THE CHILD’S MOTHER
The child was born in a peasant’s house east of the Klar river. The
child’s mother had come seeking employment one day in early June.
She had been unfortunate, she had said to the master and mistress, and
her mother had been so hard to her that she had had to run away from
home. She called herself Elizabeth Karlsdotter; but she would not say
from whence she came, for then perhaps they would tell her parents that
she was there, and if they should find her, she would be tortured to
death, she knew it. She asked for no pay, only food and a roof over her
head. She could work, weave or spin, and take care of the cows,—whatever
they wanted. If they wished, she could also pay for herself.
She had been clever enough to come to the farm-house bare-foot, with her
shoes under her arm; she had coarse hands; she spoke the country dialect;
and she wore a peasant woman’s clothes. She was believed.
The master thought she looked sickly, and did not count much on her
fitness for work. But somewhere the poor thing must be. And so she was
allowed to stop.
There was something about her which made every one on the farm kind to
her. She had come to a good place. The people were serious and reticent.
Her mistress liked her; when she discovered that she could weave, they
borrowed a loom from the vicarage, and the child’s mother worked at it
the whole summer.
It never occurred to any one that she needed to be spared; she had to
work like a peasant girl the whole time. She liked too to have much
work. She was not unhappy. Life among the peasants pleased her, although
she lacked all her accustomed conveniences. But everything was taken so
simply and quietly there. Every one’s thoughts were on his or her work;
the days passed so uniform and monotonous that one mistook the day and
thought it was the middle of the week when Sunday came.
One day at the end of August there had been haste with the oat crop, and
the child’s mother had gone out with the others to bind the sheaves. She
had strained herself, and the child had been born, but too soon. She had
expected it in October.
Now the farmer’s wife stood with the child in the living room to warm it
by the fire, for the poor little thing was shivering in the August heat.
The child’s mother lay in a room beyond and listened to what they said
of the little one. She could imagine how the men and maids came up and
looked at him.
“Such a poor little thing,” they all said, and then followed always,
without fail:—
“Poor little thing, with no father!”
They did not complain of the child’s crying: they thought a child needed
to cry; and, when everything was considered, the child was strong for its
age; had it but a father, all would have been well.
The mother lay and listened and wondered. The matter suddenly seemed to
her incredibly important. How would he get through life, the poor little
thing?
She had made her plans before. She would remain at the farm-house the
first year. Then she would hire a room and earn her bread at the loom.
She meant to earn enough to feed and clothe the child. Her husband could
continue to believe that she was unworthy. She had thought that the child
perhaps would be a better man if she alone brought it up, than if a
stupid and conceited father should guide it.
But now, since the child was born, she could not see the matter in the
same way. Now she thought that she had been selfish. “The child must have
a father,” she said to herself.
If he had not been such a pitiful little thing, if he had been able to
eat and sleep like other children, if his head had not always sunk down
on one shoulder, and if he had not so nearly died when the attack of
cramp came, it would not have been so important.
It was not so easy to decide, but decide she must immediately. The child
was three days old, and the peasants in Värmland seldom wait longer to
have the child baptized. Under what name should the baby be entered in
the church-register, and what would the clergyman want to know about the
child’s mother?
It was an injustice to the child to let him be entered as fatherless. If
he should be a weak and sickly man, how could she take the responsibility
of depriving him of the advantages of birth and riches?
The child’s mother had noticed that there is generally great joy and
excitement when a child comes into the world. Now it seemed to her that
it must be hard for this baby to live, whom every one pitied. She wanted
to see him sleeping on silk and lace, as it behoves a count’s son. She
wanted to see him encompassed with joy and pride.
The child’s mother began to think that she had done its father too great
an injustice. Had she the right to keep him for herself? That she could
not have. Such a precious little thing, whose worth it is not in the
power of man to calculate, should she take that for her own? That would
not be honest.
But she did not wish to go back to her husband. She feared that it would
be her death. But the child was in greater danger than she. He might die
any minute, and he was not baptized.
That which had driven her from her home, the grievous sin which had dwelt
in her heart, was gone. She had now no love for any other than the child.
It was not too heavy a duty to try to get him his right place in life.
The child’s mother had the farmer and his wife called and told them
everything. The husband journeyed to Borg to tell Count Dohna that his
countess was alive, and that there was a child.
The peasant came home late in the evening; he had not met the count, for
he had gone away, but he had been to the minister at Svartsjö, and talked
with him of the matter.
Then the countess heard that her marriage had been declared invalid, and
that she no longer had a husband.
The minister wrote a friendly letter to her, and offered her a home in
his house.
A letter from her own father to Count Henrik, which must have reached
Borg a few days after her flight, was also sent to her. It was just that
letter in which the old man had begged the count to hasten to make his
marriage legal, which had indicated to the count the easiest way to be
rid of his wife.
It is easy to imagine that the child’s mother was seized with anger more
than sorrow, when she heard the peasant’s story.
She lay awake the whole night. The child must have a father, she thought
over and over again.
The next morning the peasant had to drive to Ekeby for her, and go for
Gösta Berling.
Gösta asked the silent man many questions, but could find out nothing.
Yes, the countess had been in his house the whole summer. She had been
well and had worked. Now a child was born. The child was weak; but the
mother would soon be strong again.
Gösta asked if the countess knew that the marriage had been annulled.
Yes, she knew it now. She had heard it yesterday.
And as long as the drive lasted Gösta had alternately fever and chills.
What did she want of him? Why did she send for him?
He thought of the life that summer on Löfven’s shores. They had let the
days go by with jests and laughter and pleasure parties, while she had
worked and suffered.
He had never thought of the possibility of ever seeing her again. Ah, if
he had dared to hope! He would have then come into her presence a better
man. What had he now to look back on but the usual follies!
About eight o’clock in the evening he arrived, and was immediately taken
to the child’s mother. It was dark in the room. He could scarcely see her
where she lay. The farmer and his wife came in also.
Now you must know that she whose white face shone in the dimness was
always the noblest and the purest he knew, the most beautiful soul which
had ever arrayed itself in earthly dust. When he once again felt the
bliss of being near her, he longed to throw himself on his knees and
thank her for having again appeared to him; but he was so overpowered by
emotion that he could neither speak nor act.
“Dear Countess Elizabeth!” he only cried.
“Good-evening, Gösta.”
She gave him her hand, which seemed once more to have become soft and
transparent. She lay silent, while he struggled with his emotion.
The child’s mother was not shaken by any violently raging feelings when
she saw Gösta. It surprised her only that he seemed to consider her of
chief importance, when he ought to understand that it now only concerned
the child.
“Gösta,” she said gently, “you must help me now, as you once promised.
You know that my husband has abandoned me, so that my child has no
father.”
“Yes, countess; but that can certainly be changed. Now that there is a
child, the count can be forced to make the marriage legal. You may be
certain that I shall help you!”
The countess smiled. “Do you think that I will force myself upon Count
Dohna?”
The blood surged up to Gösta’s head. What did she wish then? What did she
want of him?
“Come here, Gösta,” she said, and again stretched out her hand. “You
must not be angry with me for what I am going to say; but I thought that
you who are—who are—”
“A dismissed priest, a drunkard, a pensioner, Ebba Dohna’s murderer; I
know the whole list—”
“Are you already angry, Gösta?”
“I would rather that you did not say anything more.”
But the child’s mother continued:—
“There are many, Gösta, who would have liked to be your wife out of love;
but it is not so with me. If I loved you I should not dare to speak as I
am speaking now. For myself I would never ask such a thing, Gösta; but
do you see, I can do it for the sake of the child. You must understand
what I mean to beg of you. Of course it is a great degradation for you,
since I am an unmarried woman who has a child. I did not think that you
would be willing to do it because you are worse than others; although,
yes, I did think of that too. But first I thought that you could be
willing, because you are kind, Gösta, because you are a hero and can
sacrifice yourself. But it is perhaps too much to ask. Perhaps such a
thing would be impossible for a man. If you despise me too much, if it is
too loathsome for you to give your name to another man’s child, say so!
I shall not be angry. I understand that it is too much to ask; but the
child is sick, Gösta. It is cruel at his baptism not to be able to give
the name of his mother’s husband.”
He, hearing her, experienced the same feeling as when that spring day he
had put her on land and left her to her fate. Now he had to help her to
ruin her life, her whole future life. He who loved her had to do it.
“I will do everything you wish, countess,” he said.
The next day he spoke to the dean at Bro, for there the banns were to be
called.
The good old dean was much moved by his story, and promised to take all
the responsibility of giving her away.
“Yes,” he said, “you must help her, Gösta, otherwise she might become
insane. She thinks that she has injured the child by depriving it of its
position in life. She has a most sensitive conscience, that woman.”
“But I know that I shall make her unhappy,” cried Gösta.
“That you must not do, Gösta. You must be a sensible man now, with wife
and child to care for.”
The dean had to journey down to Svartsjö and speak to both the minister
there and the judge. The end of it all was that the next Sunday, the
first of September, the banns were called in Svartsjö between Gösta
Berling and Elizabeth von Thurn.
Then the child’s mother was carried with the greatest care to Ekeby, and
there the child was baptized.
The dean talked to her, and told her that she could still recall her
decision to marry such a man as Gösta Berling. She ought to first write
to her father.
“I cannot repent,” she said; “think if my child should die before it had
a father.”
When the banns had been thrice asked, the child’s mother had been well
and up several days. In the afternoon the dean came to Ekeby and married
her to Gösta Berling. But no one thought of it as a wedding. No guests
were invited. They only gave the child a father, nothing more.
The child’s mother shone with a quiet joy, as if she had attained a great
end in life. The bridegroom was in despair. He thought how she had thrown
away her life by a marriage with him. He saw with dismay how he scarcely
existed for her. All her thoughts were with her child.
A few days after the father and mother were mourning. The child had died.
Many thought that the child’s mother did not mourn so violently nor so
deeply as they had expected; she had a look of triumph. It was as if she
rejoiced that she had thrown away her life for the sake of the child.
When he joined the angels, he would still remember that a mother on earth
had loved him.
* * * * *
All this happened quietly and unnoticed. When the banns were published
for Gösta Berling and Elizabeth von Thurn in the Svartsjö church, most
of the congregation did not even know who the bride was. The clergyman
and the gentry who knew the story said little about it. It was as if they
were afraid that some one who had lost faith in the power of conscience
should wrongly interpret the young woman’s action. They were so afraid,
so afraid lest some one should come and say: “See now, she could not
conquer her love for Gösta; she has married him under a plausible
pretext.” Ah, the old people were always so careful of that young woman!
Never could they bear to hear anything evil of her. They would scarcely
acknowledge that she had sinned. They would not agree that any fault
stained that soul which was so afraid of evil.
Another great event happened just then, which also caused Gösta’s
marriage to be little discussed.
Major Samzelius had met with an accident. He had become more and more
strange and misanthropic. His chief intercourse was with animals, and he
had collected a small menagerie at Sjö.
He was dangerous too; for he always carried a loaded gun, and shot it off
time after time without paying much attention to his aim. One day he was
bitten by a tame bear which he had shot without intending it. The wounded
animal threw itself on him, and succeeded in giving him a terrible bite
in the arm. The beast broke away and took refuge in the forest.
The major was put to bed and died of the wound, but not till just before
Christmas. Had his wife known that he lay ill, she could have resumed her
sway over Ekeby. But the pensioners knew that she would not come before
their year was out.