta danced with Marianne, Sintram sat in his sledge before the
door, and beside him stood Melchior Sinclair.
The great land-owner was impatient at being forced to wait for Marianne.
He stamped in the snow with his great snow-boots and beat with his arms,
for it was bitter cold.
“Perhaps you ought not to have played Marianne away to Gösta,” said
Sintram.
“What do you mean?”
Sintram arranged his reins and lifted his whip, before he answered:—
“It did not belong to the tableau, that kissing.”
The powerful land-owner raised his arm for a death-blow, but Sintram was
already gone. He drove away, whipping the horse to a wild gallop without
daring to look back, for Melchior Sinclair had a heavy hand and short
patience.
He went now into the dancing-room to look for his daughter, and saw how
Gösta and Marianne were dancing.
Wild and giddy was that last polka.
Some of the couples were pale, others glowing red, dust lay like smoke
over the hall, the wax-candles gleamed, burned down to the sockets, and
in the midst of all the ghostly ruin, they flew on, Gösta and Marianne,
royal in their tireless strength, no blemish on their beauty, happy in
the glorious motion.
Melchior Sinclair watched them for a while; but then he went and left
Marianne to dance. He slammed the door, tramped down the stairs, and
placed himself in the sledge, where his wife already waited, and drove
home.
When Marianne stopped dancing and asked after her parents, they were gone.
When she was certain of this she showed no surprise. She dressed herself
quietly and went out in the yard. The ladies in the dressing-room thought
that she drove in her own sledge.
She hurried in her thin satin shoes along the road without telling any
one of her distress.
In the darkness no one recognized her, as she went by the edge of the
road; no one could think that this late wanderer, who was driven up into
the high drifts by the passing sledges, was the beautiful Marianne.
When she could go in the middle of the road she began to run. She ran as
long as she was able, then walked for a while, then ran again. A hideous,
torturing fear drove her on.
From Ekeby to Björne it cannot be farther than at most two miles.
Marianne was soon at home, but she thought almost that she had come the
wrong way. When she reached the house all the doors were closed, all the
lights out; she wondered if her parents had not come home.
She went forward and twice knocked loudly on the front door. She seized
the door-handle and shook it till the noise resounded through the whole
house. No one came and opened, but when she let the iron go, which she
had grasped with her bare hands, the fast-frozen skin was torn from them.
Melchior Sinclair had driven home in order to shut his door on his only
child.
He was drunk with much drinking, wild with rage. He hated his daughter,
because she liked Gösta Berling. He had shut the servants into the
kitchen, and his wife in the bedroom. With solemn oaths he told them that
the one who let Marianne in, he would beat to a jelly. And they knew that
he would keep his word.
No one had ever seen him so angry. Such a grief had never come to him
before. Had his daughter come into his presence, he would perhaps have
killed her.
Golden ornaments, silken dresses had he given her, wit and learning had
been instilled in her. She had been his pride, his glory. He had been
as proud of her as if she had worn a crown. Oh, his queen, his goddess,
his honored, beautiful, proud Marianne! Had he ever denied her anything?
Had he not always considered himself too common to be her father? Oh,
Marianne, Marianne!
Ought he not to hate her, when she is in love with Gösta Berling and
kisses him? Should he not cast her out, shut his door against her, when
she will disgrace her greatness by loving such a man? Let her stay at
Ekeby, let her run to the neighbors for shelter, let her sleep in the
snow-drifts; it’s all the same, she has already been dragged in the dirt,
the lovely Marianne. The bloom is gone. The lustre of her life is gone.
He lies there in his bed, and hears how she beats on the door. What does
that matter to him? He is asleep. Outside stands one who will marry a
dismissed priest; he has no home for such a one. If he had loved her
less, if he had been less proud of her, he could have let her come in.
Yes, his blessing he could not refuse them. He had played it away. But to
open the door for her, that he would not do. Ah, Marianne!
The beautiful young woman still stood outside the door of her home. One
minute she shook the lock in powerless rage, the next she fell on her
knees, clasped her mangled hands, and begged for forgiveness.
But no one heard her, no one answered, no one opened to her.
Oh! was it not terrible? I am filled with horror as I tell of it. She
came from a ball whose queen she had been! She had been proud, rich,
happy; and in one minute she was cast into such an endless misery. Shut
out from her home, exposed to the cold,—not scorned, not beaten, not
cursed, but shut out with cold, immovable lovelessness.
Think of the cold, starlit night, which spread its arch above her, the
great wide night with the empty, desolate snow-fields, with the silent
woods. Everything slept, everything was sunk in painless sleep; only one
living point in all that sleeping whiteness. All sorrow and pain and
horror, which otherwise had been spread over the world, crept forward
towards that one lonely point. O God, to suffer alone in the midst of
this sleeping, ice-bound world!
For the first time in her life she met with unmercifulness and hardness.
Her mother would not take the trouble to leave her bed to save her. The
old servants, who had guided her first steps, heard her and did not move
a finger for her sake. For what crime was she punished?
Where should she find compassion, if not at this door? If she had been a
murderess, she would still have knocked on it, knowing that they would
forgive her. If she had sunk to being the most miserable of creatures,
come wasted and in rags, she would still confidently have gone up to that
door, and expected a loving welcome. That door was the entrance to her
home; behind it she could only meet with love.
Had not her father tried her enough? Would they not soon open to her?
“Father, father!” she called. “Let me come in! I freeze, I tremble. It is
terrible out here!”
“Mother, mother! You who have gone so many steps to serve me, you who
have watched so many nights over me, why do you sleep now? Mother,
mother, wake just this one night, and I will never give you pain again!”
She calls, and falls into breathless silence to listen for an answer. But
no one heard her, no one obeyed her, no one answered.
Then she wrings her hands in despair, but there are no tears in her eyes.
The long, dark house with its closed doors and darkened windows lay awful
and motionless in the night. What would become of her, who was homeless?
Branded and dishonored was she, as long as she encumbered the earth. And
her father himself pressed the red-hot iron deeper into her shoulders.
“Father,” she called once more, “what will become of me? People will
believe the worst of me.”
She wept and suffered; her body was stiff with cold.
Alas, that such misery can reach one, who but lately stood so high! It
is so easy to be plunged into the deepest suffering! Should we not fear
life? Who sails in a safe craft? Round about us swell sorrows like a
heaving ocean; see how the hungry waves lick the ship’s sides, see how
they rage up over her. Ah, no safe anchorage, no solid ground, no steady
ship, as far as the eye can see; only an unknown sky over an ocean of
sorrow!
But hush! At last, at last! A light step comes through the hall.
“Is it mother?” asked Marianne.
“Yes, my child.”
“May I come in now?”
“Father will not let you come in.”
“I have run in the snow-drifts in my thin shoes all the way from Ekeby.
I have stood here an hour and knocked and called. I am freezing to death
out here. Why did you drive away and leave me?”
“My child, my child, why did you kiss Gösta Berling?”
“But father must have seen that I do not like him for that. It was in
fun. Does he think that I will marry Gösta?”
“Go to the gardener’s house, Marianne, and beg that you pass the night
there. Your father is drunk. He will not listen to reason. He has kept me
a prisoner up there. I crept out when I thought he was asleep. He will
kill me, if you come in.”
“Mother, mother, shall I go to strangers when I have a home? Are you as
hard as father? How can you allow me to be shut out? I will lay myself in
the drift out here, if you do not let me in.”
Then Marianne’s mother laid her hand on the lock to open the door, but at
the same moment a heavy step was heard on the stair, and a harsh voice
called her.
Marianne listened: her mother hurried away, the harsh voice cursed her
and then—
Marianne heard something terrible,—she could hear every sound in the
silent house.
She heard the thud of a blow, a blow with a stick or a box on the ear;
then she heard a faint noise, and then again a blow.
He struck her mother, the terrible brutal Melchior Sinclair struck his
wife!
And in pale horror Marianne threw herself down on the threshold and
writhed in anguish. Now she wept, and her tears froze to ice on the
threshold of her home.
Grace! pity! Open, open, that she might bend her own back under the
blows! Oh, that he could strike her mother, strike her, because she did
not wish to see her daughter the next day lying dead in the snow-drift,
because she had wished to comfort her child!
Great humiliation had come to Marianne that night. She had fancied
herself a queen, and she lay there little better than a whipped slave.
But she rose up in cold rage. Once more she struck the door with her
bloody hand and called:—
“Hear what I say to you,—you, who beat my mother. You shall weep for
this, Melchior Sinclair, weep!”
Then she went and laid herself to rest in the snow-drift. She threw off
her cloak and lay in her black velvet dress, easily distinguishable
against the white snow. She lay and thought how her father would come out
the next day on his early morning tour of inspection and find her there.
She only hoped that he himself might find her.
* * * * *
O Death, pale friend, is it as true as it is consoling, that I never can
escape meeting you? Even to me, the lowliest of earth’s workers, will
you come, to loosen the torn leather shoes from my feet, to take the
spade and the barrow from my hand, to take the working-dress from my
body. With gentle force you lay me out on a lace-trimmed bed; you adorn
me with draped linen sheets. My feet need no more shoes, my hands are
clad in snow-white gloves, which no more work shall soil. Consecrated by
thee to the sweetness of rest, I shall sleep a sleep of a thousand years.
Oh deliverer! The lowliest of earth’s laborers am I, and I dream with a
thrill of pleasure of the hour when I shall be received into your kingdom.
Pale friend, on me you can easily try your strength, but I tell you
that the fight was harder against those women of the olden days. Life’s
strength was mighty in their slender bodies, no cold could cool their
hot blood. You had laid Marianne on your bed, O Death, and you sat
by her side, as an old nurse sits by the cradle to lull the child to
sleep. You faithful old nurse, who know what is good for the children
of men, how angry you must be when playmates come, who with noise and
romping wake your sleeping child. How vexed you must have been when the
pensioners lifted the lovely Marianne out of the bed, when a man laid her
against his breast, and warm tears fell from his eyes on to her face.
* * * * *
At Ekeby all lights were out, and all the guests had gone. The pensioners
stood alone in the bachelors’ wing, about the last half-emptied punch
bowl.
Then Gösta rung on the edge of the bowl and made a speech for you, women
of the olden days. To speak of you, he said, was to speak of the kingdom
of heaven: you were all beauties, ever bright, ever young, ever lovely
and gentle as a mother’s eyes when she looks down on her child. Soft
as young squirrels you hung on your husband’s neck, your voice never
trembled with anger, no frowns ruffled your brow, your white hands were
never harsh and hard. Sweet saints, you were adored images in the temple
of home. Men lay at your feet, offering you incense and prayers. Through
you love worked its wonders, and round your temples poetry wreathed its
gold, gleaming glory.
And the pensioners sprang up, wild with wine, wild with his words, with
their blood raging. Old Eberhard and the lazy Christopher drew back
from the sport. In the wildest haste the pensioners harnessed horses to
sledges and hurried out in the cold night to pay homage to those who
never could be honored enough, to sing a serenade to each and all of
them who possessed the rosy cheeks and bright eyes which had just lighted
up Ekeby halls.
But the pensioners did not go far on their happy way, for when they came
to Björne, they found Marianne lying in the snow-drift, just by the door
of her home.
They trembled and raged to see her there. It was like finding a
worshipped saint lying mangled and stripped outside the church-door.
Gösta shook his clenched hand at the dark house. “You children of hate,”
he cried, “you hail-storms, you ravagers of God’s pleasure-house!”
Beerencreutz lighted his horn lantern and let it shine down on the livid
face. Then the pensioners saw Marianne’s mangled hands, and the tears
which had frozen to ice on her eyelashes, and they wailed like women, for
she was not merely a saintly image, but a beautiful woman, who had been a
joy to their old hearts.
Gösta Berling threw himself on his knees beside her.
“She is lying here, my bride,” he said. “She gave me the betrothal kiss a
few hours ago, and her father has promised me his blessing. She lies and
waits for me to come and share her white bed.”
And Gösta lifted up the lifeless form in his strong arms.
“Home to Ekeby with her!” he cried. “Now she is mine. In the snow-drift
I have found her; no one shall take her from me. We will not wake them
in there. What has she to do behind those doors, against which she has
beaten her hand into blood?”
He was allowed to do as he wished. He laid Marianne in the foremost
sledge and sat down at her side. Beerencreutz sat behind and took the
reins.
“Take snow and rub her, Gösta!” he commanded.
The cold had paralyzed her limbs, nothing more. The wildly agitated heart
still beat. She had not even lost consciousness; she knew all about the
pensioners, and how they had found her, but she could not move. So she
lay stiff and stark in the sledge, while Gösta Berling rubbed her with
snow and alternately wept and kissed, and she felt an infinite longing to
be able only to lift a hand, that she might give a caress in return.
She remembered everything. She lay there stiff and motionless and thought
more clearly than ever before. Was she in love with Gösta Berling? Yes,
she was. Was it merely a whim of the moment? No, it had been for many
years. She compared herself with him and the other people in Värmland.
They were all just like children. They followed whatever impulse came
to them. They only lived the outer life, had never looked deep into
their souls. But she had become what one grows to be by living in the
world; she could never really lose herself in anything. If she loved,
yes, whatever she did, one half of her stood and looked on with a cold
scorn. She had longed for a passion which should carry her away in wild
heedlessness, and now it had come. When she kissed Gösta Berling on the
balcony, for the first time she had forgotten herself.
And now the passion came over her again, her heart throbbed so that she
heard it beat. Should she not soon be mistress of her limbs? She felt a
wild joy that she had been thrust out from her home. Now she could be
Gösta’s without hesitation. How stupid she had been, to have subdued her
love so many years. Ah, it is so sweet to yield to love. But shall she
never, never be free from these icy chains? She has been ice within and
fire on the surface; now it is the opposite, a soul of fire in a body of
ice.
Then Gösta feels how two arms gently are raised about his neck in a weak,
feeble pressure.
He could only just feel them, but Marianne thought that she gave
expression to the suppressed passion in her by a suffocating embrace.
But when Beerencreutz saw it he let the horse go as it would along the
familiar road. He raised his eyes and looked obstinately and unceasingly
at the Pleiades.
CHAPTER VII
THE OLD VEHICLES
If it should happen to you that you are sitting or lying and reading this
at night, as I am writing it during the silent hours, then do not draw a
sigh of relief here and think that the good pensioners were allowed to
have an undisturbed sleep, after they had come back with Marianne and
made her a good bed in the best guest-room beyond the big drawing-room.
They went to bed, and went to sleep, but it was not their lot to sleep in
peace and quiet till noon, as you and I, dear reader, might have done,
if we had been awake till four in the morning and our limbs ached with
fatigue.
It must not be forgotten that the old major’s wife went about the country
with beggar’s wallet and stick, and that it never was her way, when she
had anything to do, to think of a poor tired sinner’s convenience. And
now she would do it even less, as she had decided to drive the pensioners
that very night from Ekeby.
Gone was the day when she sat in splendor and magnificence at Ekeby and
sowed happiness over the earth, as God sows stars over the skies. And
while she wandered homeless about the land, the authority and honor of
the great estate was left in the pensioners’ hands to be guarded by
them, as the wind guards ashes, as the spring sun guards the snow-drift.
It sometimes happened that the pensioners drove out, six or eight of
them, in a long sledge drawn by four horses, with chiming bells and
braided reins. If they met the major’s wife, as she went as a beggar,
they did not turn away their heads.
Clenched fists were stretched against her. By a violent swing of the
sledge, she was forced up into the drifts by the roadside, and Major
Fuchs, the bear-killer, always took pains to spit three times to take
away the evil effect of meeting the old woman.
They had no pity on her. She was as odious as a witch to them as she went
along the road. If any mishap had befallen her, they would no more have
grieved than he who shoots off his gun on Easter Eve, loaded with brass
hooks, grieves that he has hit a witch flying by.
It was to secure their salvation that these unhappy pensioners persecuted
the major’s wife. People have often been cruel and tortured one another
with the greatest hardness, when they have trembled for their souls.
When the pensioners late at night reeled from the drinking-tables to the
window to see if the night was calm and clear, they often noticed a dark
shadow, which glided over the grass, and knew that the major’s wife had
come to see her beloved home; then the bachelors’ wing rang with the
pensioners’ scornful laughter, and gibes flew from the open windows down
to her.
Verily, lovelessness and arrogance began to take possession of the
penniless adventurers’ hearts. Sintram had planted hate. Their souls
could not have been in greater danger if the major’s wife had remained
at Ekeby. More die in flight than in battle.
The major’s wife cherished no great anger against the pensioners.
If she had had the power, she would have whipped them like naughty boys
and then granted them her grace and favor again.
But now she feared for her beloved lands, which were in the pensioners’
hands to be guarded by them, as wolves guard the sheep, as crows guard
the spring grain.
There are many who have suffered the same sorrow. She is not the only one
who has seen ruin come to a beloved home and well-kept fields fall into
decay. They have seen their childhood’s home look at them like a wounded
animal. Many feel like culprits when they see the trees there wither
away, and the paths covered with tufts of grass. They wish to throw
themselves on their knees in those fields, which once boasted of rich
harvests, and beg them not to blame them for the disgrace which befalls
them. And they turn away from the poor old horses; they have not courage
to meet their glance. And they dare not stand by the gate and see the
cattle come home from pasture. There is no spot on earth so sad to visit
as an old home in ruin.
When I think what that proud Ekeby must have suffered under the
pensioners’ rule, I wish that the plan of the major’s wife had been
fulfilled, and that Ekeby had been taken from them.
It was not her thought to take back her dominion again.
She had only one object,—to rid her home of these madmen, these locusts,
these wild brigands, in whose path no grass grew.
While she went begging about the land and lived on alms, she continually
thought of her mother; and the thought bit deep into her heart, that
there could be no bettering for her till her mother lifted the curse from
her shoulders.
No one had ever mentioned the old woman’s death, so she must be still
living up there by the iron-works in the forest. Ninety years old, she
still lived in unceasing labor, watching over her milk-pans in the
summer, her charcoal-kilns in the winter, working till death, longing for
the day when she would have completed her life’s duties.
And the major’s wife thought that her mother had lived so long in order
to be able to lift the curse from her life. That mother could not die who
had called down such misery on her child.
So the major’s wife wanted to go to the old woman, that they might both
get rest. She wished to struggle up through the dark woods by the long
river to the home of her childhood.
Till then she could not rest. There were many who offered her a warm home
and all the comforts of a faithful friendship, but she would not stop
anywhere. Grim and fierce, she went from house to house, for she was
weighed down by the curse.
She was going to struggle up to her mother, but first she wanted to
provide for her beloved home. She would not go and leave it in the hands
of light-minded spendthrifts, of worthless drunkards, of good-for-nothing
dispersers of God’s gifts.
Should she go to find on her return her inheritance gone to waste, her
hammers silent, her horses starving, her servants scattered? Ah, no, once
more she will rise in her might and drive out the pensioners.
She well understood that her husband saw with joy how her inheritance
was squandered. But she knew him enough to understand, also, that if she
drove away his devouring locusts, he would be too lazy to get new ones.
Were the pensioners removed, then her old bailiff and overseer could
carry on the work at Ekeby in the old grooves.
And so, many nights her dark shadow had glided along the black lanes. She
had stolen in and out of the cottagers’ houses, she had whispered with
the miller and the mill-hands in the lower floor of the great mill, she
had conferred with the smith in the dark coal-house.
And they had all sworn to help her. The honor of the great estate should
no longer be left in the hands of careless pensioners, to be guarded as
the wind guards the ashes, as the wolf guards the flock of sheep.
And this night, when the merry gentlemen had danced, played, and drunk
until they had sunk down on their beds in a dead sleep, this very night
they must go. She has let them have their good time. She has sat in the
smithy and awaited the end of the ball. She has waited still longer,
until the pensioners should return from their nocturnal drive. She has
sat in silent waiting, until the message was brought her that the last
light was out in the bachelors’ wing and that the great house slept. Then
she rose and went out.
The major’s wife ordered that all the workmen on the estate should be
gathered together up by the bachelors’ wing; she herself went to the
house. There she went to the main building, knocked, and was let in. The
young daughter of the minister at Broby, whom she had trained to be a
capable maid-servant, was there to meet her.
“You are so welcome, madame,” said the maid, and kissed her hand.
“Put out the light!” said the major’s wife. “Do you think I cannot find
my way without a candle?”
And then she began a wandering through the silent house. She went from
the cellar to the attic, and said farewell. With stealthy step they went
from room to room.
The major’s wife was filled with old memories. The maid neither sighed
nor sobbed, but tear after tear flowed unchecked from her eyes, while she
followed her mistress. The major’s wife had her open the linen-closet
and silver-chest, and passed her hand over the fine damask table-cloths
and the magnificent silver service. She felt caressingly the mighty pile
of pillows in the store-closet. She touched all the implements, the
looms, the spinning-wheels, and winding-bobbins. She thrust her hand into
the spice-box, and felt the rows of tallow candles which hung from the
rafters.
“The candles are dry,” she said. “They can be taken down and put away.”
She was down in the cellar, carefully lifted the beer-casks, and groped
over the rows of wine bottles.
She went into the pantry and kitchen; she felt everything, examined
everything. She stretched out her hand and said farewell to everything in
her house.
Last she went through the rooms. She found the long broad sofas in their
places; she laid her hand on the cool slabs of the marble tables, and on
the mirrors with their frames of gilded dancing nymphs.
“This is a rich house,” she said. “A noble man was he who gave me all
this for my own.”
In the great drawing-room, where the dance had lately whirled, the
stiff-backed arm-chairs already stood in prim order against the walls.
She went over to the piano, and very gently struck a chord.
“Joy and gladness were no strangers here in my time, either,” she said.
She went also to the guest-room beyond. It was pitch-dark. The major’s
wife groped with her hands and came against the maid’s face.
“Are you weeping?” she said, for she felt her hands were wet with tears.
Then the young girl burst out sobbing.
“Madame,” she cried, “madame, they will destroy everything. Why do you
leave us and let the pensioners ruin your house?”
The major’s wife drew back the curtain and pointed out into the yard.
“Is it I who have taught you to weep and lament?” she cried. “Look out!
the place is full of people; to-morrow there will not be one pensioner
left at Ekeby.”
“Are you coming back?” asked the maid.
“My time has not yet come,” said the major’s wife. “The highway is my
home, and the hay-stack my bed. But you shall watch over Ekeby for me,
child, while I am away.”
And they went on. Neither of them knew or thought that Marianne slept
in that very room. But she did not sleep. She was wide awake, heard
everything, and understood it all. She had lain there in bed and sung a
hymn to Love.
“You conqueror, who have taken me out of myself,” she said, “I lay in
fathomless misery and you have changed it to a paradise. My hands stuck
fast to the iron latch of the closed door and were torn and wounded; on
the threshold of my home my tears lie frozen to pearls of ice. Anger
froze my heart when I heard the blows on my mother’s back. In the cold
snow-drift I hoped to sleep away my anger, but you came. O Love, child
of fire, to one who was frozen by much cold you came. When I compare
my sufferings to the glory won by them, they seem to me as nothing. I
am free of all ties. I have no father nor mother, no home. People will
believe all evil of me and turn away from me. It has pleased you to do
this, O Love, for why should I stand higher than my beloved? Hand in hand
we will wander out into the world. Gösta Berling’s bride is penniless;
he found her in a snow-drift. We shall not live in lofty halls, but in a
cottage at the edge of the wood. I shall help him to watch the kiln, I
shall help him to set snares for partridges and hares, I shall cook his
food and mend his clothes. Oh, my beloved, how I shall long and mourn,
while I sit there alone by the edge of the wood and wait for you! But
not for the days of riches, only for you; only you shall I look for and
miss,—your footstep on the forest path, your joyous song, as you come
with your axe on your shoulder. Oh, my beloved, my beloved! As long as my
life lasts, I could sit and wait for you.”
So she lay and sang hymns to the heart-conquering god, and never once had
closed her eyes in sleep when the major’s wife came in.
When she had gone, Marianne got up and dressed herself. Once more must
she put on the black velvet dress and the thin satin slippers. She
wrapped a blanket about her like a shawl, and hurried out once again into
the terrible night.
Calm, starlit, and bitingly cold the February night lay over the earth;
it was as if it would never end. And the darkness and the cold of that
long night lasted on the earth long, long after the sun had risen, long
after the snow-drifts through which Marianne wandered had been changed to
water.
Marianne hurried away from Ekeby to get help. She could not let those men
who had rescued her from the snow-drift and opened their hearts and home
to her be hunted away. She went down to Sjö to Major Samzelius. It would
be an hour before she could be back.
When the major’s wife had said farewell to her home, she went out into
the yard, where her people were waiting, and the struggle began.
She placed them round about the high, narrow house, the upper story
of which was the pensioners’ far-famed home,—the great room with the
whitewashed walls, the red-painted chests, and the great folding-table,
where playing-cards swim in the spilled brandy, where the broad beds are
hidden by yellow striped curtains where the pensioners sleep.
And in the stable before full mangers the pensioners’ horses sleep and
dream of the journeys of their youth. It is sweet to dream when they know
that they never again shall leave the filled cribs, the warm stalls of
Ekeby.
In a musty old carriage-house, where all the broken-down coaches and
worn-out sledges were stored, was a wonderful collection of old vehicles.
Many are the pensioners who have lived and died at Ekeby. Their names
are forgotten on the earth, and they have no longer a place in men’s
hearts; but the major’s wife has kept the vehicles in which they came to
Ekeby, she has collected them all in the old carriage-house.
And there they stand and sleep, and dust falls thick, thick over them.
But now in this February night the major’s wife has the door opened to
the carriage-house, and with lanterns and torches she seeks out the
vehicles which belong to Ekeby’s present pensioners,—Beerencreutz’s old
gig, and Örneclou’s coach, painted with coat of arms, and the narrow
cutter which had brought Cousin Christopher.
She does not care if the vehicles are for summer or winter, she only sees
that each one gets his own.
And in the stable they are now awake, all the pensioners’ old horses, who
had so lately been dreaming before full mangers. The dream shall be true.
You shall again try the steep hills, and the musty hay in the sheds of
wayside inns, and drunken horse-dealers’ sharp whips, and the mad races
on ice so slippery that you tremble only to walk on it.
The old beasts mouth and snort when the bit is put into their toothless
jaws; the old vehicles creak and crack. Pitiful infirmity, which should
have been allowed to sleep in peace till the end of the world, was now
dragged out before all eyes; stiff joints, halting forelegs, spavin, and
broken-wind are shown up.
The stable grooms succeed, however, in getting the horses harnessed; then
they go and ask the major’s wife in what Gösta Berling shall be put, for,
as every one knows, he came to Ekeby in the coal-sledge of the major’s
wife.
“Put Don Juan in our best sledge,” she says, “and spread over it the
bear-skin with the silver claws!” And when the grooms grumble, she
continues: “There is not a horse in my stable which I would not give to
be rid of that man, remember that!”
Well, now the vehicles are waked and the horses too, but the pensioners
still sleep. It is now their time to be brought out in the winter night;
but it is a more perilous deed to seize them in their beds than to lead
out stiff-legged horses and shaky old carriages. They are bold, strong
men, tried in a hundred adventures; they are ready to defend themselves
till death; it is no easy thing to take them against their will from out
their beds and down to the carriages which shall carry them away.
The major’s wife has them set fire to a hay-stack, which stands so near
the house that the flames must shine in to where the pensioners are
sleeping.
“The hay-stack is mine, all Ekeby is mine,” she says.
And when the stack is in flames, she cries: “Wake them now!”
But the pensioners sleep behind well-closed doors. The whole mass of
people begin to cry out that terrible “Fire, fire!” but the pensioners
sleep on.
The master-smith’s heavy sledge-hammer thunders against the door, but the
pensioners sleep.
A hard snowball breaks the window-pane and flies into the room,
rebounding against the bed-curtains, but the pensioners sleep.
They dream that a lovely girl throws a handkerchief at them, they dream
of applause from behind fallen curtains, they dream of gay laughter and
the deafening noise of midnight feasts.
The noise of cannon at their cars, an ocean of ice-cold water were needed
to awake them.
They have bowed, danced, played, acted, and sung. They are heavy with
wine, exhausted, and sleep a sleep as deep as death’s.
This blessed sleep almost saves them.
The people begin to think that this quiet conceals a danger. What if
it means that the pensioners are already out to get help? What if it
means that they stand awake, with finger on the trigger, on guard behind
windows or door, ready to fall upon the first who enters?
These men are crafty, ready to fight; they must mean something by their
silence. Who can think it of them, that they would let themselves be
surprised in their lairs like bears?
The people bawl their “Fire, fire!” time after time, but nothing avails.
Then when all are trembling, the major’s wife herself takes an axe and
bursts open the outer door.
Then she rushes alone up the stairs, throws open the door to the
bachelors’ wing, and calls into the room: “Fire!”
Hers is a voice which finds a better echo in the pensioners’ ears than
the people’s outcry. Accustomed to obey that voice, twelve men at the
same moment spring from their beds, see the flames, throw on their
clothes, and rush down the stairs out into the yard.
But at the door stands the great master-smith and two stout mill-hands,
and deep disgrace then befalls the pensioners. Each, as he comes down, is
seized, thrown to the ground, and his feet bound; thereupon he is carried
without ceremony to the vehicle prepared for him.
None escaped; they were all caught. Beerencreutz, the grim colonel, was
bound and carried away; also Christian Bergh, the mighty captain, and
Eberhard, the philosopher.
Even the invincible, the terrible Gösta Berling was caught. The major’s
wife had succeeded.
She was still greater than the pensioners.
They are pitiful to see, as they sit with bound limbs in the mouldy old
vehicles. There are hanging heads and angry glances, and the yard rings
with oaths and wild bursts of powerless rage.
The major’s wife goes from one to the other.
“You shall swear,” she says, “never to come back to Ekeby.”
“Begone, hag!”
“You shall swear,” she says, “otherwise I will throw you into the
bachelors’ wing, bound as you are, and you shall burn up in there, for
to-night I am going to burn down the bachelors’ wing.”
“You dare not do that.”
“Dare not! Is not Ekeby mine? Ah, you villain! Do you think I do not
remember how you spit at me on the highway? Did I not long to set fire
here just now and let you all burn up? Did you lift a finger to defend me
when I was driven from my home? No, swear now!”
And she stands there so terrible, although she pretends perhaps to be
more angry than she is, and so many men armed with axes stand about her,
that they are obliged to swear, that no worse misfortune may happen.
The major’s wife has their clothes and boxes brought down and has their
hand-fetters loosened; then the reins are laid in their hands.
But much time has been consumed, and Marianne has reached Sjö.
The major was no late-riser; he was dressed when she came. She met him in
the yard; he had been out with his bears’ breakfast.
He did not say anything when he heard her story. He only went in to the
bears, put muzzles on them, led them out, and hurried away to Ekeby.
Marianne followed him at a distance. She was dropping with fatigue, but
then she saw a bright light of fire in the sky and was frightened nearly
to death.
What a night it was! A man beats his wife and leaves his child to freeze
to death outside his door. Did a woman now mean to burn up her enemies;
did the old major mean to let loose the bears on his own people?
She conquered her weariness, hurried past the major, and ran madly up to
Ekeby.
She had a good start. When she reached the yard, she made her way through
the crowd. When she stood in the middle of the ring, face to face with
the major’s wife, she cried as loud as she could,—
“The major, the major is coming with the bears!”
There was consternation among the people; all eyes turned to the major’s
wife.
“You have gone for him,” she said to Marianne.
“Run!” cried the latter, more earnestly. “Away, for God’s sake! I do not
know what the major is thinking of, but he has the bears with him.”
All stood still and looked at the major’s wife.
“I thank you for your help, children,” she said quietly to the people.
“Everything which has happened to-night has been so arranged that no one
of you can be prosecuted by the law or get into trouble for it. Go home
now! I do not want to see any of my people murder or be murdered. Go now!”
Still the people waited.
The major’s wife turned to Marianne.
“I know that you are in love,” she said. “You act in love’s madness. May
the day never come when you must look on powerless at the ruin of your
home! May you always be mistress over your tongue and your hand when
anger fills the soul!”
“Dear children, come now, come!” she continued, turning to the people.
“May God protect Ekeby! I must go to my mother. Oh, Marianne, when you
have got back your senses, when Ekeby is ravaged, and the land sighs in
want, think on what you have done this night, and look after the people!”
Thereupon she went, followed by her people.
When the major reached the yard, he found there no living thing but
Marianne and a long line of horses with sledges and carriages,—a long
dismal line, where the horses were not worse than the vehicles, nor the
vehicles worse than their owners. Ill-used in the struggle of life were
they all.
Marianne went forward and freed them.
She noticed how they bit their lips and looked away. They were ashamed as
never before. A great disgrace had befallen them.
“I was not better off when I lay on my knees on the steps at Björne a
couple of hours ago,” said Marianne.
And so, dear reader, what happened afterwards that night—how the old
vehicles were put into the carriage-house, the horses in the stable, and
the pensioners in their house—I shall not try to relate. The dawn began
to appear over the eastern hills, and the day came clear and calm. How
much quieter the bright, sunny days are than the dark nights, under whose
protecting wings beasts of prey hunt and owls hoot!
I will only say that when the pensioners had gone in again and had found
a few drops in the last punch-bowl to fill their glasses, a sudden
ecstasy came over them.
“A toast for the major’s wife!” they cried.
Ah, she is a matchless woman! What better could they wish for than to
serve her, to worship her?
Was it not sad that the devil had got her in his power, and that all her
endeavors were to send poor gentlemen’s souls to hell?
CHAPTER VIII
THE GREAT BEAR IN GURLITTA CLIFF
In the darkness of the forests dwell unholy creatures, whose jaws are
armed with horrible, glittering teeth or sharp beaks, whose feet have
pointed claws, which long to sink themselves in a blood-filled throat,
and whose eyes shine with murderous desires.
There the wolves live, who come out at night and hunt the peasant’s
sledge until the wife must take her little child, which sits upon her
knee, and throw it to them, to save her own and her husband’s life.
There the lynx lives, which the people call “göpa,” for in the woods at
least it is dangerous to call it by its right name. He who speaks of it
during the day had best see that the doors and windows of the sheep-house
are well closed towards night, for otherwise it will come. It climbs
right up the walls, for its claws are strong as steel nails, glides in
through the smallest hole, and throws itself on the sheep. And “göpa”
hangs on their throats, and drinks their blood, and kills and tears, till
every sheep is dead. He does not cease his wild death-dance among the
terrified animals as long as any of them show a sign of life.
And in the morning the peasant finds all the sheep lying dead with torn
throats, for “göpa” leaves nothing living where he ravages.
There the great owl lives, which hoots at dusk. If one mimics him, he
comes whizzing down with outspread wings and strikes out one’s eyes, for
he is no real bird, but an evil spirit.
And there lives the most terrible of them all, the bear, who has the
strength of twelve men, and who, when he becomes a devil, can be killed
only with a silver bullet.
And if one should chance to meet him in the wood, big and high as a
wandering cliff, one must not run, nor defend one’s self; one must throw
one’s self down on the ground and pretend to be dead. Many small children
have imagined themselves lying on the ground with the bear over them.
He has rolled them over with his paw, and they have felt his hot breath
on their faces, but they have lain quiet, until he has gone away to dig
a hole to bury them in. Then they have softly raised themselves up and
stolen away, slowly at first, then in mad haste.
But think, think if the bear had not thought them really dead, but had
taken a bite, or if he had been very hungry and wanted to eat them right
up, or if he had seen them when they moved and had run after them. O God!
Terror is a witch. She sits in the dimness of the forest, sings magic
songs to people, and fills their hearts with frightful thoughts. From her
comes that deadly fear which weighs down life and darkens the beauty of
smiling landscapes. Nature is malignant, treacherous as a sleeping snake;
one can believe nothing. There lies Löfven’s lake in brilliant beauty;
but trust it not, it lures to destruction. Every year it must gather its
tribute of the drowned. There lies the wood temptingly peaceful; but
trust it not! The wood is full of unholy things, beset with evil spirits
and bloodthirsty vagrants’ souls.
Trust not the brook with its gliding waters. It is sudden sickness and
death to wade in it after sunset. Trust not the cuckoo, who sings so
gayly in the spring. In the autumn he becomes a hawk with fierce eyes and
terrible claws. Trust not the moss, nor the heather, nor the rock. Nature
is evil, full of invisible powers, who hate man. There is no spot where
you can set your foot in safety; it is wonderful that your weak race can
escape so much persecution.
Terror is a witch. Does she still sit in the darkness of the woods of
Värmland? Does she still darken the beauty of smiling places, does she
still dampen the joy of living? Great her power has been. I know it well,
who have put steel in the cradle and a red-hot coal in the bath; I know
it, who have felt her iron hand around my heart.
But no one shall think that I now am going to relate anything terrible
or dreadful. It is only an old story of the great bear in Gurlitta Cliff
which I must tell; and any one can believe it or not, as it always is
with hunting stories.
* * * * *
The great bear has its home on the beautiful mountain summit which is
called Gurlitta Cliff, and which raises itself precipitously from the
shores of the Löfven.
The roots of a fallen pine between which tufts of moss are hanging make
the walls and roof of his dwelling, branches and twigs protect it, the
snow makes it warm. He can lie there and sleep a good quiet sleep from
summer to summer.
Is he, then, a poet, a dreamer, this hairy monarch of the forest? Will
he sleep away the cold winter’s chill nights and colorless days to be
waked by purling brooks and the song of birds? Will he lie there and
dream of blushing cranberry bogs, and of ant-hills filled with brown
delicious creatures, and of the white lambs which graze on the green
slopes? Does he want, happy one! to escape the winter of life?
Outside the snow-storm rages; wolves and foxes wander about, mad with
hunger. Why shall the bear alone sleep? Let him get up and feel how the
cold bites, how heavy it is to wade in deep snow.
He has bedded himself in so well. He is like the sleeping princess in
the fairy tale; and as she was waked by love, so will he be waked by the
spring. By a ray of sunlight which penetrates through the twigs and warms
his nose, by the drops of melting snow which wet his fur, will he be
waked. Woe to him who untimely disturbs him!
He hears, suddenly, shouts, noise, and shots. He shakes the sleep out
of his joints, and pushes aside the branches to see what it is. It is
not spring, which rattles and roars outside his lair, nor the wind,
which overthrows pine-trees and casts up the driving snow, but it is the
pensioners, the pensioners from Ekeby, old acquaintances of the forest
monarch. He remembered well the night when Fuchs and Beerencreutz sat
and dozed in a Nygård peasant’s barn, where they awaited a visit from
him. They had just fallen asleep over their brandy-bottle, when he swung
himself in through the peat-roof; but they awoke, when he was trying to
lift the cow he had killed out of the stall, and fell upon him with gun
and knife. They took the cow from him and one of his eyes, but he saved
his life.
Yes, verily the pensioners and he are old acquaintances. He remembered
how they had come on him another time, when he and his queen consort had
just laid themselves down for their winter sleep in the old lair here on
Gurlitta Cliff and had young ones in the hole. He remembered well how
they came on them unawares. He got away all right, throwing to either
side everything that stood in his path; but he must limp for life from a
bullet in his thigh, and when he came back at night to the royal lair,
the snow was red with his queen consort’s blood, and the royal children
had been carried away to the plain, to grow up there and be man’s
servants and friends.
Yes, now the ground trembles; now the snow-drift which hides his lair
shakes; now he bursts out, the great bear, the pensioners’ old enemy.
Look out, Fuchs, old bear-killer; look out now, Beerencreutz; look out,
Gösta Berling, hero of a hundred adventures!
Woe to all poets, all dreamers, all heroes of romance! There stands Gösta
Berling with finger on trigger, and the bear comes straight towards him.
Why does he not shoot? What is he thinking of?
Why does he not send a bullet straight into the broad breast? He stands
in just the place to do it. The others are not placed right to shoot.
Does he think he is on parade before the forest monarch?
Gösta of course stood and dreamed of the lovely Marianne, who is lying at
Ekeby dangerously ill, from the chill of that night when she slept in the
snow-drift.
He thinks of her, who also is a sacrifice to the curse of hatred which
overlies the earth, and he shudders at himself, who has come out to
pursue and to kill.
And there comes the great bear right towards him, blind in one eye from
the blow of a pensioner’s knife, lame in one leg from a bullet from a
pensioner’s gun, fierce and shaggy, alone, since they had killed his
wife and carried away his children. And Gösta sees him as he is,—a poor,
persecuted beast, whom he will not deprive of life, all he has left,
since people have taken from him everything else.
“Let him kill me,” thinks Gösta, “but I will not shoot.”
And while the bear breaks his way towards him, he stands quite still as
if on parade, and when the forest monarch stands directly in front of
him, he presents arms and takes a step to one side.
The bear continues on his way, knowing too well that he has no time to
waste, breaks into the wood, ploughs his way through drifts the height of
a man, rolls down the steep slopes, and escapes, while all of them, who
had stood with cocked guns and waited for Gösta’s shot, shoot off their
guns after him.
But it is of no avail; the ring is broken, and the bear gone. Fuchs
scolds, and Beerencreutz swears, but Gösta only laughs.
How could they ask that any one so happy as he should harm one of God’s
creatures?
The great bear of Gurlitta Cliff got away thus with his life, and he
is waked from his winter sleep, as the peasants will find. No bear has
greater skill than he to tear apart the roofs of their low, cellar-like
cow-barns; none can better avoid a concealed ambush.
The people about the upper Löfven soon were at their wits’ end about him.
Message after message was sent down to the pensioners, that they should
come and kill the bear.
Day after day, night after night, during the whole of February, the
pensioners scour the upper Löfven to find the bear, but he always escapes
them. Has he learned cunning from the fox, and swiftness from the
wolf? If they lie in wait at one place, he is ravaging the neighboring
farmyard; if they seek him in the wood, he is pursuing the peasant, who
comes driving over the ice. He has become the boldest of marauders: he
creeps into the garret and empties the housewife’s honey-jar; he kills
the horse in the peasant’s sledge.
But gradually they begin to understand what kind of a bear he is and why
Gösta could not shoot him. Terrible to say, dreadful to believe, this
is no ordinary bear. No one can hope to kill him if he does not have a
silver bullet in his gun. A bullet of silver and bell-metal cast on a
Thursday evening at new moon in the church-tower without the priest or
the sexton or anybody knowing it would certainly kill him, but such a one
is not so easy to get.
* * * * *
There is one man at Ekeby who, more than all the rest, would grieve over
all this. It is, as one can easily guess, Anders Fuchs, the bear-killer.
He loses both his appetite and his sleep in his anger at not being able
to kill the great bear in Gurlitta Cliff. At last even he understands
that the bear can only be killed with a silver bullet.
The grim Major Anders Fuchs was not handsome. He had a heavy, clumsy
body, and a broad, red face, with hanging bags under his cheeks and
several double chins. His small black moustache sat stiff as a brush
above his thick lips, and his black hair stood out rough and thick from
his head. Moreover, he was a man of few words and a glutton. He was not
a person whom women meet with sunny smile and open arms, nor did he give
them tender glances back again. One could not believe that he ever would
see a woman whom he could tolerate, and everything which concerned love
and enthusiasm was foreign to him.
One Thursday evening, when the moon, just two fingers wide, lingers above
the horizon an hour or two after the sun has gone down, Major Fuchs
betakes himself from Ekeby without telling any one where he means to go.
He has flint and steel and a bullet-mould in his hunting-bag, and his gun
on his back, and goes up towards the church at Bro to see what luck there
may be for an honest man.
The church lies on the eastern shore of the narrow sound between the
upper and lower Löfven, and Major Fuchs must go over a bridge to get
there. He wends his way towards it, deep in his thoughts, without looking
up towards Broby hill, where the houses cut sharply against the clear
evening sky; he only looks on the ground, and wonders how he shall get
hold of the key of the church without anybody’s knowing it.
When he comes down to the bridge, he hears some one screaming so
despairingly that he has to look up.
At that time the little German, Faber, was organist at Bro. He was a
slender man, small in body and mind. And the sexton was Jan Larsson, an
energetic peasant, but poor, for the Broby clergyman had cheated him out
of his patrimony, five hundred rix-dollars.
The sexton wanted to marry the organist’s sister, the little, delicate
maiden Faber, but the organist would not let him have her, and therefore
the two were not good friends. That evening the sexton has met the
organist as he crossed the bridge and has fallen upon him. He seizes him
by the shoulder, and holding him at arm’s length out over the railing
tells him solemnly that he shall drop him into the sound if he does
not give him the little maiden. The little German will not give in; he
struggles and screams, and reiterates “No,” although far below him he
sees the black water rushing between the white banks.
“No, no,” he screams; “no, no!”
And it is uncertain if the sexton in his rage would have let him down
into the cold black water if Major Fuchs had not just then come over the
bridge. The sexton is afraid, puts Faber down on solid ground, and runs
away as fast as he can.
Little Faber falls on the major’s neck to thank him for his life, but
the major pushes him away, and says that there is nothing to thank him
for. The major has no love for Germans, ever since he had his quarters
at Putbus on the Rügen during the Pomeranian war. He had never so nearly
starved to death as in those days.
Then little Faber wants to run up to the bailiff Scharling and accuse the
sexton of an attempt at murder, but the major lets him know that it is of
no use here in the country, for it does not count for anything to kill a
German.
Little Faber grows calmer and asks the major to come home with him to eat
a bit of sausage and to taste his home-brewed ale.
The major follows him, for he thinks that the organist must have a key
to the church-door; and so they go up the hill, where the Bro church
stands, with the vicarage, the sexton’s cottage and the organist’s house
round about it.
“You must excuse us,” says little Faber, as he and the major enter the
house. “It is not really in order to-day. We have had a little to do, my
sister and I. We have killed a cock.”
“The devil!” cries the major.
The little maid Faber has just come in with the ale in great earthen
mugs. Now, every one knows that the major did not look upon women with a
tender glance, but this little maiden he had to gaze upon with delight,
as she came in so neat in lace and cap. Her light hair lay combed so
smooth above her forehead, the home-woven dress was so pretty and so
dazzlingly clean, her little hands were so busy and eager, and her little
face so rosy and round, that he could not help thinking that if he had
seen such a little woman twenty-five years ago, he must have come forward
and offered himself.
She is so pretty and rosy and nimble, but her eyes are quite red with
weeping. It is that which suggests such tender thoughts.
While the men eat and drink, she goes in and out of the room. Once she
comes to her brother, courtesies, and says,—
“How do you wish me to place the cows in the stable?”
“Put twelve on the left and eleven on the right, then they can’t gore one
another.”
“Have you so many cows, Faber?” bursts out the major.
The fact was that the organist had only two cows, but he called one
eleven and the other twelve, that it might sound fine, when he spoke of
them.
And then the major hears that Faber’s barn is being altered, so that the
cows are out all day and at night are put into the woodshed.
The little maiden comes again to her brother, courtesies to him, and says
that the carpenter had asked how high the barn should be made.
“Measure by the cows,” says the organist, “measure by the cows!”
Major Fuchs thinks that is such a good answer. However it comes to pass,
the major asks the organist why his sister’s eyes are so red, and learns
that she weeps because he will not let her marry the penniless sexton, in
debt and without inheritance as he is.
Major Fuchs grows more and more thoughtful. He empties tankard after
tankard, and eats sausage after sausage, without noticing it. Little
Faber is appalled at such an appetite and thirst; but the more the major
eats and drinks, the clearer and more determined his mind grows. The more
decided becomes his resolution to do something for the little maiden
Faber.
He has kept his eyes fixed on the great key which hangs on a knob by the
door, and as soon as little Faber, who has had to keep up with the major
in drinking the home-brewed ale, lays his head on the table and snores,
Major Fuchs has seized the key, put on his cap, and hurried away.
A minute later he is groping his way up the tower stairs, lighted by
his little horn lantern, and comes at last to the bell-room, where the
bells open their wide throats over him. He scrapes off a little of the
bell-metal with a file, and is just going to take the bullet-mould and
melting-ladle out of his hunting-bag, when he finds that he has forgotten
what is most important of all: he has no silver with him. If there
shall be any power in the bullet, it must be cast there in the tower.
Everything is right; it is Thursday evening and a new moon, and no one
has any idea he is there, and now he cannot do anything. He sends forth
into the silence of the night an oath with such a ring in it that the
bells hum.
Then he hears a slight noise down in the church and thinks he hears steps
on the stairs. Yes, it is true, heavy steps are coming up the stairs.
Major Fuchs, who stands there and swears so that the bells vibrate, is a
little thoughtful at that. He wonders who it can be who is coming to help
him with the bullet-casting. The steps come nearer and nearer. Whoever it
is, is coming all the way up to the bell-room.
The major creeps far in among the beams and rafters, and puts out his
lantern. He is not exactly afraid, but the whole thing would be spoiled
if any one should see him there. He has scarcely had time to hide before
the new-comer’s head appears above the floor.
The major knows him well; it is the miserly Broby minister. He, who is
nearly mad with greed, has the habit of hiding his treasures in the
strangest places. He comes now with a roll of bank-notes which he is
going to hide in the tower-room. He does not know that any one sees him.
He lifts up a board in the floor and puts in the money and takes himself
off again.
The major is not slow; he lifts up the same board. Oh, so much money!
Package after package of bank-notes, and among them brown leather bags,
full of silver. The major takes just enough silver to make a bullet; the
rest he leaves.
When he comes down to the earth again, he has the silver bullet in
his gun. He wonders what luck has in store for him that night. It is
marvellous on Thursday nights, as every one knows. He goes up towards
the organist’s house. Fancy if the bear knew that Faber’s cows are in a
miserable shed, no better than under the bare sky.
What! surely he sees something black and big coming over the field
towards the woodshed; it must be the bear. He puts the gun to his cheek
and is just going to shoot, but then he changes his mind.
The little maid’s red eyes come before him in the darkness; he thinks
that he will help her and the sexton a little, but it is hard not to kill
the great bear himself. He said afterwards that nothing in the world had
ever been so hard, but as the little maiden was so dear and sweet, it had
to be done.
He goes up to the sexton’s house, wakes him, drags him out, half dressed
and half naked, and says that he shall shoot the bear which is creeping
about outside of Faber’s woodshed.
“If you shoot the bear, he will surely give you his sister,” he says,
“for then you will be a famous man. That is no ordinary bear, and the
best men in the country would consider it an honor to kill it.”
And he puts into his hand his own gun, loaded with a bullet of silver and
bell-metal cast in a church tower on a Thursday evening at the new moon,
and he cannot help trembling with envy that another than he shall shoot
the great forest monarch, the old bear of Gurlitta Cliff.
The sexton aims,—God help us! aims, as if he meant to hit the Great Bear,
which high up in the sky wanders about the North Star, and not a bear
wandering on the plain,—and the gun goes off with a bang which can be
heard all the way to Gurlitta Cliff.
But however he has aimed, the bear falls. So it is when one shoots with a
silver bullet. One shoots the bear through the heart, even if one aims at
the Dipper.
People come rushing out from all the neighboring farmyards and wonder
what is going on, for never had a shot sounded so loud nor waked so many
sleeping echoes as this one, and the sexton wins much praise, for the
bear had been a real pest.
Little Faber comes out too, but now is Major Fuchs sadly disappointed.
There stands the sexton covered with glory, besides having saved Faber’s
cows, but the little organist is neither touched nor grateful. He does
not open his arms to him and greet him as brother-in-law and hero.
The major stands and frowns and stamps his foot in rage over such
smallness. He wants to explain to the covetous, narrow-minded little
fellow what a deed it is, but he begins to stammer, so that he cannot get
out a word. And he gets angry and more angry at the thought that he has
given up the glory of killing the great bear in vain.
Oh, it is quite impossible for him to comprehend that he who had done
such a deed should not be worthy to win the proudest of brides.
The sexton and some of the young men are going to skin the bear; they go
to the grindstone and sharpen the knives. Others go in and go to bed.
Major Fuchs stands alone by the dead bear.
Then he goes to the church once more, puts the key again in the lock,
climbs up the narrow stairs and the twisted ladder, wakes the sleeping
pigeons, and once more comes up to the tower-room.
Afterwards, when the bear is skinned under the major’s inspection, they
find between his jaws a package of notes of five hundred rix-dollars. It
is impossible to say how it came there, but of course it was a marvellous
bear; and as the sexton had killed him, the money is his, that is very
plain.
When it is made known, little Faber too understands what a glorious deed
the sexton has done, and he declares that he would be proud to be his
brother-in-law.
On Friday evening Major Anders Fuchs returns to Ekeby, after having been
at a feast, in honor of the lucky shot, at the sexton’s and an engagement
dinner at the organist’s. He follows the road with a heavy heart; he
feels no joy that his enemy is dead, and no pleasure in the magnificent
bear-skin which the sexton has given him.
Many perhaps will believe that he is grieving that the sweet little
maiden shall be another’s. Oh no, that causes him no sorrow. But what
goes to his very heart is that the old, one-eyed forest king is dead, and
it was not he who shot the silver bullet at him.
So he comes into the pensioners’ wing, where the pensioners are sitting
round the fire, and without a word throws the bear-skin down among them.
Let no one think that he told about that expedition; it was not until
long, long after that any one could get out of him the truth of it. Nor
did he betray the Broby clergyman’s hiding-place, who perhaps never
noticed the theft.
The pensioners examine the skin.
“It is a fine skin,” says Beerencreutz. “I would like to know why this
fellow has come out of his winter sleep, or perhaps you shot him in his
hole?”
“He was shot at Bro.”
“Yes, as big as the Gurlitta bear he never was,” says Gösta, “but he has
been a fine beast.”
“If he had had one eye,” says Kevenhüller, “I would have thought that you
had killed the old one himself, he is so big; but this one has no wound
or inflammation about his eyes, so it cannot be the same.”
Fuchs swears over his stupidity, but then his face lights up so that he
is really handsome. The great bear has not been killed by another man’s
bullet.
“Lord God, how good thou art!” he says, and folds his hands.
CHAPTER IX
THE AUCTION AT BJÖRNE
We young people often had to wonder at the old people’s tales. “Was there
a ball every day, as long as your radiant youth lasted?” we asked them.
“Was life then one long adventure?”
“Were all young women beautiful and lovely in those days, and did every
feast end by Gösta Berling carrying off one of them?”
Then the old people shook their worthy heads, and began to tell of the
whirring of the spinning-wheel and the clatter of the loom, of work in
the kitchen, of the thud of the flail and the path of the axe through
the forest; but it was not long before they harked back to the old
theme. Then sledges drove up to the door, horses speeded away through
the dark woods with the joyous young people; then the dance whirled and
the violin-strings snapped. Adventure’s wild chase roared about Löfven’s
long lake with thunder and crash. Far away could its noise be heard. The
forest tottered and fell, all the powers of destruction were let loose;
fire flamed out, floods laid waste the land, wild beasts roamed starving
about the farmyards. Under the light-footed horses’ hoofs all quiet
happiness was trampled to dust. Wherever the hunt rushed by, men’s hearts
flamed up in madness, and the women in pale terror had to flee from their
homes.
And we young ones sat wondering, silent, troubled, but blissful. “What
people!” we thought. “We shall never see their like.”
“Did the people of those days never _think_ of what they were doing?” we
asked.
“Of course they thought, children,” answered the old people.
“But not as we think,” we insisted.
But the old people did not understand what we meant.
But we thought of the strange spirit of self-consciousness which had
already taken possession of us. We thought of him, with his eyes of ice
and his long, bent fingers,—he who sits there in the soul’s darkest
corner and picks to pieces our being, just as old women pick to pieces
bits of silk and wool.
Bit by bit had the long, hard, crooked fingers picked, until our whole
self lay there like a pile of rags, and our best impulses, our most
original thoughts, everything which we had done and said, had been
examined, investigated, picked to pieces, and the icy eyes had looked on,
and the toothless mouth had laughed in derision and whispered,—
“See, it is rags, only rags.”
There was also one of the people of that time who had opened her soul to
the spirit with the icy eyes. In one of them he sat, watching the causes
of all actions, sneering at both evil and good, understanding everything,
condemning nothing, examining, seeking out, picking to pieces, paralyzing
the emotions of the heart and the power of the mind by sneering
unceasingly.
The beautiful Marianne bore the spirit of introspection within her. She
felt his icy eyes and sneers follow every step, every word. Her life
had become a drama where she was the only spectator. She had ceased
to be a human being, she did not suffer, she was not glad, nor did
she love; she carried out the beautiful Marianne Sinclair’s rôle, and
self-consciousness sat with staring, icy eyes and busy, picking fingers,
and watched her performance.
She was divided into two halves. Pale, unsympathetic, and sneering, one
half sat and watched what the other half was doing; and the strange
spirit who picked to pieces her being never had a word of feeling or
sympathy.
But where had he been, the pale watcher of the source of deeds, that
night, when she had learned to know the fulness of life? Where was he
when she, the sensible Marianne, kissed Gösta Berling before a hundred
pairs of eyes, and when in a gust of passion she threw herself down in
the snow-drift to die? Then the icy eyes were blinded, then the sneer was
weakened, for passion had raged through her soul. The roar of adventure’s
wild hunt had thundered in her ears. She had been a whole person during
that one terrible night.
Oh, you god of self-mockery, when Marianne with infinite difficulty
succeeded in lifting her stiffened arms and putting them about Gösta’s
neck, you too, like old Beerencreutz, had to turn away your eyes from the
earth and look at the stars.
That night you had no power. You were dead while she sang her love-song,
dead while she hurried down to Sjö after the major, dead when she saw the
flames redden the sky over the tops of the trees.
For they had come, the mighty storm-birds, the griffins of demoniac
passions. With wings of fire and claws of steel they had come swooping
down over you, you icy-eyed spirit; they had struck their claws into your
neck and flung you far into the unknown. You have been dead and crushed.
But now they had rushed on,—they whose course no sage can predict, no
observer can follow; and out of the depths of the unknown had the strange
spirit of self-consciousness again raised itself and had once again taken
possession of Marianne’s soul.
During the whole of February Marianne lay ill at Ekeby. When she sought
out the major at Sjö she had been infected with small-pox. The terrible
illness had taken a great hold on her, who had been so chilled and
exhausted. Death had come very near to her, but at the end of the month
she had recovered. She was still very weak and much disfigured. She would
never again be called the beautiful Marianne.
This, however, was as yet only known to Marianne and her nurse. The
pensioners themselves did not know it. The sick-room where small-pox
raged was not open to any one.
But when is the introspective power greater than during the long hours
of convalescence? Then the fiend sits and stares and stares with his icy
eyes, and picks and picks with his bony, hard fingers. And if one looks
carefully, behind him sits a still paler creature, who stares and sneers,
and behind him another and still another, sneering at one another and at
the whole world.
And while Marianne lay and looked at herself with all these staring icy
eyes, all natural feelings died within her.
She lay there and played she was ill; she lay there and played she was
unhappy, in love, longing for revenge.
She was it all, and still it was only a play. Everything became a play
and unreality under those icy eyes, which watched her while they were
watched by a pair behind them, which were watched by other pairs in
infinite perspective.
All the energy of life had died within her. She had found strength for
glowing hate and tender love for one single night, not more.
She did not even know if she loved Gösta Berling. She longed to see him
to know if he could take her out of herself.
While under the dominion of her illness, she had had only one clear
thought: she had worried lest her illness should be known. She did not
wish to see her parents; she wished no reconciliation with her father,
and she knew that he would repent if he should know how ill she was.
Therefore she ordered that her parents and every one else should only
know that the troublesome irritation of the eyes, which she always had
when she visited her native country, forced her to sit in a darkened
room. She forbade her nurse to say how ill she was; she forbade the
pensioners to go after the doctor at Karlstad. She had of course
small-pox, but only very lightly; in the medicine-chest at Ekeby there
were remedies enough to save her life.
She never thought of death; she only lay and waited for health, to be
able to go to the clergyman with Gösta and have the banns published.
But now the sickness and the fever were gone. She was once more cold and
sensible. It seemed to her as if she alone was sensible in this world
of fools. She neither hated nor loved. She understood her father; she
understood them all. He who understands does not hate.
She had heard that Melchior Sinclair meant to have an auction at Björne
and make way with all his wealth, that she might inherit nothing after
him. People said that he would make the devastation as thorough as
possible; first he would sell the furniture and utensils, then the
cattle and implements, and then the house itself with all its lands, and
would put the money in a bag and sink it to the bottom of the Löfven.
Dissipation, confusion, and devastation should be her inheritance.
Marianne smiled approvingly when she heard it: such was his character,
and so he must act.
It seemed strange to her that she had sung that great hymn to love. She
had dreamed of love in a cottage, as others have done. Now it seemed odd
to her that she had ever had a dream.
She sighed for naturalness. She was tired of this continual play. She
never had a strong emotion. She only grieved for her beauty, but she
shuddered at the compassion of strangers.
Oh, one second of forgetfulness of herself! One gesture, one word, one
act which was not calculated!
One day, when the rooms had been disinfected and she lay dressed on a
sofa, she had Gösta Berling called. They answered her that he had gone to
the auction at Björne.
* * * * *
At Björne there was in truth a big auction. It was an old, rich home.
People had come long distances to be present at the sale.
Melchior Sinclair had flung all the property in the house together in
the great drawing-room. There lay thousands of articles, collected in
piles, which reached from floor to ceiling.
He had himself gone about the house like an angel of destruction on the
day of judgment, and dragged together what he wanted to sell. Everything
in the kitchen,—the black pots, the wooden chairs, the pewter dishes, the
copper kettles, all were left in peace, for among them there was nothing
which recalled Marianne; but they were the only things which escaped his
anger.
He burst into Marianne’s room, turning everything out. Her doll-house
stood there, and her book-case, the little chair he had had made for her,
her trinkets and clothes, her sofa and bed, everything must go.
And then he went from room to room. He tore down everything he found
unpleasant, and carried great loads down to the auction-room. He panted
under the weight of sofas and marble slabs; but he went on. He had thrown
open the sideboards and taken out the magnificent family silver. Away
with it! Marianne had touched it. He filled his arms with snow-white
damask and with shining linen sheets with hem-stitching as wide as one’s
hand,—honest home-made work, the fruit of many years of labor,—and flung
them down together on the piles. Away with them! Marianne was not worthy
to own them. He stormed through the rooms with piles of china, not caring
if he broke the plates by the dozen, and he seized the hand-painted cups
on which the family arms were burned. Away with them! Let any one who
will use them! He staggered under mountains of bedding from the attic:
bolsters and pillows so soft that one sunk down in them as in a wave.
Away with them! Marianne had slept on them.
He cast fierce glances on the old, well-known furniture. Was there a
chair where she had not sat, or a sofa which she had not used, or a
picture which she had not looked at, a candlestick which had not lighted
her, a mirror which had not reflected her features? Gloomily he shook his
fist at this world of memories. He would have liked to have rushed on
them with swinging club and to have crushed everything to small bits and
splinters.
But it seemed to him a more famous revenge to sell them all at auction.
They should go to strangers! Away to be soiled in the cottagers’ huts, to
be in the care of indifferent strangers. Did he not know them, the dented
pieces of auction furniture in the peasants’ houses, fallen into dishonor
like his beautiful daughter? Away with them! May they stand with torn-out
stuffing and worn-off gilding, with cracked legs and stained leaves, and
long for their former home! Away with them to the ends of the earth, so
that no eye can find them, no hand gather them together!
When the auction began, he had filled half the hall with an incredible
confusion of piled-up articles.
Right across the room he had placed a long counter. Behind it stood the
auctioneer and put up the things; there the clerks sat and kept the
record, and there Melchior Sinclair had a keg of brandy standing. In the
other half of the room, in the hall, and in the yard were the buyers.
There were many people, and much noise and gayety. The bids followed
close on one another, and the auction was lively. But by the keg of
brandy, with all his possessions in endless confusion behind him, sat
Melchior Sinclair, half drunk and half mad. His hair stood up in rough
tufts above his red face; his eyes were rolling, fierce, and bloodshot.
He shouted and laughed, as if he had been in the best of moods; and every
one who had made a good bid he called up to him and offered a dram.
Among those who saw him there was Gösta Berling, who had stolen in with
the crowd of buyers, but who avoided coming under Melchior Sinclair’s
eyes. He became thoughtful at the sight, and his heart stood still, as at
a presentiment of a misfortune.
He wondered much where Marianne’s mother could be during all this. And he
went out, against his will, but driven by fate, to find Madame Gustava
Sinclair.
He had to go through many doors before he found her. Her husband had
short patience and little fondness for wailing and women’s complaints. He
had wearied of seeing her tears flow over the fate which had befallen her
household treasures. He was furious that she could weep over table and
bed linen, when, what was worse, his beautiful daughter was lost; and so
he had hunted her, with clenched fists, before him, through the house,
out into the kitchen, and all the way to the pantry.
She could not go any farther, and he had rejoiced at seeing her there,
cowering behind the step-ladder, awaiting heavy blows, perhaps death. He
let her stay there, but he locked the door and stuffed the key in his
pocket. She could sit there as long as the auction lasted. She did not
need to starve, and his ears had rest from her laments.
There she still sat, imprisoned in her own pantry, when Gösta came
through the corridor between the kitchen and the dining-room. He saw her
face at a little window high up in the wall. She had climbed up on the
step-ladder, and stood staring out of her prison.
“What are you doing up there?” asked Gösta.
“He has shut me in,” she whispered.
“Your husband?”
“Yes. I thought he was going to kill me. But listen, Gösta, take the key
of the dining-room door, and go into the kitchen and unlock the pantry
door with it, so that I can come out. That key fits here.”
Gösta obeyed, and in a couple of minutes the little woman stood in the
kitchen, which was quite deserted.
“You should have let one of the maids open the door with the dining-room
key,” said Gösta.
“Do you think I want to teach them that trick? Then I should never have
any peace in the pantry. And, besides, I took this chance to put the
upper shelves in order. They needed it, indeed. I cannot understand how I
could have let so much rubbish collect there.”
“You have so much to attend to,” said Gösta.
“Yes, that you may believe. If I were not everywhere, neither the loom
nor the spinning-wheel would be going right. And if—”
Here she stopped and wiped away a tear from the corner of her eye.
“God help me, how I do talk!” she said; “they say that I won’t have
anything more to look after. He is selling everything we have.”
“Yes, it is a wretched business,” said Gösta.
“You know that big mirror in the drawing-room, Gösta. It was such a
beauty, for the glass was whole in it, without a flaw, and there was no
blemish at all on the gilding. I got it from my mother, and now he wants
to sell it.”
“He is mad.”
“You may well say so. He is not much better. He won’t stop until we shall
have to go and beg on the highway, we as well as the major’s wife.”
“It will never be so bad as that,” answered Gösta.
“Yes, Gösta. When the major’s wife went away from Ekeby, she foretold
misfortune for us, and now it is coming. She would never have allowed
him to sell Björne. And think, his own china, the old Canton cups from
his own home, are to be sold. The major’s wife would never have let it
happen.”
“But what is the matter with him?” asked Gösta.
“Oh, it is only because Marianne has not come back again. He has waited
and waited. He has gone up and down the avenue the whole day and waited
for her. He is longing himself mad, but I do not dare to say anything.”
“Marianne believes that he is angry with her.”
“She does not believe that. She knows him well enough; but she is proud
and will not take the first step. They are stiff and hard, both of them,
and I have to stand between them.”
“You must know that Marianne is going to marry me?”
“Alas, Gösta, she will never do that. She says that only to make him
angry. She is too spoiled to marry a poor man, and too proud, too.
Go home and tell her that if she does not come home soon, all her
inheritance will have gone to destruction. Oh, he will throw everything
away, I know, without getting anything for it.”
Gösta was really angry with her. There she sat on a big kitchen table,
and had no thought for anything but her mirrors and her china.
“You ought to be ashamed!” he burst out. “You throw your daughter out
into a snow-drift, and then you think that it is only temper that she
does not come back. And you think that she is no better than to forsake
him whom she cares for, lest she should lose her inheritance.”
“Dear Gösta, don’t be angry, you too. I don’t know what I am saying. I
tried my best to open the door for Marianne, but he took me and dragged
me away. They all say here that I don’t understand anything. I shall not
grudge you Marianne, Gösta, if you can make her happy. It is not so easy
to make a woman happy, Gösta.”
Gösta looked at her. How could he too have raised his voice in anger
against such a person as she,—terrified and cowed, but with such a good
heart!
“You do not ask how Marianne is,” he said gently.
She burst into tears.
“Will you not be angry with me if I ask you?” she said. “I have longed to
ask you the whole time. Think that I know no more of her than that she
is living. Not one greeting have I had from her the whole time, not once
when I sent clothes to her, and so I thought that you and she did not
want to have me know anything about her.”
Gösta could bear it no longer. He was wild, he was out of his
head,—sometimes God had to send his wolves after him to force him to
obedience,—but this old woman’s tears, this old woman’s laments were
harder for him to bear than the howling of the wolves. He let her know
the truth.
“Marianne has been ill the whole time,” he said. “She has had small-pox.
She was to get up to-day and lie on the sofa. I have not seen her since
the first night.”
Madame Gustava leaped with one bound to the ground. She left Gösta
standing there, and rushed away without another word to her husband.
The people in the auction-room saw her come up to him and eagerly whisper
something in his ear. They saw how his face grew still more flushed, and
his hand, which rested on the cock, turned it round so that the brandy
streamed over the floor.
It seemed to all as if Madame Gustava had come with such important news
that the auction must end immediately. The auctioneer’s hammer no longer
fell, the clerks’ pens stopped, there were no new bids.
Melchior Sinclair roused himself from his thoughts.
“Well,” he cried, “what is the matter?”
And the auction was in full swing once more.
Gösta still sat in the kitchen, and Madame Gustava came weeping out to
him.
“It’s no use,” she said. “I thought he would stop when he heard that
Marianne had been ill; but he is letting them go on. He would like to,
but now he is ashamed.”
Gösta shrugged his shoulders and bade her farewell.
In the hall he met Sintram.
“This is a funny show,” exclaimed Sintram, and rubbed his hands. “You are
a master, Gösta. Lord, what you have brought to pass!”
“It will be funnier in a little while,” whispered Gösta. “The Broby
clergyman is here with a sledge full of money. They say that he wants
to buy the whole of Björne and pay in cash. Then I would like to see
Melchior Sinclair, Sintram.”
Sintram drew his head down between his shoulders and laughed internally
a long time. And then he made his way into the auction-room and up to
Melchior Sinclair.
“If you want a drink, Sintram, you must make a bid first.”
Sintram came close up to him.
“You are in luck to-day as always,” he said. “A fellow has come to
the house with a sledge full of money. He is going to buy Björne and
everything both inside and out. He has told a lot of people to bid for
him. He does not want to show himself yet for a while.”
“You might say who he is; then I suppose I must give you a drink for your
pains.”
Sintram took the dram and moved a couple of steps backwards, before he
answered,—
“They say it is the Broby clergyman, Melchior.”
Melchior Sinclair had many better friends than the Broby clergyman. It
had been a life-long feud between them. There were legends of how he
had lain in wait on dark nights on the roads where the minister should
pass, and how he had given him many an honest drubbing, the old fawning
oppressor of the peasants.
It was well for Sintram that he had drawn back a step or two, but he did
not entirely escape the big man’s anger. He got a brandy glass between
his eyes and the whole brandy keg on his feet. But then followed a scene
which for a long time rejoiced his heart.
“Does the Broby clergyman want my house?” roared Melchior Sinclair. “Do
you stand there and bid on my things for the Broby clergyman? Oh, you
ought to be ashamed! You ought to know better!”
He seized a candlestick, and an inkstand, and slung them into the crowd
of people.
All the bitterness of his poor heart at last found expression. Roaring
like a wild beast, he clenched his fist at those standing about, and
slung at them whatever missile he could lay his hand on. Brandy glasses
and bottles flew across the room. He did not know what he was doing in
his rage.
“It’s the end of the auction,” he cried. “Out with you! Never while I
live shall the Broby clergyman have Björne. Out! I will teach you to bid
for the Broby clergyman!”
He rushed on the auctioneer and the clerks. They hurried away. In the
confusion they overturned the desk, and Sinclair with unspeakable fury
burst into the crowd of peaceful people.
There was a flight and wildest confusion. A couple of hundred people were
crowding towards the door, fleeing before a single man. And he stood,
roaring his “Out with you!” He sent curses after them, and now and again
he swept about him with a chair, which he brandished like a club.
He pursued them out into the hall, but no farther. When the last stranger
had left the house, he went back into the drawing-room and bolted the
door after him. Then he dragged together a mattress and a couple of
pillows, laid himself down on them, went to sleep in the midst of all the
havoc, and never woke till the next day.
When Gösta got home, he heard that Marianne wished to speak to him. That
was just what he wanted. He had been wondering how he could get a word
with her.
When he came into the dim room where she lay, he had to stand a moment at
the door. He could not see where she was.
“Stay where you are, Gösta,” Marianne said to him. “It may be dangerous
to come near me.”
But Gösta had come up the stairs in two bounds, trembling with eagerness
and longing. What did he care for the contagion? He wished to have the
bliss of seeing her.
For she was so beautiful, his beloved! No one had such soft hair, such an
open, radiant brow. Her whole face was a symphony of exquisite lines.
He thought of her eyebrows, sharply and clearly drawn like the
honey-markings on a lily, and of the bold curve of her nose, and of her
lips, as softly turned as rolling waves, and of her cheek’s long oval and
her chin’s perfect shape.
And he thought of the rosy hue of her skin, of the magical effect of her
coal-black eyebrows with her light hair, and of her blue irises swimming
in clear white, and of the light in her eyes.
She was beautiful, his beloved! He thought of the warm heart which
she hid under a proud exterior. She had strength for devotion and
self-sacrifice concealed under that fine skin and her proud words. It was
bliss to see her.
He had rushed up the stairs in two bounds, and she thought that he would
stop at the door. He stormed through the room and fell on his knees at
the head of her bed.
But he meant to see her, to kiss her, and to bid her farewell.
He loved her. He would certainly never cease to love her, but his heart
was used to being trampled on. Oh, where should he find her, that rose
without support or roots, which he could take and call his own? He
might not keep even her whom he had found disowned and half dead at the
roadside.
When should his love raise its voice in a song so loud and clear that he
should hear no dissonance through it? When should his palace of happiness
be built on a ground for which no other heart longed restlessly and with
regret?
He thought how he would bid her farewell.
“There is great sorrow in your home,” he would say. “My heart is torn
at the thought of it. You must go home and give your father his reason
again. Your mother lives in continual danger of death. You must go home,
my beloved.”
These were the words he had on his lips, but they were never spoken.
He fell on his knees at the head of her bed, and he took her face between
his hands and kissed her; but then he could not speak. His heart began to
beat so fiercely, as if it would burst his breast.
Small-pox had passed over that lovely face. Her skin had become coarse
and scarred. Never again should the red blood glow in her cheeks, or the
fine blue veins show on her temples. Her eyebrows had fallen out, and the
shining white of her eyes had changed to yellow.
Everything was laid waste. The bold lines had become coarse and heavy.
They were not few who mourned over Marianne Sinclair’s lost beauty. In
the whole of Värmland, people lamented the change in her bright color,
her sparkling eyes, and blond hair. There beauty was prized as nowhere
else. The joyous people grieved, as if the country had lost a precious
stone from the crown of its honor, as if their life had received a blot
on its glory.
But the first man who saw her after she had lost her beauty did not
indulge in sorrow.
Unutterable emotion filled his soul. The more he looked at her, the
warmer it grew within him. Love grew and grew, like a river in the
spring. In waves of fire it welled up in his heart, it filled his whole
being, it rose to his eyes as tears; it sighed on his lips, trembled in
his hands, in his whole body.
Oh, to love her, to protect her, to keep her from all harm!
To be her slave, her guide!
Love is strong when it has gone through the baptismal fire of pain. He
could not speak to Marianne of parting and renunciation. He could not
leave her—he owed her his life. He could commit the unpardonable sin for
her sake.
He could not speak a coherent word, he only wept and kissed, until at
last the old nurse thought it was time to lead him out.
When he had gone, Marianne lay and thought of him and his emotion. “It is
good to be so loved,” she thought.
Yes, it was good to be loved, but how was it with herself? What did she
feel? Oh, nothing, less than nothing!
Was it dead, her love, or where had it taken flight? Where had it hidden
itself, her heart’s child?
Did it still live? Had it crept into her heart’s darkest corner and sat
there freezing under the icy eyes, frightened by the pale sneer, half
suffocated under the bony fingers?
“Ah, my love,” she sighed, “child of my heart! Are you alive, or are you
dead, dead as my beauty?”
* * * * *
The next day Melchior Sinclair went in early to his wife.
“See to it that there is order in the house again, Gustava!” he said. “I
am going to bring Marianne home.”
“Yes, dear Melchior, here there will of course be order,” she answered.
Thereupon there was peace between them.
An hour afterwards he was on his way to Ekeby.
It was impossible to find a more noble and kindly old gentleman than
Melchior Sinclair, as he sat in the open sledge in his best fur cloak and
his best rug. His hair lay smooth on his head, but his face was pale and
his eyes were sunken in their sockets.
There was no limit to the brilliancy of the clear sky on that February
day. The snow sparkled like a young girl’s eyes when she hears the music
of the first waltz. The birches stretched the fine lace-work of their
reddish-brown twigs against the sky, and on some of them hung a fringe of
little icicles.
There was a splendor and a festive glow in the day. The horses prancing
threw up their forelegs, and the coachman cracked his whip in sheer
pleasure of living.
After a short drive the sledge drew up before the great steps at Ekeby.
The footman came out.
“Where are your masters?” asked Melchior.
“They are hunting the great bear in Gurlitta Cliff.”
“All of them?”
“All of them, sir. Those who do not go for the sake of the bear go for
the sake of the luncheon.”
Melchior laughed so that it echoed through the silent yard. He gave the
man a crown for his answer.
“Go say to my daughter that I am here to take her home. She need not be
afraid of the cold. I have the big sledge and a wolfskin cloak to wrap
her in.”
“Will you not come in, sir?”
“Thank you! I sit very well where I am.”
The man disappeared, and Melchior began his waiting.
He was in such a genial mood that day that nothing could irritate him. He
had expected to have to wait a little for Marianne; perhaps she was not
even up. He would have to amuse himself by looking about him for a while.
From the cornice hung a long icicle, with which the sun had terrible
trouble. It began at the upper end, melted a drop, and wanted to have
it run down along the icicle and fall to the earth. But before it had
gone half the way, it had frozen again. And the sun made continual new
attempts, which always failed. But at last a regular freebooter of a
ray hung itself on the icicle’s point, a little one, which shone and
sparkled; and however it was, it accomplished its object,—a drop fell
tinkling to the ground.
Melchior looked on and laughed. “You were not such a fool,” he said to
the ray of sunlight.
The yard was quiet and deserted. Not a sound was heard in the big house.
But he was not impatient. He knew that women needed plenty of time to
make themselves ready.
He sat and looked at the dove-cote. The birds had a grating before the
door. They were shut in, as long as the winter lasted, lest hawks should
exterminate them. Time after time a pigeon came and stuck out its white
head through the meshes.
“She is waiting for the spring,” said Melchior Sinclair, “but she must
have patience for a while.”
The pigeon came so regularly that he took out his watch and followed her,
with it in his hand. Exactly every third minute she stuck out her head.
“No, my little friend,” he said, “do you think spring will be ready in
three minutes? You must learn to wait.”
And he had to wait himself; but he had plenty of time.
The horses first pawed impatiently in the snow, but then they grew sleepy
from standing and blinking in the sun. They laid their heads together and
slept.
The coachman sat straight on his box, with whip and reins in his hand and
his face turned directly towards the sun, and slept, slept so that he
snored.
But Melchior did not sleep. He had never felt less like sleeping. He had
seldom passed pleasanter hours than during this glad waiting. Marianne
had been ill. She had not been able to come before, but now she would
come. Oh, of course she would. And everything would be well again.
She must understand that he was not angry with her. He had come himself
with two horses and the big sledge.
It is nothing to have to wait when one is sure of one’s self, and when
there is so much to distract one’s mind.
There comes the great watch-dog. He creeps forward on the tips of his
toes, keeps his eyes on the ground, and wags his tail gently, as if he
meant to set out on the most indifferent errand. All at once he begins to
burrow eagerly in the snow. The old rascal must have hidden there some
stolen goods. But just as he lifts his head to see if he can eat it now
undisturbed, he is quite out of countenance to see two magpies right in
front of him.
“You old thief!” say the magpies, and look like conscience itself. “We
are police officers. Give up your stolen goods!”
“Oh, be quiet with your noise! I am the steward—”
“Just the right one,” they sneer.
The dog throws himself on them, and they fly away with slow flaps. The
dog rushes after them, jumps, and barks. But while he is chasing one, the
other is already back. She flies down into the hole, tears at the piece
of meat, but cannot lift it. The dog snatches away the meat, holds it
between his paws, and bites in it. The magpies place themselves close in
front of him, and make disagreeable remarks. He glares fiercely at them,
while he eats, and when they get too impertinent, he jumps up and drives
them away.
The sun began to sink down towards the western hills. Melchior looked at
his watch. It is three o’clock. And his wife, who had had dinner ready at
twelve!
At the same moment the footman came out and announced that Miss Marianne
wished to speak to him.
Melchior laid the wolfskin cloak over his arm and went beaming up the
steps.
When Marianne heard his heavy tread on the stairs, she did not even then
know if she should go home with him or not. She only knew that she must
put an end to this long waiting.
She had hoped that the pensioners would come home; but they did not come.
So she had to do something to put an end to it all. She could bear it no
longer.
She had thought that he in a burst of anger would have driven away after
he had waited five minutes, or that he would break the door in or try to
set the house on fire.
But there he sat calm and smiling, and only waited. She cherished neither
hatred nor love for him. But there was a voice in her which seemed to
warn her against putting herself in his power again, and moreover she
wished to keep her promise to Gösta.
If he had slept, if he had spoken, if he had been restless, if he had
shown any sign of doubt, if he had had the carriage driven into the
shade! But he was only patience and certainty.
Certain, so infectiously certain, that she would come if he only waited!
Her head ached. Every nerve quivered. She could get no rest as long as
she knew that he sat there. It was as if his will dragged her bound down
the stairs.
So she thought she would at least talk with him.
Before he came, she had all the curtains drawn up, and she placed herself
so that her face came in the full light.
For it was her intention to put him to a sort of test; but Melchior
Sinclair was a wonderful man that day.
When he saw her, he did not make a sign, nor did he exclaim. It was as
if he had not seen any change in her. She knew how highly he prized her
beauty. But he showed no sorrow. He controlled himself not to wound her.
That touched her. She began to understand why her mother had loved him
through everything.
He showed no hesitation. He came with neither reproaches nor excuses.
“I will wrap the wolfskin about you, Marianne; it is not cold. It has
been on my knees the whole time.”
To make sure, he went up to the fire and warmed it.
Then he helped her to raise herself from the sofa, wrapped the cloak
about her, put a shawl over her head, drew it down under her arms, and
knotted it behind her back.
She let him do it. She was helpless. It was good to have everything
arranged, it was good not to have to decide anything, especially good for
one who was so picked to pieces as she, for one who did not possess one
thought or one feeling which was her own.
Melchior lifted her up, carried her down to the sleigh, closed the top,
tucked the furs in about her, and drove away from Ekeby.
She shut her eyes and sighed, partly from pleasure, partly from regret.
She was leaving life, the real life; but it did not make so much
difference to her,—she who could not live but only act.
* * * * *
A few days later her mother arranged that she should meet Gösta. She sent
for him while her husband was off on his long walk to see after his
timber, and took him in to Marianne.
Gösta came in; but he neither bowed nor spoke. He stood at the door and
looked on the ground like an obstinate boy.
“But, Gösta!” cried Marianne. She sat in her arm-chair and looked at him
half amused.
“Yes, that is my name.”
“Come here, come to me, Gösta!”
He went slowly forward to her, but did not raise his eyes.
“Come nearer! Kneel down here!”
“Lord God, what is the use of all that?” he cried; but he obeyed.
“Gösta, I want to tell you that I think it was best that I came home.”
“Let us hope that they will not throw you out in the snow-drift again.”
“Oh, Gösta, do you not care for me any longer? Do you think that I am too
ugly?”
He drew her head down and kissed her, but he looked as cold as ever.
She was almost amused. If he was pleased to be jealous of her parents,
what then? It would pass. It amused her to try and win him back. She did
not know why she wished to keep him, but she did. She thought that it was
he who had succeeded for once in freeing her from herself. He was the
only one who would be able to do it again.
And now she began to speak, eager to win him back. She said that it had
not been her meaning to desert him for good, but for a time they must for
appearance’s sake break off their connection. He must have seen, himself,
that her father was on the verge of going mad, that her mother was in
continual danger of her life. He must understand that she had been forced
to come home.
Then his anger burst out in words. She need not give herself so much
trouble. He would be her plaything no longer. She had given him up when
she had gone home, and he could not love her any more. When he came home
the day before yesterday from his hunting-trip and found her gone without
a message, without a word, his blood ran cold in his veins, he had nearly
died of grief. He could not love any one who had given him such pain. She
had, besides, never loved him. She was a coquette, who wanted to have
some one to kiss her and caress her when she was here in the country,
that was all.
Did he think that she was in the habit of allowing young men to caress
her?
Oh yes, he was sure of it. Women were not so saintly as they seemed.
Selfishness and coquetry from beginning to end! No, if she could know
how he had felt when he came home from the hunt. It was as though he had
waded in ice-water. He should never get over that pain. It would follow
him through the whole of his life. He would never be the same person
again.
She tried to explain to him how it had all happened. She tried to
convince him that she was still faithful. Well, it did not matter, for
now he did not love her any more. He had seen through her. She was
selfish. She did not love him. She had gone without leaving him a message.
He came continually back to that. She really enjoyed the performance. She
could not be angry, she understood his wrath so well. She did not fear
any real break between them. But at last she became uneasy. Had there
really been such a change in him that he could no longer care for her?
“Gösta,” she said, “was I selfish when I went to Sjö after the major; I
knew that they had small-pox there. Nor is it pleasant to go out in satin
slippers in the cold and snow.”
“Love lives on love, and not on services and deeds,” said Gösta.
“You wish, then, that we shall be as strangers from now on, Gösta?”
“That is what I wish.”
“You are very changeable, Gösta Berling.”
“People often charge me with it.”
He was cold, impossible to warm, and she was still colder.
Self-consciousness sat and sneered at her attempt to act love.
“Gösta,” she said, making a last effort, “I have never intentionally
wronged you, even if it may seem so. I beg of you, forgive me!”
“I cannot forgive you.”
She knew that if she had possessed a real feeling she could have won him
back. And she tried to play the impassioned. The icy eyes sneered at her,
but she tried nevertheless. She did not want to lose him.
“Do not go, Gösta! Do not go in anger! Think how ugly I have become! No
one will ever love me again.”
“Nor I, either,” he said. “You must accustom yourself to see your heart
trampled upon as well as another.”
“Gösta, I have never loved any one but you. Forgive me. Do not forsake
me! You are the only one who can save me from myself.”
He thrust her from him.
“You do not speak the truth,” he said with icy calmness. “I do not know
what you want of me, but I see that you are lying. Why do you want to
keep me? You are so rich that you will never lack suitors.”
And so he went.
And not until he had closed the door, did regret and pain in all their
strength take possession of Marianne’s heart.
It was love, her heart’s own child, who came out of the corner where the
cold eyes had banished him. He came, he for whom she had so longed when
it was too late.
When Marianne could with real certainty say to herself that Gösta Berling
had forsaken her, she felt a purely physical pain so terrible that she
almost fainted. She pressed her hands against her heart, and sat for
hours in the same place, struggling with a tearless grief.
And it was she herself who was suffering, not a stranger, nor an actress.
It was she herself. Why had her father come and separated them? Her love
had never been dead. It was only that in her weak condition after her
illness she could not appreciate his power.
O God, O God, that she had lost him! O God, that she had waked so late!
Ah, he was the only one, he was her heart’s conqueror! From him she could
bear anything. Hardness and angry words from him bent her only to humble
love. If he had beaten her, she would have crept like a dog to him and
kissed his hand.
She did not know what she would do to get relief from this dull pain.
She seized pen and paper and wrote with terrible eagerness. First she
wrote of her love and regret. Then she begged, if not for his love, only
for his pity. It was a kind of poem she wrote.
When she had finished she thought that if he should see it he must
believe that she had loved him. Well, why should she not send what she
had written to him? She would send it the next day, and she was sure that
it would bring him back to her.
The next day she spent in agony and in struggling with herself. What she
had written seemed to her paltry and so stupid. It had neither rhyme nor
metre. It was only prose. He would only laugh at such verses.
Her pride was roused too. If he no longer cared for her, it was such a
terrible humiliation to beg for his love.
Sometimes her good sense told her that she ought to be glad to escape
from the connection with Gösta, and all the deplorable circumstances
which it had brought with it.
Her heart’s pain was still so terrible that her emotions finally
conquered. Three days after she had become conscious of her love, she
enclosed the verses and wrote Gösta Berling’s name on the cover. But they
were never sent. Before she could find a suitable messenger she heard
such things of Gösta Berling that she understood it was too late to win
him back.
But it was the sorrow of her life that she had not sent the verses in
time, while she could have won him.
All her pain fastened itself on that point: “If I only had not waited so
long, if I had not waited so many days!”
The happiness of life, or at any rate the reality of life, would have
been won to her through those written words. She was sure they would have
brought him back to her.
Grief, however, did her the same service as love. It made her a whole
being, potent to devote herself to good as well as evil. Passionate
feelings filled her soul, unrestrained by self-consciousness’s icy chill.
And she was, in spite of her plainness, much loved.
But they say that she never forgot Gösta Berling. She mourned for him as
one mourns for a wasted life.
And her poor verses, which at one time were much read, are forgotten long
ago. I beg of you to read them and to think of them. Who knows what power
they might have had, if they had been sent? They are impassioned enough
to bear witness of a real feeling. Perhaps they could have brought him
back to her.
They are touching enough, tender enough in their awkward formlessness. No
one can wish them different. No one can want to see them imprisoned in
the chains of rhyme and metre, and yet it is so sad to think that it was
perhaps just this imperfection which prevented her from sending them in
time.
I beg you to read them and to love them. It is a person in great trouble
who has written them.
“Child, thou hast loved once, but nevermore
Shalt thou taste of the joys of love!
A passionate storm has raged through thy soul
Rejoice thou hast gone to thy rest!
No more in wild joy shall thou soar up on high
Rejoice, thou hast gone to thy rest!
No more shalt thou sink in abysses of pain,
Oh, nevermore.
“Child, thou hast loved once, but nevermore
Shall your soul burn and scorch in the flames.
Thou wert as a field of brown, sun-dried grass
Flaming with fire for a moment’s space;
From the whirling smoke-clouds the fiery sparks
Drove the birds of heaven with piercing cries.
Let them return! Thou burnest no more!—
Wilt burn nevermore.
“Child, thou hast loved, but now nevermore
Shalt thou hear love’s murmuring voice.
Thy young heart’s strength, like a weary child
That sits still and tired on the hard school-bench,
Yearns for freedom and pleasure.
But no man calleth it more like a forgotten song;
No one sings it more,—nevermore.
“Child, the end has now come!
And with it gone love and love’s joy.
He whom thou lovedst as if he had taught thee
With wings to hover through space,
He whom thou lovedst as if he had given thee
Safety and home when the village was flooded,
Is gone, who alone understood
The key to the door of thy heart.
“I ask but one thing of thee, O my beloved:
‘Lay not upon me the load of thy hate!’
That weakest of all things, the poor human heart,
How can it live with the pang and the thought
That it gave pain to another?
“O my beloved, if thou wilt kill me,
Use neither dagger nor poison nor rope!
Say only you wish me to vanish
From the green earth and the kingdom of life,
And I shall sink to my grave.
“From thee came life of life; thou gavest me love,
And now thou recallest thy gift, I know it too well.
But do not give me thy hate!
I still have love of living! Oh, remember that;
But under a load of hate I have but to die.”
CHAPTER X
THE YOUNG COUNTESS
The young countess sleeps till ten o’clock in the morning, and wants
fresh bread on the breakfast-table every day. The young countess
embroiders, and reads poetry. She knows nothing of weaving and cooking.
The young countess is spoiled.
But the young countess is gay, and lets her joyousness shine on all and
everything. One is so glad to forgive her the long morning sleep and the
fresh bread, for she squanders kindness on the poor and is friendly to
every one.
The young countess’s father is a Swedish nobleman, who has lived in
Italy all his life, retained there by the loveliness of the land and by
one of that lovely land’s beautiful daughters. When Count Henrik Dohna
travelled in Italy he had been received in this nobleman’s house, made
the acquaintance of his daughters, married one of them, and brought her
with him to Sweden.
She, who had always spoken Swedish and had been brought up to love
everything Swedish, is happy in the land of the bear. She whirls so
merrily in the long dance of pleasure, on Löfven’s shores, that one could
well believe she had always lived there. Little she understands what it
means to be a countess. There is no state, no stiffness, no condescending
dignity in that young, joyous creature.
It was the old men who liked the young countess best. It was wonderful,
what a success she had with old men. When they had seen her at a ball,
one could be sure that all of them, the judge at Munkerud and the
clergyman at Bro and Melchior Sinclair and the captain at Berga, would
tell their wives in the greatest confidence that if they had met the
young countess thirty or forty years ago—
“Yes, then she was not born,” say the old ladies.
And the next time they meet, they joke with the young countess, because
she wins the old men’s hearts from them.
The old ladies look at her with a certain anxiety. They remember so well
Countess Märta. She had been just as joyous and good and beloved when
she first came to Borg. And she had become a vain and pleasure-seeking
coquette, who never could think of anything but her amusements. “If she
only had a husband who could keep her at work!” say the old ladies.
“If she only could learn to weave!” For weaving was a consolation for
everything; it swallowed up all other interests, and had been the saving
of many a woman.
The young countess wants to be a good housekeeper. She knows nothing
better than as a happy wife to live in a comfortable home, and she often
comes at balls, and sits down beside the old people.
“Henrik wants me to learn to be a capable housekeeper,” she says, “just
as his mother is. Teach me how to weave!”
Then the old people heave a sigh: first, over Count Henrik, who can think
that his mother was a good housekeeper; and then over the difficulty of
initiating this young, ignorant creature in such a complicated thing.
It was enough to speak to her of heddles, and harnesses, and warps, and
woofs,[2] to make her head spin.
No one who sees the young countess can help wondering why she married
stupid Count Henrik. It is a pity for him who is stupid, wherever he
may be. And it is the greatest pity for him who is stupid and lives in
Värmland.
There are already many stories of Count Henrik’s stupidity, and he is
only a little over twenty years old. They tell how he entertained Anna
Stjärnhök on a sleighing party a few years ago.
“You are very pretty, Anna,” he said.
“How you talk, Henrik!”
“You are the prettiest girl in the whole of Värmland.”
“That I certainly am not.”
“The prettiest in this sleighing party at any rate.”
“Alas, Henrik, I am not that either.”
“Well, you are the prettiest in this sledge, that you can’t deny.”
No, that she could not.
For Count Henrik is no beauty. He is as ugly as he is stupid. They say
of him that that head on the top of his thin neck has descended in the
family for a couple of hundred years. That is why the brain is so worn
out in the last heir.
“It is perfectly plain that he has no head of his own,” they say. “He
has borrowed his father’s. He does not dare to bend it; he is afraid of
losing it,—he is already yellow and wrinkled. The head has been in use
with both his father and grandfather. Why should the hair otherwise be so
thin and the lips so bloodless and the chin so pointed?”
He always has scoffers about him, who encourage him to say stupid things,
which they save up, circulate, and add to.
It is lucky for him that he does not notice it. He is solemn and
dignified in everything he does. He moves formally, he holds himself
straight, he never turns his head without turning his whole body.
He had been at Munkerud on a visit to the judge a few years ago. He had
come riding with high hat, yellow breeches, and polished boots, and
had sat stiff and proud in the saddle. When he arrived everything went
well, but when he was to ride away again it so happened that one of the
low-hanging branches of a birch-tree knocked off his hat. He got off,
put on his hat, and rode again under the same branch. His hat was again
knocked off; this was repeated four times.
The judge at last went out to him and said: “If you should ride on one
side of the branch the next time?”
The fifth time he got safely by.
But still the young countess cared for him in spite of his old-man’s
head. She of course did not know that he was crowned with such a halo
of stupidity in his own country, when she saw him in Rome. There,
there had been something of the glory of youth about him, and they had
come together under such romantic circumstances. You ought to hear the
countess tell how Count Henrik had to carry her off. The priests and the
cardinals had been wild with rage that she wished to give up her mother’s
religion and become a Protestant. The whole people had been in uproar.
Her father’s palace was besieged. Henrik was pursued by bandits. Her
mother and sisters implored her to give up the marriage. But her father
was furious that that Italian rabble should prevent him from giving his
daughter to whomsoever he might wish. He commanded Count Henrik to carry
her off. And so, as it was impossible for them to be married at home
without its being discovered, Henrik and she stole out by side streets
and all sorts of dark alleys to the Swedish consulate. And when she had
abjured the Catholic faith and become a Protestant, they were immediately
married and sent north in a swift travelling-carriage. “There was no time
for banns, you see. It was quite impossible,” the young countess used to
say. “And of course it was gloomy to be married at a consulate, and not
in one of the beautiful churches, but if we had not Henrik would have had
to do without me. Every one is so impetuous down there, both papa and
mamma and the cardinals and the priests, all are so impetuous. That was
why everything had to be done so secretly, and if the people had seen us
steal out of the house, they would certainly have killed us both—only to
save my soul; Henrik was of course already lost.”
The young countess loves her husband, ever since they have come home to
Borg and live a quieter life. She loves in him the glory of the old name
and the famous ancestors. She likes to see how her presence softens the
stiffness of his manner, and to hear how his voice grows tender when he
speaks to her. And besides, he cares for her and spoils her, and she is
married to him. The young countess cannot imagine that a married woman
should not care for her husband.
In a certain way he corresponds to her ideal of manliness. He is honest
and loves the truth. He had never broken his word. She considers him a
true nobleman.
On the 18th of March Bailiff Scharling celebrates his birthday, and many
then drive up Broby Hill. People from the east and the west, known and
unknown, invited and uninvited, come to the bailiff’s on that day. All
are welcome, all find plenty of food and drink, and in the ball-room
there is room for dancers from seven parishes.
The young countess is coming too, as she always does where there is to be
dancing and merry-making.
But she is not happy as she comes. It is as if she has a presentiment
that it is now her turn to be dragged-in in adventure’s wild chase.
On the way she sat and watched the sinking sun. It set in a cloudless sky
and left no gold edges on the light clouds. A pale, gray, twilight, swept
by cold squalls, settled down over the country.
The young countess saw how day and night struggled, and how fear seized
all living things at the mighty contest. The horses quickened their pace
with the last load to come under shelter. The woodcutters hurried home
from the woods, the maids from the farmyard. Wild creatures howled at the
edge of the wood. The day, beloved of man, was conquered.
The light grew dim, the colors faded. She only saw chillness and
ugliness. What she had hoped, what she had loved, what she had done,
seemed to her to be also wrapped in the twilight’s gray light. It was the
hour of weariness, of depression, of impotence for her as for all nature.
She thought that her own heart, which now in its playful gladness clothed
existence with purple and gold, she thought that this heart perhaps
sometime would lose its power to light up her world.
“Oh, impotence, my own heart’s impotence!” she said to herself. “Goddess
of the stifling, gray twilight. You will one day be mistress of my soul.
Then I shall see life ugly and gray, as it perhaps is, then my hair will
grow white, my back be bent, my brain be paralyzed.”
At the same moment the sledge turned in at the bailiff’s gate, and as the
young countess looked up, her eyes fell on a grated window in the wing,
and on a fierce, staring face behind.
That face belonged to the major’s wife at Ekeby, and the young woman knew
that her pleasure for the evening was now spoiled.
One can be glad when one does not see sorrow, only hears it spoken of.
But it is harder to keep a joyous heart when one stands face to face with
black, fierce, staring trouble.
The countess knows of course that Bailiff Scharling had put the major’s
wife in prison, and that she shall be tried for the assault she made on
Ekeby the night of the great ball. But she never thought that she should
be kept in custody there at the bailiff’s house, so near the ball-room
that one could look into her room, so near that she must hear the dance
music and the noise of merry-making. And the thought takes away all her
pleasure.
The young countess dances both waltz and quadrille. She takes part in
both minuet and contra-dance; but after each dance she steals to the
window in the wing. There is a light there and she can see how the
major’s wife walks up and down in her room. She never seems to rest, but
walks and walks.
The countess takes no pleasure in the dance. She only thinks of the
major’s wife going backwards and forwards in her prison like a caged wild
beast. She wonders how all the others can dance. She is sure there are
many there who are as much moved as she to know that the major’s wife is
so near, and still there is no one who shows it.
But every time she has looked out her feet grow heavier in the dance, and
the laugh sticks in her throat.
The bailiff’s wife notices her as she wipes the moisture from the
window-pane to see out, and comes to her.
“Such misery! Oh, it is such suffering!” she whispers to the countess.
“I think it is almost impossible to dance to-night,” whispers the
countess back again.
“It is not with my consent that we dance here, while she is sitting shut
up there,” answers Madame Scharling. “She has been in Karlstad since she
was arrested. But there is soon to be a trial now, and that is why she
was brought here to-day. We could not put her in that miserable cell in
the courthouse, so she was allowed to stay in the weaving-room in the
wing. She should have had my drawing-room, countess, if all these people
had not come to-day. You hardly know her, but she has been like a mother
and queen to us all. What will she think of us, who are dancing here,
while she is in such great trouble. It is as well that most of them do
not know that she is sitting there.”
“She ought never to have been arrested,” says the young countess, sternly.
“No, that is a true word, countess, but there was nothing else to do, if
there should not be a worse misfortune. No one blamed her for setting
fire to her own hay-stack and driving out the pensioners, but the major
was scouring the country for her. God knows what he would have done if
she had not been put in prison. Scharling has given much offence because
he arrested the major’s wife, countess. Even in Karlstad they were much
displeased with him, because he did not shut his eyes to everything which
happened at Ekeby; but he did what he thought was best.”
“But now I suppose she will be sentenced?” says the countess.
“Oh, no, countess, she will not be sentenced. She will be acquitted, but
all that she has to bear these days is being too much for her. She is
going mad. You can understand, such a proud woman, how can she bear to be
treated like a criminal! I think that it would have been best if she had
been allowed to go free. She might have been able to escape by herself.”
“Let her go,” says the countess.
“Any one can do that but the bailiff and his wife,” whispers Madame
Scharling. “We have to guard her. Especially to-night, when so many of
her friends are here, two men sit on guard outside her door, and it is
locked and barred so that no one can come in. But if any one got her out,
countess, we should be so glad, both Scharling and I.”
“Can I not go to her?” says the young countess. Madame Scharling seizes
her eagerly by the wrist and leads her out with her. In the hall they
throw a couple of shawls about them, and hurry across the yard.
“It is not certain that she will even speak to us,” says the bailiff’s
wife. “But she will see that we have not forgotten her.”
They come into the first room in the wing, where the two men sit and
guard the barred door, and go in without being stopped to the major’s
wife. She was in a large room crowded with looms and other implements. It
was used mostly for a weaving-room, but it had bars in the window and a
strong lock on the door, so that it could be used, in case of need, for a
cell.
The major’s wife continues to walk without paying any attention to them.
She is on a long wandering these days. She cannot remember anything
except that she is going the hundred and twenty miles to her mother, who
is up in the Älfdal woods, and is waiting for her. She never has time to
rest She must go. A never-resting haste is on her. Her mother is over
ninety years old. She would soon be dead.
She has measured off the floor by yards, and she is now adding up the
yards to furlongs and the furlongs to half-miles and miles.
Her way seems heavy and long, but she dares not rest. She wades through
deep drifts. She hears the forests murmur over her as she goes. She rests
in Finn huts and in the charcoal-burner’s log cabin. Sometimes, when
there is nobody for many miles, she has to break branches for a bed and
rest under the roots of a fallen pine.
And at last she has reached her journey’s end, the hundred and twenty
miles are over, the wood opens out, and the red house stands in a
snow-covered yard. The Klar River rushes foaming by in a succession of
little waterfalls, and by that well-known sound she hears that she is at
home. And her mother, who must have seen her coming begging, just as she
had wished, comes to meet her.
When the major’s wife has got so far she always looks up, glances about
her, sees the closed door, and knows where she is.
Then she wonders if she is going mad, and sits down to think and to
rest. But after a time she sets out again, calculates the yards and the
furlongs, the half-miles and the miles, rests for a short time in Finn
huts, and sleeps neither night nor day until she has again accomplished
the hundred and twenty miles.
During all the time she has been in prison she has almost never slept.
And the two women who had come to see her looked at her with anguish.
The young countess will ever afterwards remember her, as she walked
there. She sees her often in her dreams, and wakes with eyes full of
tears and a moan on her lips.
The old woman is so pitifully changed, her hair is so thin, and loose
ends stick out from the narrow braid. Her face is relaxed and sunken, her
dress is disordered and ragged. But with it all she has so much still of
her lofty bearing that she inspires not only sympathy, but also respect.
But what the countess remembered most distinctly were her eyes, sunken,
turned inward, not yet deprived of all the light of reason, but almost
ready to be extinguished, and with a spark of wildness lurking in their
depths, so that one had to shudder and fear to have the old woman in the
next moment upon one, with teeth ready to bite, fingers to tear.
They have been there quite a while when the major’s wife suddenly stops
before the young woman and looks at her with a stern glance. The countess
takes a step backwards and seizes Madame Scharling’s arm.
The features of the major’s wife have life and expression, her eyes look
out into the world with full intelligence.
“Oh, no; oh, no,” she says and smiles; “as yet it is not so bad, my dear
young lady.”
She asks them to sit down, and sits down herself. She has an air of
old-time stateliness, known since days of feasting at Ekeby and at the
royal balls at the governor’s house at Karlstad. They forget the rags and
the prison and only see the proudest and richest woman in Värmland.
“My dear countess,” she says, “what possessed you to leave the dance to
visit a lonely old woman? You must be very good.”
Countess Elizabeth cannot answer. Her voice is choking with emotion.
Madame Scharling answers for her, that she had not been able to dance for
thinking of the major’s wife.
“Dear Madame Scharling,” answers the major’s wife, “has it gone so far
with me that I disturb the young people in their pleasure? You must not
weep for me, my dear young countess,” she continued. “I am a wicked old
woman, who deserves all I get. You do not think it right to strike one’s
mother?”
“No, but—”
The major’s wife interrupts her and strokes the curly, light hair back
from her forehead.
“Child, child,” she says, “how could you marry that stupid Henrik Dohna?”
“But I love him.”
“I see how it is, I see how it is,” says the major’s wife. “A kind child
and nothing more; weeps with those in sorrow, and laughs with those who
are glad. And obliged to say ‘yes’ to the first man who says, ‘I love
you.’ Yes, of course. Go back now and dance, my dear young countess.
Dance and be happy! There is nothing bad in you.”
“But I want to do something for you.”
“Child,” says the major’s wife, solemnly, “an old woman lived at Ekeby
who held the winds of heaven prisoners. Now she is caught and the winds
are free. Is it strange that a storm goes over the land?
“I, who am old, have seen it before, countess. I know it. I know that the
storm of the thundering God is coming. Sometimes it rushes over great
kingdoms, sometimes over small out-of-the-way communities. God’s storm
forgets no one. It comes over the great as well as the small. It is grand
to see God’s storm coming.
“Anguish shall spread itself over the land. The small birds’ nests shall
fall from the branches. The hawk’s nest in the pine-tree’s top shall be
shaken down to the earth with a great noise, and even the eagle’s nest in
the mountain cleft shall the wind drag out with its dragon tongue.
“We thought that all was well with us; but it was not so. God’s storm
is needed. I understand that, and I do not complain. I only wish that I
might go to my mother.”
She suddenly sinks back.
“Go now, young woman,” she says. “I have no more time. I must go. Go now,
and look out for them who ride on the storm-cloud!”
Thereupon she renews her wandering. Her features relax, her glance turns
inward. The countess and Madame Scharling have to leave her.
As soon as they are back again among the dancers the young countess goes
straight to Gösta Berling.
“I can greet you from the major’s wife,” she says. “She is waiting for
you to get her out of prison.”
“Then she must go on waiting, countess.”
“Oh, help her, Herr Berling!”
Gösta stares gloomily before him. “No,” he says, “why should I help her?
What thanks do I owe her? Everything she has done for me has been to my
ruin.”
“But Herr Berling—”
“If she had not existed,” he says angrily, “I would now be sleeping up
there in the forest. Is it my duty to risk my life for her, because she
has made me a pensioner at Ekeby? Do you think much credit goes with that
profession?”
The young countess turns away from him without answering. She is angry.
She goes back to her place thinking bitter thoughts of the pensioners.
They have come to-night with horns and fiddles, and mean to let the bows
scrape the strings until the horse-hair is worn through, without thinking
that the merry tunes ring in the prisoner’s miserable room. They come
here to dance until their shoes fall to pieces, and do not remember that
their old benefactress can see their shadows whirling by the misty
window-panes. Alas, how gray and ugly the world was! Alas, what a shadow
trouble and hardness had cast over the young countess’s soul!
After a while Gösta comes to ask her to dance.
She refuses shortly.
“Will you not dance with me, countess?” he asks, and grows very red.
“Neither with you nor with any other of the Ekeby pensioners,” she says.
“We are not worthy of such an honor.”
“It is no honor, Herr Berling. But it gives me no pleasure to dance with
those who forget the precepts of gratitude.”
Gösta has already turned on his heel.
This scene is heard and seen by many. All think the countess is right.
The pensioners’ ingratitude and heartlessness had waked general
indignation.
But in these days Gösta Berling is more dangerous than a wild beast in
the forest. Ever since he came home from the hunt and found Marianne
gone, his heart has been like an aching wound. He longs to do some one a
bloody wrong and to spread sorrow and pain far around.
If she wishes it so, he says to himself, it shall be as she wishes. But
she shall not save her own skin. The young countess likes abductions. She
shall get her fill. He has nothing against adventure. For eight days he
has mourned for a woman’s sake. It is long enough. He calls Beerencreutz
the colonel, and Christian Bergh the great captain, and the slow Cousin
Christopher, who never hesitates at any mad adventure, and consults with
them how he shall avenge the pensioners’ injured honor.
It is the end of the party. A long line of sledges drive up into the
yard. The men are putting on their fur cloaks. The ladies look for their
wraps in the dreadful confusion of the dressing-room.
The young countess has been in great haste to leave this hateful ball.
She is ready first of all the ladies. She stands smiling in the middle of
the room and looks at the confusion, when the door is thrown open, and
Gösta Berling shows himself on the threshold.
No man has a right to enter this room. The old ladies stand there with
their thin hair no longer adorned with becoming caps; and the young ones
have turned up their skirts under their cloaks, that the stiff ruffles
may not be crushed on the way home.
But without paying any attention to the warning cries, Gösta Berling
rushes up to the countess and seizes her.
He lifts her in his arms and rushes from the room out into the hall and
then on to the steps with her.
The astonished women’s screams could not check him. When they hurry
after, they only see how he throws himself into a sledge with the
countess in his arms.
They hear the driver crack his whip and see the horse set off. They know
the driver: it is Beerencreutz. They know the horse: it is Don Juan. And
in deep distress over the countess’s fate they call their husbands.
And these waste no time in questions, but hasten to their sledges. And
with the count at their head they chase after the ravisher.
But he lies in the sledge, holding the young countess fast. He has
forgotten all grief, and mad with adventure’s intoxicating joy, he sings
at the top of his voice a song of love and roses.
Close to him he presses her; but she makes no attempt to escape. Her face
lies, white and stiffened, against his breast.
Ah, what shall a man do when he has a pale, helpless face so near his
own, when he sees the fair hair which usually shades the white, gleaming
forehead, pushed to one side, and when the eyelids have closed heavily
over the gray eyes’ roguish glance?
What shall a man do when red lips grow pale beneath his eyes?
Kiss, of course, kiss the fading lips, the closed eyes, the white
forehead.
But then the young woman awakes. She throws herself back. She is like a
bent spring. And he has to struggle with her with his whole strength to
keep her from throwing herself from the sledge, until finally he forces
her, subdued and trembling, down in the corner of the sledge.
“See,” says Gösta quite calmly to Beerencreutz, “the countess is the
third whom Don Juan and I have carried off this winter. But the others
hung about my neck with kisses, and she will neither be kissed by me nor
dance with me. Can you understand these women, Beerencreutz?”
But when Gösta drove away from the house, when the women screamed and the
men swore, when the sleigh-bells rang and the whips cracked, and there
was nothing but cries and confusion, the men who guarded the major’s wife
were wondering.
“What is going on?” they thought. “Why are they screaming?”
Suddenly the door is thrown open, and a voice calls to them.
“She is gone. He is driving away with her.”
They rush out, running like mad, without waiting to see if it was the
major’s wife or who it was who was gone. Luck was with them, and they
came up with a hurrying sledge, and they drove both far and fast, before
they discovered whom they were pursuing.
But Berg and Cousin Christopher went quietly to the door, burst the lock,
and opened it for the major’s wife.
“You are free,” they said.
She came out. They stood straight as ramrods on either side of the door
and did not look at her.
“You have a horse and sledge outside.”
She went out, placed herself in the sledge, and drove away. No one
followed her. No one knew whither she went.
Down Broby hill Don Juan speeds towards the Löfven’s ice-covered surface.
The proud courser flies on. Strong, ice-cold breezes whistle by their
cheeks. The bells jingle. The stars and the moon are shining. The snow
lies blue-white and glitters from its own brightness.
Gösta feels poetical thoughts wake in him.
“Beerencreutz,” he says, “this is life. Just as Don Juan hurries away
with this young woman, so time hurries away with man. You are necessity,
who steers the journey. I am desire, who fetters the will, and she is
dragged helpless, always deeper and deeper down.”
“Don’t talk!” cries Beerencreutz. “They are coming after us.”
And with a whistling cut of the whip he urges Don Juan to still wilder
speed.
“Once it was wolves, now it is spoils,” cries Gösta. “Don Juan, my boy,
fancy that you are a young elk. Rush through the brushwood, wade through
the swamps, leap from the mountain top down into the clear lake, swim
across it with bravely lifted head, and vanish, vanish in the thick
pine-woods’ rescuing darkness! Spring, Don Juan! Spring like a young elk!”
Joy fills his wild heart at the mad race. The cries of the pursuers are
to him a song of victory. Joy fills his wild heart when he feels the
countess’s body shake with fright, when he hears her teeth chatter.
Suddenly he loosens the grip of iron with which he has held her. He
stands up in the sledge and waves his cap.
“I am Gösta Berling,” he cries, “lord of ten thousand kisses and thirteen
thousand love-letters! Hurra for Gösta Berling! Take him who can!”
And in the next minute he whispers in the countess’s ear:—
“Is not the pace good? Is not the course kingly? Beyond Löfven lies Lake
Väner. Beyond Väner lies the sea, everywhere endless stretches of clear
blue-black ice, and beyond all a glowing world. Rolling thunders in
the freezing ice, shrill cries behind us, shooting stars above us, and
jingling bells before us! Forward! Always forward! Have you a mind to try
the journey, young, beautiful lady?”
He had let her go. She pushes him roughly away. The next instant finds
him on his knees at her feet.
“I am a wretch, a wretch. You ought not to have angered me, countess. You
stood there so proud and fair, and never thought that a pensioner’s hand
could reach you. Heaven and earth love you. You ought not to add to the
burden of those whom heaven and earth scorn.”
He draws her hands to him and lifts them to his face.
“If you only knew,” he says, “what it means to be an outcast. One does
not stop to think what one does. No, one does not.”
At the same moment he notices that she has nothing on her hands. He draws
a pair of great fur gloves from his pocket and puts them on her.
And he has become all at once quite quiet. He places himself in the
sledge, as far from the young countess as possible.
“You need not be afraid,” he says. “Do you not see where we are driving?
You must understand that we do not dare to do you any harm.”
She, who has been almost out of her mind with fright, sees that they have
driven across the lake and that Don Juan is struggling up the steep hill
to Borg.
They stop the horse before the steps of the castle, and let the young
countess get out of the sledge at the door of her own home.
When she is surrounded by attentive servants, she regains her courage and
presence of mind.
“Take care of the horse, Andersson!” she says to the coachman. “These
gentlemen who have driven me home will be kind enough to come in for a
while. The count will soon be here.”
“As you wish, countess,” says Gösta, and instantly gets out of the
sledge. Beerencreutz throws the reins to the groom without a moment’s
hesitation. And the young countess goes before them and ushers them into
the hall with ill-concealed malicious joy.
The countess had expected that the pensioners would hesitate at the
proposition to await her husband.
They did not know perhaps what a stern and upright man he was. They were
not afraid of the inquiry he should make of them, who had seized her by
force and compelled her to drive with them. She longed to hear him forbid
them ever again to set their foot in her house.
She wished to see him call in the servants to point out the pensioners to
them as men who thereafter never should be admitted within the doors of
Borg. She wished to hear him express his scorn not only of what they had
done to her, but also of their conduct toward the old major’s wife, their
benefactress.
He, who showed her only tenderness and consideration, would rise in just
wrath against her persecutors. Love would give fire to his speech. He,
who guarded and looked after her as a creature of finer stuff than any
other, would not bear that rough men had fallen upon her like birds of
prey upon a sparrow. She glowed with thirst of revenge.
Beerencreutz, however, walked undaunted into the dining-room, and up to
the fire, which was always lighted when the countess came home from a
ball.
Gösta remained in the darkness by the door and silently watched the
countess, while the servant removed her outer wraps. As he sat and looked
at the young woman, he rejoiced as he had not done for many years. He saw
so clearly it was like a revelation, although he did not understand how
he had discovered it, that she had in her one of the most beautiful of
souls.
As yet it lay bound and sleeping; but it would some day show itself. He
rejoiced at having discovered all the purity and gentleness and innocence
which was hidden in her. He was almost ready to laugh at her, because she
looked so angry and stood with flushed cheeks and frowning brows.
“You do not know how gentle and good you are,” he thought.
The side of her being which was turned towards the outside world would
never do her inner personality justice, he thought. But Gösta Berling
from that hour must be her servant, as one must serve everything
beautiful and godlike. Yes, there was nothing to be sorry for that he
had just been so violent with her. If she had not been so afraid, if she
had not thrust him from her so angrily, if he had not felt how her whole
being was shaken by his roughness, he would never have known what a fine
and noble soul dwelt within her.
He had not thought it before. She had only cared for pleasure-seeking and
amusement. And she had married that stupid Count Henrik.
Yes, now he would be her slave till death; dog and slave as Captain Bergh
used to say, and nothing more.
He sat by the door, Gösta Berling, and held with clasped hands a sort
of service. Since the day when he for the first time felt the flame of
inspiration burn in him, he had not known such a holiness in his soul. He
did not move, even when Count Dohna came in with a crowd of people, who
swore and lamented over the pensioners’ mad performance.
He let Beerencreutz receive the storm. With indolent calm, tried by many
adventures, the latter stood by the fireplace. He had put one foot up on
the fender, rested his elbow on his knee, and his chin on his hand, and
looked at the excited company.
“What is the meaning of all this?” roared the little count at him.
“The meaning is,” he said, “that as long as there are women on earth,
there will be fools to dance after their piping.”
The young count’s face grew red.
“I ask what that means!” he repeated.
“I ask that too,” sneered Beerencreutz. “I ask what it means when Henrik
Dohna’s countess will not dance with Gösta Berling.”
The count turned questioning to his wife.
“I could not, Henrik,” she cried. “I could not dance with him or any of
them. I thought of the major’s wife, whom they allowed to languish in
prison.”
The little count straightened his stiff body and stretched up his
old-man’s head.
“We pensioners,” said Beerencreutz, “permit no one to insult us. She
who will not dance with us must drive with us. No harm has come to the
countess, and there can be an end of the matter.”
“No,” said the count. “It cannot be the end. It is I who am responsible
for my wife’s acts. Now I ask why Gösta Berling did not turn to me to get
satisfaction when my wife had insulted him.”
Beerencreutz smiled.
“I ask that,” repeated the count.
“One does not ask leave of the fox to take his skin from him,” said
Beerencreutz.
The count laid his hand on his narrow chest.
“I am known to be a just man,” he cried. “I can pass sentence on my
servants. Why should I not be able to pass sentence on my wife? The
pensioners have no right to judge her. The punishment they have given
her, I wipe out. It has never been, do you understand, gentlemen. It has
never existed.”
The count screamed out the words in a high falsetto. Beerencreutz
cast a swift glance about the assembly. There was not one of those
present—Sintram and Daniel Bendix and Dahlberg and all the others who had
followed in—who did not stand and smile at the way he outwitted stupid
Henrik Dohna.
The young countess did not understand at first. What was it which should
not be considered? Her anguish, the pensioner’s hard grip on her tender
body, the wild song, the wild words, the wild kisses, did they not exist?
Had that evening never been, over which the goddess of the gray twilight
had reigned?
“But, Henrik—”
“Silence!” he said. And he drew himself up to chide her. “Woe to you,
that you, who are a woman, have wished to set yourself up as a judge of
men,” he says. “Woe to you, that you, who are my wife, dare to insult
one whose hand I gladly press. What is it to you if the pensioners have
put the major’s wife in prison? Were they not right? You can never know
how angry a man is to the bottom of his soul when he hears of a woman’s
infidelity. Do you also mean to go that evil way, that you take such a
woman’s part?”
“But, Henrik—”
She wailed like a child, and stretched out her arms to ward off the angry
words. She had never before heard such hard words addressed to her. She
was so helpless among these hard men, and now her only defender turned
against her. Never again would her heart have power to light up the world.
“But, Henrik, it is you who ought to protect me.”
Gösta Berling was observant now, when it was too late. He did not know
what to do. He wished her so well. But he did not dare to thrust himself
between man and wife.
“Where is Gösta Berling?” asked the count.
“Here,” said Gösta. And he made a pitiable attempt to make a jest of the
matter. “You were making a speech, I think, count, and I fell asleep.
What do you say to letting us go home and letting you all go to bed?”
“Gösta Berling, since my countess has refused to dance with you, I
command her to kiss your hand and to ask you for forgiveness.”
“My dear Count Henrik,” says Gösta, smiling, “it is not a fit hand for
a young woman to kiss. Yesterday it was red with blood from killing an
elk, to-day black with soot from a fight with a charcoal-burner. You have
given a noble and high-minded sentence. That is satisfaction enough.
Come, Beerencreutz!”
The count placed himself in his way.
“Do not go,” he said. “My wife must obey me. I wish that my countess
shall know whither it leads to be self-willed.”
Gösta stood helpless. The countess was quite white; but she did not move.
“Go,” said the count.
“Henrik, I cannot.”
“You can,” said the count, harshly. “You can. But I know what you want.
You will force me to fight with this man, because your whim is not to
like him. Well, if you will not make him amends, I shall do so. You
women love to have a man killed for your sake. You have done wrong, but
will not atone for it. Therefore I must do it. I shall fight the duel,
countess. In a few hours I shall be a bloody corpse.”
She gave him a long look. And she saw him as he was,—stupid, cowardly,
puffed up with pride and vanity, the most pitiful of men.
“Be calm,” she said. And she became as cold as ice. “I will do it.”
But now Gösta Berling became quite beside himself.
“You shall not, countess! No, you shall not! You are only a child, a
poor, innocent child, and you would kiss my hand. You have such a white,
beautiful soul. I will never again come near you. Oh, never again! I
bring death and destruction to everything good and blameless. You shall
not touch me. I shudder for you like fire for water. You shall not!”
He put his hands behind his back.
“It is all the same to me, Herr Berling. Nothing makes any difference to
me any more. I ask you for forgiveness. I ask you to let me kiss your
hand!”
Gösta kept his hands behind his back. He approached the door.
“If you do not accept the amends my wife offers, I must fight with you,
Gösta Berling, and moreover must impose upon her another, severer,
punishment.”
The countess shrugged her shoulders. “He is mad from cowardice,” she
whispered. “Let me do it! It does not matter if I am humbled. It is after
all what you wanted the whole time.”
“Did I want that? Do you think I wanted that? Well, if I have no hands to
kiss, you must see that I did not want it,” he cried.
He ran to the fire and stretched out his hands into it. The flames
closed over them, the skin shrivelled up, the nails crackled. But in the
same second Beerencreutz seized him by the neck and threw him across the
floor. He tripped against a chair and sat down. He sat and almost blushed
for such a foolish performance. Would she think that he only did it by
way of boast? To do such a thing in the crowded room must seem like a
foolish vaunt. There had not been a vestige of danger.
Before he could raise himself, the countess was kneeling beside him. She
seized his red, sooty hands and looked at them.
“I will kiss them, kiss them,” she cried, “as soon as they are not too
painful and sore!” And the tears streamed from her eyes as she saw the
blisters rising under the scorched skin.
For he had been like a revelation to her of an unknown glory. That such
things could happen here on earth, that they could be done for her! What
a man this was, ready for everything, mighty in good as in evil, a man of
great deeds, of strong words, of splendid actions! A hero, a hero, made
of different stuff from others! Slave of a whim, of the desire of the
moment, wild and terrible, but possessor of a tremendous power, fearless
of everything.
She had been so depressed the whole evening she had not seen anything but
pain and cruelty and cowardice. Now everything was forgotten. The young
countess was glad once more to be alive. The goddess of the twilight was
conquered. The young countess saw light and color brighten the world.
* * * * *
It was the same night in the pensioners’ wing.
There they scolded and swore at Gösta Berling. The old men wanted to
sleep; but it was impossible. He let them get no rest. It was in vain
that they drew the bed-curtains and put out the light. He only talked.
He let them know what an angel the young countess was, and how he adored
her. He would serve her, worship her. He was glad that every one had
forsaken him. He could devote his life to her service. She despised him
of course. But he would be satisfied to lie at her feet like a dog.
Had they ever noticed an island out in the Löfven? Had they seen it
from the south side, where the rugged cliff rises precipitously from
the water? Had they seen it from the north, where it sinks down to the
sea in a gentle slope, and where the narrow shoals, covered with great
pines wind out into the water, and make the most wonderful little lakes?
There on the steep cliff, where the ruins of an old viking fortress still
remain, he would build a palace for the young countess, a palace of
marble. Broad steps, at which boats decked with flags should land, should
be hewn in the cliff down to the sea. There should be glowing halls and
lofty towers with gilded pinnacles. It should be a suitable dwelling for
the young countess. That old wooden house at Borg was not worthy for her
to enter.
When he had gone on so for a while, first one snore and then another
began to sound behind the yellow-striped curtains. But most of them swore
and bewailed themselves over him and his foolishness.
“Friends,” he then says solemnly, “I see the green earth covered with the
works of man or with the ruins of men’s work. The pyramids weigh down
the earth, the tower of Babel has bored through the sky, the beautiful
temples and the gray castles have fallen into ruins. But of all which
hands have built, what is it which has not fallen, nor shall fall? Ah,
friends, throw away the trowel and the mortar! Spread your mason’s aprons
over your heads and lay you down to build bright palaces of dreams!
What has the soul to do with temples of stone and clay? Learn to build
everlasting palaces of dreams and visions!”
Thereupon he went laughing to bed.
When, shortly after, the countess heard that the major’s wife had been
set free, she gave a dinner for the pensioners.
And then began hers and Gösta Berling’s long friendship.
CHAPTER XI
GHOST-STORIES
Oh, children of the present day!
I have nothing new to tell you, only what is old and almost forgotten. I
have legends from the nursery, where the little ones sat on low stools
about the old nurse with her white hair, or from the log-fire in the
cottage, where the laborers sat and chatted, while the steam reeked from
their wet clothes, and they drew knives from leather sheaths at their
necks to spread the butter on thick, soft bread, or from the hall where
old men sat in their rocking-chairs, and, cheered by the steaming toddy,
talked of old times.
When a child, who had listened to the old nurse, to the laborers, to
the old men, stood at the window on a winter’s evening, it saw no
clouds on the horizon without their being the pensioners; the stars
were wax-candles, which were lighted at the old house at Borg; and the
spinning-wheel which hummed in the next room was driven by old Ulrika
Dillner. For the child’s head was filled with the people of those old
days; it lived for and adored them.
But if such a child, whose whole soul was filled with stories, should be
sent through the dark attic to the store-room for flax or biscuits, then
the small feet scurried; then it came flying down the stairs, through
the passage to the kitchen. For up there in the dark it could not help
thinking of the wicked mill-owner at Fors,—of him who was in league with
the devil.
Sintram’s ashes have been resting long in Svartsjö churchyard, but no
one believes that his soul has been called to God, as it reads on his
tombstone.
While he was alive he was one of those to whose home, on long, rainy
Sunday afternoons, a heavy coach, drawn by black horses, used to come.
A gentleman richly but plainly dressed gets out of the carriage, and
helps with cards and dice to while away the long hours which with their
monotony have driven the master of the house to despair. The game is
carried on far into the night; and when the stranger departs at dawn he
always leaves behind some baleful parting-gift.
As long as Sintram was here on earth he was one of those whose coming is
made known by spirits. They are heralded by visions. Their carriages roll
into the yard, their whip cracks, their voices sound on the stairs, the
door of the entry is opened and shut. The dogs and people are awakened by
the noise, it is so loud; but there is no one who has come, it is only an
hallucination which goes before them.
Ugh, those horrible people, whom evil spirits seek out! What kind of
a big black dog was it which showed itself at Fors in Sintram’s time?
He had terrible, shining eyes, and a long tongue which dripped blood
and hung far out of his panting throat. One day, when the men-servants
had been in the kitchen and eaten their dinner, he had scratched at
the kitchen door, and all the maids had screamed with fright; but the
biggest and strongest of the men had taken a burning log from the fire,
thrown open the door, and hurled it into the dog’s gaping mouth.
Then he had fled with terrible howls, flames and smoke had burst from his
throat, sparks whirled about him, and his footprints on the path shone
like fire.
And was it not dreadful that every time Sintram came home from a journey
he had changed the animals which drew him? He left with horses, but when
he came home at night he had always black bulls before his carriage.
The people who lived near the road saw their great black horns against
the sky when he drove by, and heard the creatures’ bellowing, and were
terrified by the line of sparks which the hoofs and wheels drew out of
the dry gravel.
Yes, the little feet needed to hurry, indeed, to come across the big,
dark attic. Think if something awful, if he, whose name one may not say,
should come out of a dark corner! Who can be sure? It was not only to
wicked people that he showed himself. Had not Ulrika Dillner seen him?
Both she and Anna Stjärnhök could say that they had seen him.
* * * * *
Friends, children, you who dance, you who laugh! I beg you so earnestly
to dance carefully, laugh gently, for there can be so much unhappiness if
your thin slippers tread on sensitive hearts instead of on hard boards;
and your glad, silvery laughter can drive a soul to despair.
It was surely so; the young people’s feet had trodden too hard on old
Ulrika Dillner, and the young people’s laughter had rung too arrogantly
in her ears; for there came over her suddenly an irresistible longing
for a married woman’s titles and dignities. At last she said “yes” to
the evil Sintram’s long courtship, followed him to Fors as his wife, and
was parted from the old friends at Berga, the dear old work, and the old
cares for daily bread.
It was a match which went quickly and gayly. Sintram offered himself at
Christmas, and in February they were married. That year Anna Stjärnhök
was living in Captain Uggla’s home. She was a good substitute for old
Ulrika, and the latter could draw back without compunction, and take to
herself married honors.
Without compunction, but not without regret. It was not a pleasant place
she had come to; the big, empty rooms were filled with dreadful terrors.
As soon as it was dark she began to tremble and to be afraid. She almost
died of homesickness.
The long Sunday afternoons were the hardest of all. They never came to
an end, neither they nor the long succession of torturing thoughts which
travelled through her brain.
So it happened one day in March, when Sintram had not come home from
church to dinner, that she went into the drawing-room, on the second
floor, and placed herself at the piano. It was her last consolation.
The old piano, with a flute-player and shepherdess painted on the white
cover, was her own, come to her from her parents’ home. To it she could
tell her troubles; it understood her.
But is it not both pitiful and ridiculous? Do you know what she is
playing? Only a polka, and she who is so heart-broken!
She does not know anything else. Before her fingers stiffened round
broom and carving-knife she had learned this one polka. It sticks in her
fingers; but she does not know any other piece,—no funeral march, no
impassioned sonata, not even a wailing ballad,—only the polka.
She plays it whenever she has anything to confide to the old piano. She
plays it both when she feels like weeping and like smiling. When she was
married she played it, and when for the first time she had come to her
own home, and also now.
The old strings understand her: she is unhappy, unhappy.
A traveller passing by and hearing the polka ring could well believe
that Sintram was having a ball for neighbors and friends, it sounds so
gay. It is such a brave and glad melody. With it, in the old days, she
has played carelessness in and hunger out at Berga; when they heard it
every one must up and dance. It burst the fetters of rheumatism about the
joints, and lured pensioners of eighty years on to the floor. The whole
world would gladly dance to that polka, it sounds so gay—but old Ulrika
weeps. Sintram has sulky, morose servants about him, and savage animals.
She longs for friendly faces and smiling mouths. It is this despairing
longing which the lively polka shall interpret.
People find it hard to remember that she is Madame Sintram. Everybody
calls her Mamselle Dillner. She wants the polka tune to express her
sorrow for the vanity which tempted her to seek for married honors.
Old Ulrika plays as if she would break the strings. There is so much to
drown: the lamentations of the poor peasants, the curses of overworked
cottagers, the sneers of insolent servants, and, first and last, the
shame,—the shame of being the wife of a bad man.
To those notes Gösta Berling has led young Countess Dohna to the dance.
Marianne Sinclair and her many admirers have danced to them, and the
major’s wife at Ekeby has moved to their measure when Altringer was still
alive. She can see them, couple after couple, in their youth and beauty,
whirl by. There was a stream of gayety from them to her, from her to
them. It was her polka which made their cheeks glow, their eyes shine.
She is parted from all that now. Let the polka resound,—so many memories,
so many tender memories to drown!
She plays to deaden her anguish. Her heart is ready to burst with terror
when she sees the black dog, when she hears the servants whispering of
the black bulls. She plays the polka over and over again to deaden her
anguish.
Then she perceives that her husband has come home. She hears that he
comes into the room and sits down in the rocking-chair. She knows so well
the sound as the rockers creak on the deal floor that she does not even
look round.
All the time she is playing the rocking continues; she soon hears the
music no longer, only the rocking.
Poor old Ulrika, so tortured, so lonely, so helpless, astray in a hostile
country, without a friend to complain to, without any consoler but a
cracked piano, which answers her with a polka.
It is like loud laughter at a funeral, a drinking song in a church.
While the rocking-chair is still rocking she hears suddenly how the piano
is laughing at her sorrows, and she stops in the middle of a bar. She
rises and turns to the rocking-chair.
But the next instant she is lying in a swoon on the floor. It was not
her husband who sat in the rocking-chair, but another,—he to whom little
children do not dare to give a name, he who would frighten them to death
if they should meet him in the deserted attic.
* * * * *
Can any one whose soul has been filled with legends ever free himself
from their dominion? The night wind howls outside, the trees whip the
pillars of the balcony with their stiff branches, the sky arches darkly
over the far-stretching hills, and I, who sit alone in the night and
write, with the lamp lighted and the curtain drawn, I, who am old and
ought to be sensible, feel the same shudder creeping up my back as when I
first heard this story, and I have to keep lifting my eyes from my work
to be certain that no one has come in and hidden himself in that further
corner; I have to look out on the balcony to see if there is not a black
head looking over the railing. This fright never leaves me when the night
is dark and solitude deep; and it becomes at last so dreadful that I must
throw aside my pen, creep down in my bed and draw the blanket up over my
eyes.
It was the great, secret wonder of my childhood that Ulrika Dillner
survived that afternoon. I should never have done so.
I hope, dear friends, that you may never see the tears of old eyes. And
that you may not have to stand helpless when a gray head leans against
your breast for support, or when old hands are clasped about yours in
a silent prayer. May you never see the old sunk in a sorrow which you
cannot comfort.
What is the grief of the young? They have strength, they have hope. But
what suffering it is when the old weep; what despair when they, who have
always been the support of your young days, sink into helpless wailing.
There sat Anna Stjärnhök and listened to old Ulrika, and she saw no way
out for her.
The old woman wept and trembled. Her eyes were wild. She talked and
talked, sometimes quite incoherently, as if she did not know where she
was. The thousand wrinkles which crossed her face were twice as deep as
usual, the false curls, which hung down over her eyes, were straightened
by her tears, and her whole long, thin body was shaken with sobs.
At last Anna had to put an end to the wailings. She had made up her mind.
She was going to take her back with her to Berga. Of course, she was
Sintram’s wife, but she could not remain at Fors. He would drive her mad
if she stayed with him. Anna Stjärnhök had decided to take old Ulrika
away.
Ah, how the poor thing rejoiced, and yet trembled at this decision! But
she never would dare to leave her husband and her home. He would perhaps
send the big black dog after her.
But Anna Stjärnhök conquered her resistance, partly by jests, partly
by threats, and in half an hour she had her beside her in the sledge.
Anna was driving herself, and old Disa was in the shafts. The road was
wretched, for it was late in March; but it did old Ulrika good to drive
once more in the well-known sledge, behind the old horse who had been a
faithful servant at Berga almost as long as she.
As she had naturally a cheerful spirit, she stopped crying by the time
they passed Arvidstorp; at Hogberg she was already laughing, and when
they passed Munkeby she was telling how it used to be in her youth, when
she lived with the countess at Svaneholm.
They drove up a steep and stony road in the lonely and deserted region
north of Munkeby. The road sought out all the hills it possibly could
find; it crept up to their tops by slow windings, rushed down them in a
steep descent, hurried across the even valley to find a new hill to climb
over.
They were just driving down Vestratorp’s hill, when old Ulrika stopped
short in what she was saying, and seized Anna by the arm. She was staring
at a big black dog at the roadside.
“Look!” she said.
The dog set off into the wood. Anna did not see much of him.
“Drive on,” said Ulrika; “drive as fast as you can! Now Sintram will hear
that I have gone.”
Anna tried to laugh at her terror, but she insisted.
“We shall soon hear his sleigh-bells, you will see. We shall hear them
before we reach the top of the next hill.”
And when Disa drew breath for a second at the top of Elof’s hill
sleigh-bells could be heard behind them.
Old Ulrika became quite mad with fright. She trembled, sobbed, and wailed
as she had done in the drawing-room at Fors. Anna tried to urge Disa
on, but she only turned her head and gave her a glance of unspeakable
surprise. Did she think that Disa had forgotten when it was time to trot
and when it was time to walk? Did she want to teach her how to drag a
sledge, to teach her who had known every stone, every bridge, every gate,
every hill for more than twenty years?
All this while the sleigh-bells were coming nearer.
“It is he, it is he! I know his bells,” wails old Ulrika.
The sound comes ever nearer. Sometimes it seems so unnaturally loud that
Anna turns to see if Sintram’s horse has not got his head in her sledge;
sometimes it dies away. They hear it now on the right, now on the left
of the road, but they see no one. It is as if the jingling of the bells
alone pursues them.
Just as it is at night, on the way home from a party, is it also now.
These bells ring out a tune; they sing, speak, answer. The woods echo
with their sound.
Anna Stjärnhök almost wishes that their pursuer would come near
enough for her to see Sintram himself and his red horse. The dreadful
sleigh-bells anger her.
“Those bells torture me,” she says.
The word is taken up by the bells. “Torture me,” they ring. “Torture me,
torture, torture, torture me,” they sing to all possible tunes.
It was not so long ago that she had driven this same way, hunted by
wolves. She had seen their white teeth, in the darkness, gleam in their
gaping mouths; she had thought that her body would soon be torn to pieces
by the wild beasts of the forest; but then she had not been afraid. She
had never lived through a more glorious night. Strong and beautiful had
the horse been which drew her, strong and beautiful was the man who had
shared the joy of the adventure with her.
Ah, this old horse, this old, helpless, trembling companion. She feels so
helpless that she longs to cry. She cannot escape from those terrible,
irritating bells.
So she stops and gets out of the sledge. There must be an end to it
all. Why should she run away as if she were afraid of that wicked,
contemptible wretch?
At last she sees a horse’s head come out of the advancing twilight, and
after the head a whole horse, a whole sledge, and in the sledge sits
Sintram himself.
She notices, however, that it is not as if they had come along the
road—this sledge, and this horse, and their driver—but more as if they
had been created just there before her eyes, and had come forward out of
the twilight as soon as they were made ready.
Anna threw the reins to Ulrika and went to meet Sintram.
He stops the horse.
“Well, well,” he says; “what a piece of luck! Dear Miss Stjärnhök, let me
move my companion over to your sledge. He is going to Berga to-night, and
I am in a hurry to get home.”
“Where is your companion?”
Sintram lifts his blanket, and shows Anna a man who is lying asleep on
the bottom of the sledge. “He is a little drunk,” he says; “but what does
that matter? He will sleep. It’s an old acquaintance, moreover; it is
Gösta Berling.”
Anna shudders.
“Well, I will tell you,” continues Sintram, “that she who forsakes the
man she loves sells him to the devil. That was the way I got into his
claws. People think they do so well, of course; to renounce is good, and
to love is evil.”
“What do you mean? What are you talking about?” asks Anna, quite
disturbed.
“I mean that you should not have let Gösta Berling go from you, Miss
Anna.”
“It was God’s will.”
“Yes, yes, that’s the way it is; to renounce is good, and to love is
evil. The good God does not like to see people happy. He sends wolves
after them. But if it was not God who did it, Miss Anna? Could it not
just as well have been I who called my little gray lambs from the Dovre
mountains to hunt the young man and the young girl? Think, if it was I
who sent the wolves, because I did not wish to lose one of my own! Think,
if it was not God who did it!”
“You must not tempt me to doubt that,” says Anna, in a weak voice, “for
then I am lost.”
“Look here,” says Sintram, and bends down over the sleeping Gösta
Berling; “look at his little finger. That little sore never heals. We
took the blood there when he signed the contract. He is mine. There is a
peculiar power in blood. He is mine, and it is only love which can free
him; but if I am allowed to keep him he will be a fine thing.”
Anna Stjärnhök struggles and struggles to shake off the fascination which
has seized her. It is all madness, madness. No one can swear away his
soul to the odious tempter. But she has no power over her thoughts; the
twilight lies so heavy over her, the woods stand so dark and silent. She
cannot escape the dreadful terror of the moment.
“You think, perhaps,” continues Sintram, “that there is not much left in
him to ruin. But don’t think that! Has he ground down the peasants, has
he deceived poor friends, has he cheated at cards? Has he, Miss Anna, has
he been a married woman’s lover?”
“I think you are the devil himself!”
“Let us exchange. You take Gösta Berling, take him and marry him. Keep
him, and give them at Berga the money. I yield him up to you, and you
know that he is mine. Think that it was not God who sent the wolves after
you the other night, and let us exchange!”
“What do you want as compensation?”
Sintram grinned.
“I—what do I want? Oh, I am satisfied with little. I only want that old
woman there in your sledge, Miss Anna.”
“Satan, tempter,” cries Anna, “leave me! Shall I betray an old friend
who relies on me? Shall I leave her to you, that you may torture her to
madness?”
“There, there, there; quietly, Miss Anna! Think what you are doing! Here
is a fine young man, and there an old, worn-out woman. One of them I
must have. Which of them will you let me keep?”
Anna Stjärnhök laughed wildly.
“Do you think that we can stand here and exchange souls as they exchange
horses at the market at Broby?”
“Just so, yes. But if you will, we shall put it on another basis. We
shall think of the honor of the Stjärnhöks.”
Thereupon he begins to call in a loud voice to his wife, who is sitting
in Anna’s sledge; and, to the girl’s unspeakable horror, she obeys the
summons instantly, gets out of the sledge, and comes, trembling and
shaking, to them.
“See, see, see!—such an obedient wife,” says Sintram. “You cannot prevent
her coming when her husband calls. Now, I shall lift Gösta out of my
sledge and leave him here,—leave him for good, Miss Anna. Whoever may
want to can pick him up.”
He bends down to lift Gösta up; but Anna leans forward, fixes him with
her eyes, and hisses like an angry animal:—
“In God’s name, go home! Do you not know who is sitting in the
rocking-chair in the drawing-room and waiting for you? Do you dare to let
him wait?”
It was for Anna almost the climax of the horrors of the day to see
how these words affect him. He drags on the reins, turns, and drives
homewards, urging the horse to a gallop with blows and wild cries down
the dreadful hill, while a long line of sparks crackle under the runners
and hoofs in the thin March snow.
Anna Stjärnhök and Ulrika Dillner stand alone in the road, but they do
not say a word. Ulrika trembles before Anna’s wild eyes, and Anna has
nothing to say to the poor old thing, for whose sake she has sacrificed
her beloved.
She would have liked to weep, to rave, to roll on the ground and strew
snow and sand on her head.
Before, she had known the sweetness of renunciation, now she knew its
bitterness. What was it to sacrifice her love compared to sacrificing
her beloved’s soul? They drove on to Berga in the same silence; but when
they arrived, and the hall-door was opened, Anna Stjärnhök fainted for
the first and only time in her life. There sat both Sintram and Gösta
Berling, and chatted quietly. The tray with toddy had been brought in;
they had been there at least an hour.
Anna Stjärnhök fainted, but old Ulrika stood calm. She had noticed that
everything was not right with him who had followed them on the road.
Afterwards the captain and his wife arranged the matter so with Sintram
that old Ulrika was allowed to stay at Berga. He agreed good-naturedly.
“He did not want to drive her mad,” he said.
* * * * *
I do not ask any one to believe these old stories. They cannot be
anything but lies and fiction. But the anguish which passes over the
heart, until it wails as the floor boards in Sintram’s room wailed under
the swaying rockers; but the questions which ring in the ears, as the
sleigh-bells rang for Anna Stjärnhök in the lonely forest,—when will they
be as lies and fiction?
Oh, that they could be!
CHAPTER XII
EBBA DOHNA’S STORY
The beautiful point on Löfven’s eastern shore, about which the bay glides
with lapping waves, the proud point where the manor of Borg lies, beware
of approaching.
Löfven never looks more glorious than from its summit.
No one can know how lovely it is, the lake of my dreams, until he has
seen from Borg’s point the morning mist glide away from its smooth
surface; until he, from the windows of the little blue cabinet, where so
many memories dwell, has seen it reflect a pink sunset.
But I still say, go not thither!
For perhaps you will be seized with a desire to remain in that old
manor’s sorrowful halls; perhaps you will make yourself the owner of
those fair lands; and if you are young, rich, and happy, you will make
your home there with a young wife.
No, it is better never to see the beautiful point, for at Borg no one can
live and be happy. No matter how rich, how happy you may be, who move in
there, those old tear-drenched floors would soon drink _your_ tears as
well, and those walls, which could give back so many moans, would also
glean _your_ sighs.
An implacable fate is on this lovely spot. It is as if misfortune were
buried there, but found no rest in its grave, and perpetually rose from
it to terrify the living. If I were lord of Borg I would search through
the ground, both in the park and under the cellar floor in the house, and
in the fertile mould out in the meadows, until I had found the witch’s
worm-eaten corpse, and then I would give her a grave in consecrated earth
in the Svartsjö churchyard. And at the burial I would not spare on the
ringer’s pay, but let the bells sound long and loud over her; and to the
clergyman and sexton I should send rich gifts, that they with redoubled
strength might with speech and song consecrate her to everlasting rest.
Or, if that did not help, some stormy night I would set fire to the
wooden walls, and let it destroy everything, so that no one more might
be tempted to live in the home of misfortune. Afterwards no one should
be allowed to approach that doomed spot; only the church-tower’s black
jackdaws should build in the great chimney, which, blackened and
dreadful, would raise itself over the deserted foundations.
Still, I should certainly mourn when I saw the flames close over the
roof, when thick smoke, reddened by the fire and flecked with sparks,
should roll out from the old manor-house. In the crackling and the
roaring I should fancy I heard the wails of homeless memories; on the
blue points of the flames I should see disturbed spirits floating. I
should think how sorrow beautifies, how misfortune adorns, and weep as if
a temple to the old gods had been condemned to destruction.
But why croak of unhappiness? As yet Borg lies and shines on its point,
shaded by its park of mighty pines, and the snow-covered fields glitter
in March’s burning sun; as yet is heard within those walls the young
Countess Elizabeth’s gay laughter.
Every Sunday she goes to church at Svartsjö, which lies near Borg, and
gathers together a few friends for dinner. The judge and his family from
Munkerud used to come, and the Ugglas from Berga, and even Sintram. If
Gösta Berling happens to be in Svartsjö, wandering over Löfven’s ice, she
invites him too. Why should she not invite Gösta Berling?
She probably does not know that the gossips are beginning to whisper that
Gösta comes very often over to the east shore to see her. Perhaps he also
comes to drink and play cards with Sintram; but no one thinks so much of
that; every one knows that his body is of steel; but it is another matter
with his heart. No one believes that he can see a pair of shining eyes,
and fair hair which curls about a white brow, without love.
The young countess is good to him. But there is nothing strange in that;
she is good to all. She takes ragged beggar children on her knee, and
when she drives by some poor old creature on the high-road she has the
coachman stop, and takes the poor wanderer up into her sledge.
Gösta used to sit in the little blue cabinet, where there is such a
glorious view over the lake, and read poetry to her. There can be no harm
in that. He does not forget that she is a countess, and he a homeless
adventurer; and it is good for him to be with some one whom he holds high
and holy. He could just as well be in love with the Queen of Sheba as
with her.
He only asks to be allowed to wait on her as a page waits on his noble
mistress: to fasten her skates, to hold her skeins, to steer her sled.
There cannot be any question of love between them; he is just the man to
find his happiness in a romantic, innocent adoration.
The young count is silent and serious, and Gösta is playfully gay. He is
just such a companion as the young countess likes. No one who sees her
fancies that she is hiding a forbidden love. She thinks of dancing,—of
dancing and merry-making. She would like the earth to be quite flat,
without stones, without hills or seas, so that she could dance
everywhere. From the cradle to the grave she would like to dance in her
small, thin-soled, satin slippers.
But rumor is not very merciful to young women.
When the guests come to dinner at Borg, the men generally, after the
meal, go into the count’s room to sleep and smoke; the old ladies sink
down in the easy-chairs in the drawing-room, and lean their venerable
heads against the high backs; but the countess and Anna Stjärnhök go into
the blue cabinet and exchange endless confidences.
The Sunday after the one when Anna Stjärnhök took Ulrika Dillner back to
Berga they are sitting there again.
No one on earth is so unhappy as the young girl. All her gayety is
departed, and gone is the glad defiance which she showed to everything
and everybody who wished to come too near her.
Everything which had happened to her that day has sunk back into the
twilight from which it was charmed; she has only one distinct impression
left,—yes, one, which is poisoning her soul.
“If it really was not God who did it,” she used to whisper to herself.
“If it was not God, who sent the wolves?”
She asks for a sign, she longs for a miracle. She searches heaven and
earth. But she sees no finger stretched from the sky to point out her way.
As she sits now opposite the countess in the blue cabinet, her eyes fall
on a little bunch of hepaticas which the countess holds in her white
hand. Like a bolt it strikes her that she knows where the flowers have
grown, that she knows who has picked them.
She does not need to ask. Where else in the whole countryside do
hepaticas bloom in the beginning of April, except in the birch grove
which lies on the slopes of Ekeby?
She stares and stares at the little blue stars; those happy ones who
possess all hearts; those little prophets who, beautiful in themselves,
are also glorified by the splendor of all the beauty which they herald,
of all the beauty which is coming. And as she watches them a storm of
wrath rises in her soul, rumbling like the thunder, deadening like the
lightning. “By what right,” she thinks, “does Countess Dohna hold this
bunch of hepaticas, picked by the shore at Ekeby?”
They were all tempters: Sintram, the countess, everybody wanted to allure
Gösta Berling to what was evil. But she would protect him; against all
would she protect him. Even if it should cost her heart’s blood, she
would do it.
She thinks that she must see those flowers torn out of the countess’s
hand, and thrown aside, trampled, crushed, before she leaves the little
blue cabinet.
She thinks that, and she begins a struggle with the little blue stars.
Out in the drawing-room the old ladies lean their venerable heads against
the chair-backs and suspect nothing; the men smoke their pipes in calm
and quiet in the count’s room; peace is everywhere; only in the little
blue cabinet rages a terrible struggle.
Ah, how well they do who keep their hands from the sword, who understand
how to wait quietly, to lay their hearts to rest and let God direct! The
restless heart always goes astray; ill-will makes the pain worse.
But Anna Stjärnhök believes that at last she has seen a finger in the sky.
“Anna,” says the countess, “tell me a story!”
“About what?”
“Oh,” says the countess, and caresses the flowers with her white hand.
“Do not you know something about love, something about loving?”
“No, I know nothing of love.”
“How you talk! Is there not a place here which is called Ekeby,—a place
full of pensioners?”
“Yes,” says Anna, “there is a place which is called Ekeby, and there
are men there who suck the marrow of the land, who make us incapable of
serious work, who ruin growing youth, and lead astray our geniuses. Do
you want to hear of them? Do you want to hear love-stories of them?”
“Yes. I like the pensioners.”
So Anna Stjärnhök speaks,—speaks in short sentences, like an old
hymn-book, for she is nearly choking with stormy emotions. Suppressed
suffering trembles in each word, and the countess was both frightened
and interested to hear her.
“What is a pensioner’s love, what is a pensioner’s faith?—one sweetheart
to-day, another to-morrow, one in the east, another in the west. Nothing
is too high for him, nothing too low; one day a count’s daughter, the
next day a beggar girl. Nothing on earth is so capacious as his heart.
But alas, alas for her who loves a pensioner. She must seek him out
where he lies drunk at the wayside. She must silently look on while he
at the card-table plays away the home of her childhood. She must bear to
have him hang about other women. Oh, Elizabeth, if a pensioner asks an
honorable woman for a dance she ought to refuse it to him; if he gives
her a bunch of flowers she ought to throw the flowers on the ground and
trample on them; if she loves him she ought rather to die than to marry
him. There was one among the pensioners who was a dismissed priest; he
had lost his vestments for drunkenness. He was drunk in the church. He
drank up the communion wine. Have you ever heard of him?”
“No.”
“After he had been dismissed he wandered about the country as a beggar.
He drank like a madman. He would steal to get brandy.”
“What is his name?”
“He is no longer at Ekeby. The major’s wife got hold of him, gave him
clothes, and persuaded your mother-in-law, Countess Dohna, to make him
tutor to your husband, young Count Henrik.”
“A dismissed priest!”
“Oh, he was a young, powerful man, of good intelligence. There was
no harm in him, if he only did not drink. Countess Märta was not
particular. It amused her to quarrel with the neighboring clergymen.
Still, she ordered him to say nothing of his past life to her children.
For then her son would have lost respect for him, and her daughter would
not have endured him, for she was a saint.
“So he came here to Borg. He always sat just inside the door, on the very
edge of his chair, never said a word at the table, and fled out into the
park when any visitors came.
“But there in the lonely walks he used to meet young Ebba Dohna. She was
not one who loved the noisy feasts which resounded in the halls at Borg
after the countess became a widow. She was so gentle, so shy. She was
still, although she was seventeen, nothing but a tender child; but she
was very lovely, with her brown eyes, and the faint, delicate color in
her cheeks. Her thin, slender body bent forward. Her little hand would
creep into yours with a shy pressure. Her little mouth was the most
silent of mouths and the most serious. Ah, her voice, her sweet little
voice, which pronounced the words so slowly and so well, but never rang
with the freshness and warmth of youth,—its feeble tones were like a
weary musician’s last chord.
“She was not as others. Her foot trod so lightly, so softly, as if she
were a frightened fugitive. She kept her eyelids lowered in order not
to be disturbed in her contemplation of the visions of her soul. It had
turned from the earth when she was but a child.
“When she was little her grandmother used to tell her stories; and one
evening they both sat by the fire; but the stories had come to an end.
But still the little girl’s hand lay on the old woman’s dress, and she
gently stroked the silk,—that funny stuff which sounded like a little
bird. And this stroking was her prayer, for she was one of those children
who never beg in words.
“Then the old lady began to tell her of a little child in the land of
Judah; of a little child who was born to become a great King. The angels
had filled the earth with songs of praise when he was born. The kings
of the East came, guided by the star of heaven, and gave him gold and
incense; and old men and women foretold his glory. This child grew up to
greater beauty and wisdom than all other children. Already, when he was
twelve years old, his wisdom was greater than that of the chief-priests
and the scribes.
“Then the old woman told her of the most beautiful thing the earth has
ever seen: of that child’s life while he remained among men,—those wicked
men who would not acknowledge him their King.
“She told her how the child became a man, but that the glory surrounded
him still.
“Everything on the earth served him and loved him, except mankind. The
fishes let themselves be caught in his net, bread filled his baskets,
water changed itself to wine when he wished it.
“But the people gave the great King no golden crown, no shining throne.
He had no bowing courtiers about him. They let him go among them like a
beggar.
“Still, he was so good to them, the great King! He cured their
sicknesses, gave back to the blind their sight, and waked the dead.
“But,” said the grandmother, “the people would not have the great King
for their lord.
“‘They sent their soldiers against him, and took him prisoner; they
dressed him, by way of mockery, in crown and sceptre, and in a silken
cloak, and made him go out to the place of execution, bearing a heavy
cross. Oh, my child, the good King loved the high mountains. At night he
used to climb them to talk with those who dwelt in heaven, and he liked
by day to sit on the mountain-side and talk to the listening people.
But now they led him up on a mountain to crucify him. They drove nails
through his hands and feet, and hung the good King on a cross, as if he
had been a robber or a malefactor.
“‘And the people mocked at him. Only his mother and his friends wept,
that he should die before he had been a King.
“‘Oh, how the dead things mourned his death!
“‘The sun lost its light, and the mountains trembled; the curtain in the
temple was rent asunder, and the graves opened, that the dead might rise
up and show their grief.’
“The little one lay with her head on her grandmother’s knee, and sobbed
as if her heart would break.
“‘Do not weep, little one; the good King rose from his grave and went up
to his Father in heaven.’
“‘Grandmother,’ sobbed the poor little thing, ‘did he ever get any
kingdom?’
“‘He sits on God’s right hand in heaven.’
“But that did not comfort her. She wept helplessly and unrestrainedly, as
only a child can weep.
“‘Why were they so cruel to him? Why were they allowed to be so cruel to
him?’
“Her grandmother was almost frightened at her overwhelming sorrow.
“‘Say, grandmother, say that you have not told it right! Say that it did
not end so! Say that they were not so cruel to the good King! Say that he
got a kingdom on earth!’
“She threw her arms around the old woman and beseeched her with streaming
tears.
“‘Child, child,’ said her grandmother, to console her. ‘There are some
who believe that he will come again. Then he will put the earth under
his power and direct it. The beautiful earth will be a glorious kingdom.
It shall last a thousand years. Then the fierce animals will be gentle;
little children will play by the viper’s nest, and bears and cows will
eat together. No one shall injure or destroy the other; the lance shall
be bent into scythes, and the sword forged into ploughs. And everything
shall be play and happiness, for the good will possess the earth.’
“Then the little one’s face brightened behind her tears.
“‘Will the good King then get a throne, grandmother?’
“‘A throne of gold.’
“‘And servants, and courtiers, and a golden crown?’
“‘Yes.’
“‘Will he come soon, grandmother?’
“‘No one knows when he will come.’
“‘May I sit on a stool at his feet?’
“‘You may.’
“‘Grandmother, I am so happy,’ says the little one.
“Evening after evening, through many winters, they both sat by the fire
and talked of the good King and his kingdom. The little one dreamed of
the kingdom which should last a thousand years, both by night and by day.
She never wearied of adorning it with everything beautiful which she
could think of.
“Ebba Dohna never dared to speak of it to any one; but from that evening
she only lived for the Lord’s kingdom, and to await his coming.
“When the evening sun crimsoned the western sky, she wondered if he would
ever appear there, glowing with a mild splendor, followed by a host of
millions of angels, and march by her, allowing her to touch the hem of
his garment.
“She often thought, too, of those pious women who had hung a veil over
their heads, and never lifted their eyes from the ground, but shut
themselves in in the gray cloister’s calm, in the darkness of little
cells, to always contemplate the glowing visions which appear from the
night of the soul.
“Such had she grown up; such she was when she and the new tutor met in
the lonely paths of the park.
“I will not speak more harshly of him than I must. I will believe that
he loved that child, who soon chose him for companion in her lonely
wanderings. I think that his soul got back its wings when he walked by
the side of that quiet girl, who had never confided in any other. I think
that he felt himself a child again, good, gentle, virtuous.
“But if he really loved her, why did he not remember that he could not
give her a worse gift than his love? He, one of the world’s outcasts,
what did he want, what did he think of when he walked at the side of
the count’s daughter? What did the dismissed clergyman think when she
confided to him her gentle dreams? What did he want, who had been a
drunkard, and would be again when he got the chance, at the side of her
who dreamed of a bridegroom in heaven? Why did he not fly far, far away
from her? Would it not have been better for him to wander begging and
stealing about the land than to walk under the silent pines and again be
good, gentle, virtuous, when it could not change the life he had led, nor
make it right that Ebba Dohna should love him?
“Do not think that he looked like a drunkard, with livid cheeks and red
eyes. He was always a splendid man, handsome and unbroken in soul and
body. He had the bearing of a king and a body of steel, which was not
hurt by the wildest life.”
“Is he still living?” asks the countess.
“Oh, no, he must be dead now. All that happened so long ago.”
There is something in Anna Stjärnhök which begins to tremble at what she
is doing. She begins to think that she will never tell the countess who
the man is of whom she speaks; that she will let her believe that he is
dead.
“At that time he was still young;” and she begins her story again. “The
joy of living was kindled in him. He had the gift of eloquence, and a
fiery, impulsive heart.
“One evening he spoke to Ebba Dohna of love. She did not answer; she
only told him what her grandmother had told her that winter evening, and
described to him the land of her dreams. Then she exacted a promise from
him. She made him swear that he would be a proclaimer of the word of
God; one of those who would prepare the way for the Lord, so that his
coming might be hastened.
“What could he do? He was a dismissed clergyman, and no way was so closed
to him as that on which she wanted him to enter. But he did not dare to
tell her the truth. He did not have the heart to grieve that gentle child
whom he loved. He promised everything she wished.
“After that few words were needed. It went without saying that some day
she should be his wife. It was not a love of kisses and caresses. He
hardly dared come near her. She was as sensitive as a fragile flower.
But her brown eyes were sometimes raised from the ground to seek his. On
moonlit evenings, when they sat on the veranda, she would creep close to
him, and then he would kiss her hair without her noticing it.
“But you understand that his sin was in his forgetting both the past
and the future. That he was poor and humble he could forget; but he
ought always to have remembered that a day must come when in her soul
love would rise against love, earth against heaven, when she would be
obliged to choose between him and the glorious Lord of the kingdom of the
thousand years. And she was not one who could endure such a struggle.
“A summer went by, an autumn, a winter. When the spring came, and the
ice melted, Ebba Dohna fell ill. It was thawing in the valleys; there
were streams down all the hills, the ice was unsafe, the roads almost
impassable both for sledge and cart.
“Countess Dohna wanted to get a doctor from Karlstad; there was none
nearer. But she commanded in vain. She could not, either with prayers or
threats, induce a servant to go. She threw herself on her knees before
the coachman, but he refused. She went into hysterics of grief over her
daughter—she was always immoderate, in sorrow as in joy, Countess Märta.
“Ebba Dohna lay ill with pneumonia, and her life was in danger; but no
doctor could be got.
“Then the tutor drove to Karlstad. To take that journey in the condition
the roads were in was to play with his life; but he did it. It took him
over bending ice and break-neck freshets. Sometimes he had to cut steps
for the horse in the ice, sometimes drag him out of the deep clay in the
road. It was said that the doctor refused to go with him, and that he,
with pistol in hand, forced him to set out.
“When he came back the countess was ready to throw herself at his feet.
‘Take everything!’ she said. ‘Say what you want, what you desire,—my
daughter, my lands, my money!’
“‘Your daughter,’ answered the tutor.”
Anna Stjärnhök suddenly stops.
“Well, what then, what then?” asks Countess Elizabeth.
“That can be enough for now,” answers Anna, for she is one of those
unhappy people who live in the anguish of doubt. She has felt it a whole
week. She does not know what she wants. What one moment seems right to
her the next is wrong. Now she wishes that she had never begun this story.
“I begin to think that you want to deceive me, Anna. Do you not
understand that I _must_ hear the end of this story?”
“There is not much more to tell.—The hour of strife was come for Ebba
Dohna. Love raised itself against love, earth against heaven.
“Countess Märta told her of the wonderful journey which the young man had
made for her sake, and she said to her that she, as a reward, had given
him her hand.
“Ebba was so much better that she lay dressed on a sofa. She was weak and
pale, and even more silent than usual.
“When she heard those words she lifted her brown eyes reproachfully to
her mother, and said to her:—
“‘Mamma, have you given me to a dismissed priest, to one who has
forfeited his right to serve God, to a man who has been a thief, a
beggar?’
“‘But, child, who has told you that? I thought you knew nothing of it.’
“‘I heard your guests speaking of him the day I was taken ill.’
“‘But, child, remember that he has saved your life!’
“‘I remember that he has deceived me. He should have told me who he was.’
“‘He says that you love him.’
“‘I have done so. I cannot love one who has deceived me.’
“‘How has he deceived you?’
“‘You would not understand, mamma.’
“She did not wish to speak to her mother of the kingdom of her dreams,
which her beloved should have helped her to realize.
“‘Ebba,’ said the countess, ‘if you love him you shall not ask what he
has been, but marry him. The husband of a Countess Dohna will be rich
enough, powerful enough, to excuse all the follies of his youth.’
“‘I care nothing for his youthful follies, mamma; it is because he can
never be what I want him to be that I cannot marry him.’
“‘Ebba, remember that I have given him my promise!’
“The girl became as pale as death.
“‘Mamma, I tell you that if you marry me to him you part me from God.’
“‘I have decided to act for your happiness,’ says the countess. ‘I am
certain that you will be happy with this man. You have already succeeded
in making a saint of him. I have decided to overlook the claims of birth
and to forget that he is poor and despised, in order to give you a chance
to raise him. I feel that I am doing right. You know that I scorn all old
prejudices.’
“The young girl lay quiet on her sofa for a while after the countess
had left her. She was fighting her battle. Earth raised itself against
heaven, love against love; but her childhood’s love won the victory. As
she lay there on the sofa, she saw the western sky glow in a magnificent
sunset. She thought that it was a greeting from the good King; and as she
could not be faithful to him if she lived, she decided to die. There was
nothing else for her to do, since her mother wished her to belong to one
who never could be the good King’s servant.
“She went over to the window, opened it, and let the twilight’s cold,
damp air chill her poor, weak body.
“It was easily done. The illness was certain to begin again, and it did.
“No one but I knows that she sought death, Elizabeth. I found her at the
window. I heard her delirium. She liked to have me at her side those last
days.
“It was I who saw her die; who saw how she one evening stretched out her
arms towards the glowing west, and died, smiling, as if she had seen some
one advance from the sunset’s glory to meet her. It was also I who had to
take her last greeting to the man she loved. I was to ask him to forgive
her, that she could not be his wife. The good King would not permit it.
“But I have never dared to say to that man that he was her murderer.
I have not dared to lay the weight of such pain on his shoulders. And
yet he, who won her love by lies, was he not her murderer? Was he not,
Elizabeth?”
Countess Dohna long ago had stopped caressing the blue flowers. Now she
rises, and the bouquet falls to the floor.
“Anna, you are deceiving me. You say that the story is old, and that the
man has been dead a long time. But I know that it is scarcely five years
since Ebba Dohna died, and you say that you yourself were there through
it all. You are not old. Tell me who the man is!”
Anna Stjärnhök begins to laugh.
“You wanted a love-story. Now you have had one which has cost you both
tears and pain.”
“Do you mean that you have lied?”
“Nothing but romance and lies, the whole thing!”
“You are too bad, Anna.”
“Maybe. I am not so happy, either.—But the ladies are awake, and the men
are coming into the drawing-room. Let us join them!”
On the threshold she is stopped by Gösta Berling, who is looking for the
young ladies.
“You must have patience with me,” he says, laughing. “I shall only
torment you for ten minutes; but you must hear my verses.”
He tells them that in the night he had had a dream more vivid than ever
before; he had dreamt that he had written verse. He, whom the world
called “poet,” although he had always been undeserving of the title, had
got up in the middle of the night, and, half asleep, half awake, had
begun to write. It was a whole poem, which he had found the next morning
on his writing-table. He could never have believed it of himself. Now the
ladies should hear it.
And he reads:—
“The moon rose, and with her came the sweetest hour of the day.
From the clear, pale-blue, lofty vault
She flooded the leafy veranda with her light.
On the broad steps we were sitting, both old and young,
Silent at first to let the emotions sing
The heart’s old song in that tender hour.
“From the mignonette rose a sweet perfume,
And from dark thickets shadows crept over the dewy grass.
Oh, who can be safe from emotion
When the night’s shadows play, when the mignonette sheds its heavy
perfume?
“The last faded petal dropped from the rose,
Although the offering was not sought by the wind.
So—we thought—will we give up our life,
Vanish into space like a sound,
Like autumn’s yellowed leaf go without a moan.
Death is the reward of life; may we meet it quietly,
Just as a rose lets its last faded petal fall.
“On its fluttering wing a bat flew by us,
Flew and was seen, wherever the moon shone;
Then the question arose in our oppressed hearts,—
“The question which none can answer,
The question, heavy as sorrow, old as pain:
‘Oh, whither go we, what paths shall we wander
When we no longer walk on earth’s green pastures?’
Is there no one to show our spirits the way?
Easier were it to show a way to the bat who fluttered by us.
“She laid her head on my shoulder, her soft hair,
She, who loved me, and whispered softly:
‘Think not that souls fly to far-distant places;
When I am dead, think not that I am far away.
Into my beloved’s soul my homeless spirit will creep
And I will come and live in thee.’
“Oh what anguish! With sorrow my heart will break.
Was she to die, die soon? Was this night to be her last?
Did I press my last kiss on my beloved’s waving hair?
“Years have gone by since then. I still sit many times
In the old place, when the night is dark and silent.
But I tremble when the moon shines on the leafy veranda,
For her who alone knows how often I kissed my darling there,
For her who blended her quivering light with my tears,
Which fell on my darling’s hair.
Alas, for memory’s pain! Oh, ’tis the grief of my poor, sinful soul
That it should be her home! What punishment may he not await
Who has bound to himself a soul so pure, so innocent.”
“Gösta,” says Anna, jestingly, while her throat contracts with pain,
“people say of you that you have lived through more poems than others
have written, who have not done anything else all their lives; but do
you know, you will do best to compose poems your own way. That was night
work.”
“You are not kind.”
“To come and read such a thing, on death and suffering—you ought to be
ashamed!”
Gösta is not listening to her. His eyes are fixed on the young countess.
She sits quite stiff, motionless as a statue. He thinks she is going to
faint.
But with infinite difficulty her lips form one word.
“Go!” she says.
“Who shall go? Shall _I_ go?”
“The priest shall go,” she stammers out.
“Elizabeth, be silent!”
“The drunken priest shall leave my house!”
“Anna, Anna,” Gösta asks, “what does she mean?”
“You had better go, Gösta.”
“Why shall I go? What does all this mean?”
“Anna,” says Countess Elizabeth, “tell him, tell him!”
“No, countess, tell him yourself!”
The countess sets her teeth, and masters her emotion.
“Herr Berling,” she says, and goes up to him, “you have a wonderful power
of making people forget who you are. I did not know it till to-day. I
have just heard the story of Ebba Dohna’s death, and that it was the
discovery that she loved one who was unworthy which killed her. Your
poem has made me understand that you are that man. I cannot understand
how any one with your antecedents can show himself in the presence of an
honorable woman. I cannot understand it, Herr Berling. Do I speak plainly
enough?”
“You do, Countess. I will only say one word in my defence. I was
convinced, I thought the whole time that you knew everything about me. I
have never tried to hide anything; but it is not so pleasant to cry out
one’s life’s bitterest sorrow on the highways.”
He goes.
And in the same instant Countess Dohna sets her little foot on the bunch
of blue stars.
“You have now done what I wished,” says Anna Stjärnhök sternly to the
countess; “but it is also the end of our friendship. You need not think
that I can forgive your having been cruel to him. You have turned him
away, scorned, and wounded him, and I—I will follow him into captivity;
to the scaffold if need be. I will watch over him, protect him. You have
done what I wished, but I shall never forgive you.”
“But, Anna, Anna!”
“Because I told you all that do you think that I did it with a glad
spirit? Have I not sat here and bit by bit torn my heart out of my
breast?”
“Why did you do it?”
“Why? Because I did not wish—that he should be a married woman’s lover.”
CHAPTER XIII
MAMSELLE MARIE
There is a buzzing over my head. It must be a bumblebee. And such a
perfume! As true as I live, it is sweet marjoram and lavender and
hawthorn and lilacs and Easter lilies. It is glorious to feel it on a
gray autumn evening in the midst of the town. I only have to think of
that little blessed corner of the earth to have it immediately begin to
hum and smell fragrant about me, and I am transported to a little square
rose-garden, filled with flowers and protected by a privet hedge. In the
corners are lilac arbors with small wooden benches, and round about the
flower-beds, which are in the shapes of hearts and stars, wind narrow
paths strewed with white sea-sand. On three sides of the rose-garden
stands the forest, silent and dark.
On the fourth side lies a little gray cottage.
The rose-garden of which I am thinking was owned sixty years ago by an
old Madame Moreus in Svartsjö, who made her living by knitting blankets
for the peasants and cooking their feasts.
Old Madame Moreus was in her day the possessor of many things. She had
three lively and industrious daughters and a little cottage by the
roadside. She had a store of pennies at the bottom of a chest, stiff silk
shawls, straight-backed chairs, and could turn her hand to everything,
which is useful for one who must earn her bread. But the best that she
had was the rose-garden, which gave her joy as long as the summer lasted.
In Madame Moreus’ little cottage there was a boarder, a little dry old
maid, about forty years of age, who lived in a gable-room in the attic.
Mamselle Marie, as she was always called, had her own ideas on many
things, as one always does who sits much alone and lets her thoughts
dwell on what her eyes have seen.
Mamselle Marie thought that love was the root and origin of all evil in
this sorrowful world.
Every evening, before she fell asleep, she used to clasp her hands and
say her evening prayers. After she had said “Our Father” and “The Lord
bless us” she always ended by praying that God would preserve her from
love.
“It causes only misery,” she said. “I am old and ugly and poor. No, may I
never be in love!”
She sat day after day in her attic room in Madame Moreus’ little cottage,
and knitted curtains and table-covers. All these she afterwards sold to
the peasants and the gentry. She had almost knitted together a little
cottage of her own.
For a little cottage on the side of the hill opposite Svartsjö church was
what she wanted to have. But love she would never hear of.
When on summer evenings she heard the violin sounded from the cross
roads, where the fiddler sat on the stile, and the young people swung in
the polka till the dust whirled, she went a long way round through the
wood to avoid hearing and seeing.
The day after Christmas, when the peasant brides came, five or six of
them, to be dressed by Madame Moreus and her daughters, when they were
adorned with wreaths of myrtle, and high crowns of silk, and glass beads,
with gorgeous silk sashes and bunches of artificial roses, and skirts
edged with garlands of taffeta flowers, she stayed up in her room to
avoid seeing how they were being decked out in Love’s honor.
But she knew Love’s misdeeds, and of them she could tell. She wondered
that he dared to show himself on earth, that he was not frightened away
by the moans of the forsaken, by the curses of those of whom he had made
criminals, by the lamentations of those whom he had thrown into hateful
chains. She wondered that his wings could bear him so easily and lightly,
that he did not, weighed down by pain and shame, sink into nameless
depths.
No, of course she had been young, she like others, but she had never
loved. She had never let herself be tempted by dancing and caresses. Her
mother’s guitar hung dusty and unstrung in the attic; she never struck it
to sentimental love-ditties.
Her mother’s rose bushes stood in her window. She gave them scarcely any
water. She did not love flowers, those children of love. Spiders played
among the branches, and the buds never opened.
There came a time when the Svartsjö congregation had an organ put into
their church. It was the summer before the year when the pensioners
reigned. A young organ-builder came there. He too became a boarder at
Madame Moreus’.
That the young organ-builder was a master of his profession may be a
matter of doubt. But he was a gay young blade, with sunshine in his eyes.
He had a friendly word for every one, for rich and poor, for old and
young.
When he came home from his work in the evening, he held Madame Moreus’
skeins, and worked at the side of young girls in the rose-garden. Then he
declaimed “Axel” and sang “Frithiof.” He picked up Mamselle Marie’s ball
of thread as often as she dropped it, and put her clock to rights.
He never left any ball until he had danced with everybody, from the
oldest woman to the youngest girl, and if an adversity befell him, he
sat himself down by the side of the first woman he met and made her his
_confidante_. He was such a man as women create in their dreams! It
could not be said of him that he spoke of love to any one. But when he
had lived a few weeks in Madame Moreus’ gable-room, all the girls were
in love with him, and poor Mamselle Marie knew that she had prayed her
prayers in vain.
That was a time of sorrow and a time of joy. In the evening a pale
dreamer often sat in the lilac arbor, and up in Mamselle Marie’s little
room the newly strung guitar twanged to old love-songs, which she had
learned from her mother.
The young organ-builder was just as careless and gay as ever, and doled
out smiles and services to all these languishing women, who quarrelled
over him when he was away at his work. And at last the day came when he
had to leave.
The carriage stood before the door. His bag had been tied on behind, and
the young man said farewell. He kissed Madame Moreus’ hand and took the
weeping girls in his arms and kissed them on the cheek. He wept himself
at being obliged to go, for he had had a pleasant summer in the little
gray cottage. At the last he looked around for Mamselle Marie.
She came down the narrow attic-stairs in her best array. The guitar
hung about her neck on a broad, green-silk ribbon, and in her hand she
held a bunch of damask roses, for this year her mother’s rose-bushes had
blossomed. She stood before the young man, struck the guitar and sang:—
“Thou goest far from us. Ah! welcome again!
Hear the voice of my friendship, which greets thee.
Be happy: forget not a true, loving friend
Who in Värmland’s forests awaits thee!”
Thereupon she put the flowers in his buttonhole and kissed him square on
the mouth. Yes, and then she vanished up the attic stairs again, the old
apparition.
Love had revenged himself on her and made her a spectacle for all men.
But she never again complained of him. She never laid away the guitar,
and never forgot to water her mother’s rose-bushes.
She had learned to cherish Love with all his pain, his tears, his longing.
“Better to be sorrowful with him than happy without him,” she said.
* * * * *
The time passed. The major’s wife at Ekeby was driven out, the pensioners
came to power, and it so happened, as has been described, that Gösta
Berling one Sunday evening read a poem aloud to the countess at Borg, and
afterwards was forbidden by her to show himself in her house.
It is said that when Gösta shut the hall-door after him he saw several
sledges driving up to Borg. He cast a glance on the little lady who sat
in the first sledge. Gloomy as the hour was for him, it became still
more gloomy at the sight. He hurried away not to be recognized, but
forebodings of disaster filled his soul. Had the conversation in there
conjured up this woman? One misfortune always brings another.
But the servants hurried out, the shawls and furs were thrown on one
side. Who had come? Who was the little lady who stood up in the sledge?
Ah, it is really she herself, Märta Dohna, the far-famed countess!
She was the gayest and most foolish of women. Joy had lifted her on
high on his throne and made her his queen. Games and laughter were her
subjects. Music and dancing and adventure had been her share when the
lottery of life was drawn.
She was not far now from her fiftieth year, but she was one of the wise,
who do not count the years. “He whose foot is not ready to dance, or
mouth to laugh,” she said, “he is old. He knows the terrible weight of
years, not I.”
Pleasure had no undisturbed throne in the days of her youth, but change
and uncertainty only increased the delight of his glad presence. His
Majesty of the butterfly wings one day had afternoon tea in the court
ladies’ rooms at the palace in Stockholm, and danced the next in Paris.
He visited Napoleon’s camps, he went on board Nelson’s fleet in the blue
Mediterranean, he looked in on a congress at Vienna, he risked his life
at Brussels at a ball the night before a famous battle.
And wherever Pleasure was, there too was Märta Dohna, his chosen queen.
Dancing, playing, jesting, Countess Märta hurried the whole world round.
What had she not seen, what had she not lived through? She had danced
over thrones, played écarté on the fate of princes, caused devastating
wars by her jests! Gayety and folly had filled her life and would always
do so. Her body was not too old for dancing, nor her heart for love. When
did she weary of masquerades and comedies, of merry stories and plaintive
ballads?
When Pleasure sometimes could find no home out in the struggling world,
she used to drive up to the old manor by Löfven’s shores,—just as she
had come there when the princes and their court had become too gloomy
for her in the time of the Holy Alliance. It was then she had thought
best to make Gösta Berling her son’s tutor. She always enjoyed it there.
Never had Pleasure a pleasanter kingdom. There song was to be found and
card-playing, men who loved adventure, and gay, lovely women. She did not
lack for dances and balls, nor boating-parties over moonlit seas, nor
sledging through dark forests, nor appalling adventures and love’s sorrow
and pain.
But after her daughter’s death she had ceased to come to Borg. She
had not been there for five years. Now she had come to see how her
daughter-in-law bore the life up among the pine forests, the bears, and
the snow-drifts. She thought it her duty to come and see if the stupid
Henrik had not bored her to death with his tediousness. She meant to be
the gentle angel of domestic peace. Sunshine and happiness were packed in
her forty leather trunks, Gayety was her waiting-maid, Jest her coachman,
Play her companion.
And when she ran up the steps she was met with open arms. Her old rooms
on the lower floor were in order for her. Her man-servant, her lady
companion, and maid, her forty leather trunks, her thirty hat-boxes,
her bags and shawls and furs, everything was brought by degrees into
the house. There was bustle and noise everywhere. There was a slamming
of doors and a running on the stairs. It was plain enough that Countess
Märta had come.
* * * * *
It was a spring evening, a really beautiful spring evening, although it
was only April and the ice had not broken up. Mamselle Marie had opened
her window. She sat in her room, played on the guitar, and sang.
She was so engrossed in her guitar and her memories that she did not hear
that a carriage came driving up the road and stopped at the cottage. In
the carriage Countess Märta sat, and it amused her to see Mamselle Marie,
who sat at the window with her guitar on her lap, and with eyes turned
towards heaven sang old forgotten love-songs.
At last the countess got out of the carriage and went into the cottage,
where the girls were sitting at their work. She was never haughty; the
wind of revolution had whistled over her and blown fresh air into her
lungs.
It was not her fault that she was a countess, she used to say; but she
wanted at all events to live the life she liked best. She enjoyed herself
just as much at peasant weddings as at court balls. She acted for her
maids when there was no other spectator to be had, and she brought joy
with her in all the places where she showed herself, with her beautiful
little face and her overflowing love of life.
She ordered a blanket of Madame Moreus and praised the girls. She looked
about the rose-garden and told of her adventures on the journey. She
always was having adventures. And at the last she ventured up the attic
stairs, which were dreadfully steep and narrow, and sought out Mamselle
Marie in her gable-room.
She bought curtains of her. She could not live without having knitted
curtains for all her windows, and on every table should she have Mamselle
Marie’s table-covers.
She borrowed her guitar and sang to her of pleasure and love. And she
told her stories, so that Mamselle Marie found herself transported out
into the gay, rushing world. And the countess’s laughter made such music
that the frozen birds in the rose-garden began to sing when they heard
it, and her face, which was hardly pretty now,—for her complexion was
ruined by paint, and there was such an expression of sensuality about
the mouth,—seemed to Mamselle Marie so lovely that she wondered how the
little mirror could let it vanish when it had once caught it on its
shining surface.
When she left, she kissed Mamselle Marie and asked her to come to Borg.
Mamselle Marie’s heart was as empty as the swallow’s-nest at Christmas.
She was free, but she sighed for chains like a slave freed in his old age.
Now there began again for Mamselle Marie a time of joy and a time of
sorrow; but it did not last long,—only one short week.
The countess sent for her continually to come to Borg. She played her
comedy for her and told about all her lovers, and Mamselle Marie laughed
as she had never laughed before. They became the best of friends.
The countess soon knew all about the young organ-builder and about
the parting. And in the twilight she made Mamselle Marie sit on the
window-seat in the little blue cabinet. Then she hung the guitar ribbon
round her neck and got her to sing love-songs. And the countess sat and
watched how the old maid’s dry, thin figure and little plain head were
outlined against the red evening sky, and she said that the poor old
Mamselle was like a languishing maiden of the Middle Ages. All the songs
were of tender shepherds and cruel shepherdesses, and Mamselle Marie’s
voice was the thinnest voice in the world, and it is easy to understand
how the countess was amused at such a comedy.
There was a party at Borg, as was natural, when the count’s mother had
come home. And it was gay as always. There were not so many there, only
the members of the parish being invited.
The dining-room was on the lower floor, and after supper it so happened
that the guests did not go upstairs again, but sat in Countess Märta’s
room, which lay beyond. The countess got hold of Mamselle Marie’s guitar
and began to sing for the company. She was a merry person, Countess
Märta, and she could mimic any one. She now had the idea to mimic
Mamselle Marie. She turned up her eyes to heaven and sang in a thin,
shrill, child’s voice.
“Oh no, oh no, countess!” begged Mamselle Marie.
But the countess was enjoying herself, and no one could help laughing,
although they all thought that it was hard on Mamselle Marie.
The countess took a handful of dried rose-leaves out of a pot-pourri
jar, went with tragic gestures up to Mamselle Marie, and sang with deep
emotion:—
“Thou goest far from us. Ah! welcome again!
Hear the voice of my friendship, which greets thee.
Be happy: forget not a true, loving friend
Who in Värmland’s forests awaits thee!”
Then she strewed the rose-leaves over her head. Everybody laughed; but
Mamselle Marie was wild with rage. She looked as if she could have torn
out the countess’s eyes.
“You are a bad woman, Märta Dohna,” she said. “No decent woman ought to
speak to you.”
Countess Märta lost her temper too.
“Out with you, mamselle!” she said. “I have had enough of your folly.”
“Yes, I shall go,” said Mamselle Marie; “but first I will be paid for my
covers and curtains which you have put up here.”
“The old rags!” cried the countess. “Do you want to be paid for such
rags? Take them away with you! I never want to see them again! Take them
away immediately!”
Thereupon the countess threw the table-covers at her and tore down the
curtains, for she was beside herself.
The next day the young countess begged her mother-in-law to make her
peace with Mamselle Marie; but the countess would not. She was tired of
her.
Countess Elizabeth then bought of Mamselle Marie the whole set of
curtains and put them up in the upper floor. Whereupon Mamselle Marie
felt herself redressed.
Countess Märta made fun of her daughter-in-law for her love of knitted
curtains. She too could conceal her anger—preserve it fresh and new for
years. She was a richly gifted person.
PART II
CHAPTER I
COUSIN CHRISTOPHER
They had an old bird of prey up in the pensioners’ wing. He always sat
in the corner by the fire and saw that it did not go out. He was rough
and gray. His little head with the big nose and the sunken eyes hung
sorrowfully on the long, thin neck which stuck up out of a fluffy fur
collar. For the bird of prey wore furs both winter and summer.
Once he had belonged to the swarm who in the great Emperor’s train swept
over Europe; but what name and title he bore no one now can say. In
Värmland they only knew that he had taken part in the great wars, that he
had risen to might and power in the thundering struggle, and that after
1815 he had taken flight from an ungrateful fatherland. He found a refuge
with the Swedish Crown Prince, and the latter advised him to disappear in
far away Värmland.
And so it happened that one whose name had caused the world to tremble
was now glad that no one even knew that once dreaded name.
He had given the Crown Prince his word of honor not to leave Värmland
and not to make known who he was. And he had been sent to Ekeby with
a private letter to the major from the Crown Prince, who had given him
the best of recommendations. It was then the pensioners’ wing opened its
doors to him.
In the beginning people wondered much who he was who concealed his
identity under an assumed name. But gradually he was transformed into
a pensioner. Everybody called him Cousin Christopher, without knowing
exactly how he had acquired the name.
But it is not good for a bird of prey to live in a cage. One can
understand that he is accustomed to something different than hopping from
perch to perch and taking food from his keeper’s hand. The excitement of
the battle and of the danger of death had set his pulse on fire. Drowsy
peace disgusts him.
It is true that none of the pensioners were exactly tame birds; but in
none of them the blood burned so hot as in Cousin Christopher. A bear
hunt was the only thing which could put life into him, a bear hunt or a
woman, one single woman.
He had come to life when he, ten years ago, for the first time saw
Countess Märta, who was already then a widow,—a woman as changeable as
war, as inciting as danger, a startling, audacious creature; he loved her.
And now he sat there and grew old and gray without being able to ask her
to be his wife. He had not seen her for five years. He was withering and
dying by degrees, as caged eagles do. Every year he became more dried and
frozen. He had to creep down deeper into his furs and move nearer the
fire.
* * * * *
So there he is sitting, shivering, shaggy, and gray, the morning of the
day, on the evening of which the Easter bullets should be shot off and
the Easter witch burned. The pensioners have all gone out; but he sits
in the corner by the fire.
Oh, Cousin Christopher, Cousin Christopher, do you not know?
Smiling she has come, the enchanting spring.
Nature up starts from drowsy sleep, and in the blue sky butterfly-winged
spirits tumble in wild play. Close as roses on the sweet brier, their
faces shine between the clouds.
Earth, the great mother, begins to live. Romping like a child she rises
from her bath in the spring floods, from her douche in the spring rain.
But Cousin Christopher sits quiet and does not understand. He leans his
head on his stiffened fingers and dreams of showers of bullets and of
honors won on the field of battle.
One pities the lonely old warrior who sits there by the fire, without a
people, without a country, he who never hears the sound of his native
language, he who will have a nameless grave in the Bro churchyard. Is it
his fault that he is an eagle, and was born to persecute and to kill?
Oh, Cousin Christopher, you have sat and dreamed long enough in the
pensioners’ wing! Up and drink the sparkling wine of life. You must know,
Cousin Christopher, that a letter has come to the major this day, a royal
letter adorned with the seal of Sweden. It is addressed to the major, but
the contents concern you. It is strange to see you, when you read the
letter, old eagle. Your eye regains its brightness, and you lift your
head. You see the cage door open and free space for your longing wings.
* * * * *
Cousin Christopher is burrowing deep down to the bottom of his chest. He
drags out the carefully laid away gold-laced uniform and dresses himself
in it. He presses the plumed hat on his head and he is soon hastening
away from Ekeby, riding his excellent white horse.
This is another life than to sit shivering by the fire; he too now sees
that spring has come.
He straightens himself up in his saddle and sets off at a gallop. The
fur-lined dolman flutters. The plumes on his hat wave. The man has grown
young like the earth itself. He has awaked from a long winter. The old
gold can still shine. The bold warrior face under the cocked hat is a
proud sight.
It is a wonderful ride. Brooks gush from the ground, and flowers shoot
forth, as he rides by. The birds sing and warble about the freed
prisoner. All nature shares in his joy.
He is like a victor. Spring rides before on a floating cloud. And round
about Cousin Christopher rides a staff of old brothers-in-arms: there is
Happiness, who stands on tiptoe in the saddle, and Honor on his stately
charger, and Love on his fiery Arab. The ride is wonderful; wonderful is
the rider. The thrush calls to him:—
“Cousin Christopher, Cousin Christopher, whither are you riding? Whither
are you riding?”
“To Borg to offer myself, to Borg to offer myself,” answers Cousin
Christopher.
“Do not go to Borg, do not go to Borg! An unmarried man has no sorrow,”
screams the thrush after him.
But he does not listen to the warning. Up the hills and down the hills he
rides, until at last he is there. He leaps from the saddle and is shown
in to the countess.
Everything goes well. The countess is gracious to him. Cousin Christopher
feels sure that she will not refuse to bear his glorious name or to reign
in his palace. He sits and puts off the moment of rapture, when he shall
show her the royal letter. He enjoys the waiting.
She talks and entertains him with a thousand stories. He laughs at
everything, enjoys everything. But as they are sitting in one of the
rooms where Countess Elizabeth has hung up Mamselle Marie’s curtains, the
countess begins to tell the story of them. And she makes it as funny as
she can.
“See,” she says at last, “see how bad I am. Here hang the curtains now,
that I may think daily and hourly of my sin. It is a penance without
equal. Oh, those dreadful knitted curtains!”
The great warrior, Cousin Christopher, looks at her with burning eyes.
“I, too, am old and poor,” he says, “and I have sat for ten years by the
fire and longed for my mistress. Do you laugh at that too, countess?”
“Oh, that is another matter,” cries the countess.
“God has taken from me happiness and my fatherland, and forced me to eat
the bread of others,” says Cousin Christopher, earnestly. “I have learned
to have respect for poverty.”
“You, too,” cries the countess, and holds up her hands. “How virtuous
every one is getting!”
“Yes,” he says, “and know, countess, that if God some day in the future
should give me back riches and power, I would make a better use of them
than to share them with such a worldly woman, such a painted, heartless
monkey, who makes fun of poverty.”
“You would do quite right, Cousin Christopher.”
And then Cousin Christopher marches out of the room and rides home to
Ekeby again; but the spirits do not follow him, the thrush does not call
to him, and he no longer sees the smiling spring.
He came to Ekeby just as the Easter witch was to be burned. She is a big
doll of straw, with a rag face, on which eyes, nose, and mouth are drawn
with charcoal. She is dressed in old cast-off clothes. The long-handled
oven-rake and broom are placed beside her, and she has a horn of oil hung
round her neck. She is quite ready for the journey to hell.
Major Fuchs loads his gun and shoots it off into the air time after time.
A pile of dried branches is lighted, the witch is thrown on it and is
soon burning gayly. The pensioners do all they can, according to the old,
tried customs, to destroy the power of the evil one.
Cousin Christopher stands and looks on with gloomy mien. Suddenly he
drags the great royal letter from his cuff and throws it on the fire. God
alone knows what he thought. Perhaps he imagined that it was Countess
Märta herself who was burning there on the pile. Perhaps he thought that,
as that woman, when all was said, consisted only of rags and straw, there
was nothing worth anything any more on earth.
He goes once more into the pensioners’ wing, lights the fire, and puts
away his uniform. Again he sits down at the fire, and every day he gets
more rough and more gray. He is dying by degrees, as old eagles do in
captivity.
He is no longer a prisoner; but he does not care to make use of his
freedom. The world stands open to him. The battle-field, honor, life,
await him. But he has not the strength to spread his wings in flight.