A LETTER
A FEW days later, Lotta Hedman came in to the Pastor in his study in the middle of the day.
She had a letter in her hand, and stared straight before her; her hair was as smooth as Lotta's hair could ever be, and her brow was clear as if Heaven had opened above her and shed over her something of its glory.
The Pastor was somewhat surprised himself to see that she came in so calmly and coolly to speak to him, for Lotta Hedman had been strange and confused in her manner ever since the night when Sigrun had gone. She was restless always, and often talked aloud to herself. It was supposed that she saw visions, and those who heard anything of what she said noticed that it was always about the great destruction and a horseman on a red horse, and the great beast, the dreadful end of the world.
She avoided everyone as far as she could, and most of all her master. He had often noticed how she would go a long way round to keep out of his way.
Her hair stood up, as a rule, all about her head, her eyes rolled about, her clothes were ill-cared-for, and her work was done as best might be.
Whenever she encountered the two young ladies, she would call to them with stern words from the Scriptures, that sounded like threats.
They had tried to persuade the Pastor to send Lotta back to her own country, but he understood that it was her sorrow for Sigrun that troubled her, and so he had protected her and retained her in his service.
To-day, noticing the change in her appearance, he said to himself: "I see, now, that her mourning is over. There is no one but myself in the home that remembers Sigrun now."
But Lotta begged him to listen to her with patience, for she had much to say.
And to his great surprise, for she was in the highest degree solemn and earnest, she began by telling him a saga.
"There was once a homestead," she said, "where honest peasant folk lived, but close by was a mountain, and there were trollfolk there. And the peasant's wife had once been into the dwelling of the trollfolk, to help one of their wives in childbirth. And as she bathed the child, it splashed a drop of the water into her eye, and that drop of water gave her the gift of sight in that eye, so that ever after she could see all that the trollfolk were doing about her own place. She came on them many a time when they were stealing things, or laying traps for man and beast to their hurt.
"Then one day it chanced that the peasant's wife was going out to the fair at harvest-time, and walking there among the booths she met the troll from her home. And she forgot herself, and passed the time of day with him. 'Good-day to you, gaffer,' she said, shaking hands with him; 'that's a fine piece of cloth you've bought there.'
"'Ay,' said the troll, 'and cheap too. There were two peasants quarrelling about the piece, and while they fought, I took up the parcel and made off.'
"After that they stood a bit talking easily together, but then suddenly the troll said: 'But how is this, old lady—how is it you can see me at all?'
"'Why, it's this way,' said she, 'I got a drop of water in my eye last time I came to your place, and ever since I can see you, whether you like it or not.'
"'Well, now, to be sure. And which eye was it, then?'
"'In the left,'" said the woman. And quick as light he raised his hand and struck out her left eye. Took the eye clean out, never leaving a bit of it. And after that she could never all her life see anything out of ordinary.
"And that was what Pastor did to me the first time we met," said Lotta in a high, shrill voice. "Pastor struck out my eye with the gift of sight out of my face, and ever since, my life's been all confusion. I can see, but only darkly; I can hear, but indistinctly, and I get no further, and find no one to listen to me. I'm poor and homeless, and I shall never be more than a poor working girl."
The Pastor sat quietly listening, and when Lotta stopped a moment for breath, he said, without a trace of anger:
"Go on with what you have to say, Lotta. I am sure you did not come to me to-day only to speak of these old things."
"No," said Lotta, "but I want Pastor to remember that, because I have wronged you greatly afterward, in my turn. It may be well now and then to know that there are old debts owing, so one can ask for payment. And I have great need of mercy and forgiveness, as you will see."
The Pastor shook his head.
"Now I cannot see what you are thinking of."
But Lotta answered steadily:
"I know what it is I have to say, and it is no easy thing to confess, but before I come to that, there is one thing more I must tell you first.
"I am not one to go tale-bearing about," she said, "and I have never said a word to Sigrun about it, but I know there is a place called Hånger. And I have heard the whole story of the priest who was murdered there, and the gatepost and the old woman at the window and the curse that lies on the men of Hånger. And it seems to me that a man who knows he is come of a strong, wild race, that has always been hard to get on with, and who knows, too, what manner of death awaits him—I think that man must have asked himself at times if he did right in taking for his wife a girl innocent and delicate as a newly opened leaf, and knowing nothing of all the dark within him."
"Lotta Hedman!"
The Pastor's voice was still calm enough; he was but warning Lotta not to go too far.
"Let me go on, Pastor," she begged. "For I do not say this in any reproach, but only to remind you that there are faults on both sides, though the fault on ours, on Sigrun's and mine, is so much the greater that it will need much mercy and forgiveness in your scale to balance it.
"And now I have only to tell you how it was Sigrun left us. And it is by her own wish that I tell you this. I have had a letter from her to-day, telling me to do it, and it has loosed me from my abasement and lifted me up out of my deceit, so that I can once more look my fellows in the face."
The fact that it was Lotta Hedman speaking, rendered her words less surprising to the Pastor than if it had been another. He thought she was about to tell him that Sigrun had not died of the smallpox, but had taken her own life, and that Lotta fancied she had received some sort of permission to tell him about it now.
And Lotta began her story.
But as she went on, her courage faded, for she saw how the man before her grew darker in mind, as the sky darkens before the coming of a great storm. Clouds drew up from every side. A terrible cold and a terrible darkness spread abroad. And at last she could hardly utter a word.
Nevertheless, she managed to relate, without any circumspection, that she had had several messages from Sigrun, and that the latter, after her arrival at Hånger, had been ill with the smallpox. It had not been dangerous, but a long illness.
And all through her illness, and ever since, she had stayed with the good folk at Hånger. She had been out into the world on her own resources for a single day, and the things she had met with then had so terrified her that nothing could persuade her now to leave her friends and her sheltered life to go out among strange things and people.
But the eloquent words with which Lotta had intended to describe her own misery and shame, and her joy that Sigrun had changed her mind and would return to her home, all this remained for the most part unsaid.
All she did was to lay before the Pastor the letter she had that day received, dated from Hånger, the 15th of May, 1916, and with these few lines:
"Lotta, you must go to Edward and tell him everything. And ask him to come here to Hånger and fetch me, if he considers me worthy to be his wife again."
Inside was a small envelope addressed to the Pastor himself. He tore it open, and found the one word:
"Forgive!"
When he had seen it, he broke out into a bitter, heartrending laugh. It was like the first gust of the storm bursting through the clouds and Hinging them aside to commence its fierce play.
"You can telephone to Hånger and tell Sigrun I will come and fetch her to-morrow," said the Pastor. "To-day I have to go to an examination at the school."
Lotta did as she was asked. And just after noon the Pastor drove off alone. He had a long journey before him to a distant school. But on coming to the cross-roads, he did not turn off along the way that led to the school. He turned eastward, up toward the Dalsland boundary, in the direction of Hånger.
THE TROLLFOLK OF HÅNGER
AH, THERE is surely no need to believe that any supernatural influence was at work. But for one who has heard close to his ear the low-toned whispering of the beloved dead, or marked, with an unrest so great that the heart seems ready to break under it, how a soft tide of gentle thoughts comes sweeping through the soul; has felt the softest hands guiding the weary pen to its end—such an one finds it hard to believe that there were not invisible hosts this day gathered about the unfortunate man who drove along over the broad, desolate mountain tracts.
For however hurt and betrayed, however deceived and humiliated he felt, however his thoughts turned toward vengeance and punishment, they were yet led again and again toward something else that seemed to draw them with even greater power.
And the thing that drew them so was Hånger, the home of his fathers, that he had never seen, with its red buildings set far up among the pine-woods, looking out over a landscape with ten long ridges, ten high peaks, ten glittering lakes, ten parishes—and hardly ten homesteads in all.
To him, the vision had never yet appeared—the vision of the old house at Hånger, with gatepost and orchard and cellar, as he knew it had appeared to others of his race. But over him, too, lay its secret power. And his thoughts turned now to his childhood, when he had dreamed that it should fall to his lot to lift the curse that rested on Hånger and the race of Hånger. He recalled his argument of the old days, that since the curse had come upon them through the murder of a priest, so it might be lifted from their heads if one of the Hånger folk became a priest and a holy man of God.
Later, in youth and manhood, he had lost those thoughts, it is true; yet, after all, it was that original idea which had determined the direction of his life.
When he had commenced his studies, and all had gone well in what he touched, he had ceased to believe that any ill-fate especially threatened the men of his race. It was all nothing but a wayward, unruly character, and a gloomy inability to keep what was their own. If a man were but wise, and knew how to control himself, the thought of suicide would surely disappear. "And I shall be the one to show them that a Rhånge from Hånger can die as others do," he had sometimes thought. "And so, after all, it may be my lot to make an end of the old superstition."
And indeed he had succeeded in resisting all the temptations common to youth, and in leading an orderly and blameless life, in all save his relations with his wife.
He started in his seat as if suddenly awakening. For a moment or two he had been freed from the consciousness of his misfortune, but now, at the thought of his wife, it came back to him in all its horror. The very fact that he was a priest, and should live blamelessly, made the coming shame more intolerable; the gossip and scandal cut him like the lash of ironbound thongs. "Better if she had never, never returned," he thought in his bitterness of heart. "She has made life impossible for me at home here. We shall have to go and live abroad."
Strangely enough, however, his thoughts soon turned from his wife, and settled again on the old homestead with its uncanny story.
It was his father who had told him of Hånger, and there was much besides the murder and the curse in what he said.
He had told how none knew where the Hånger folk had come from. Five brothers had suddenly appeared in the parish, all big, handsome, strong men, but of unknown family, from an unknown land, speaking an unknown tongue. It was generally believed that they were the offspring of trollfolk, by some woman who had fallen into their power, and, in truth, their wildness and violent character, their courage and sharpness, their strange ways and obstinate will, and, more than all, their extraordinary success in acquiring goods and property, gave further credence to the legend.
These men, who had come into the district as poor labourers, had in the course of a few years made themselves, first, masters of Hånger, where the eldest brother had settled down, and afterward, of four other estates.
It was comforting to think of those forefathers of his. They had never been like the other peasants round them. They had dressed grandly, and walked proudly; they might have been gentry themselves, but had never cared about it. He felt to-day the need of something to increase his self-respect, and he found a certain dignity in belonging to a richly gifted and famous race.
And all things considered, he was perhaps not so very unlike them after all. Lotta Hedman had herself compared him to a troll, and reminded him that he came of a race of wild men.
If only he had not been a priest, and forced to hold his own powerful nature constantly in check!
He called to mind the night when he had gone in pursuit of the frightened Bailie—it must have been the old trollfolk blood breaking out in him.
And this again brought him back to his home and his wife, and an agonizing pain wrung his soul anew. He remembered how he had suffered all that spring from sorrow and pangs of conscience. But bitter as this suffering had been, it was yet even more bitter to know that Sigrun had condemned him to it in cold blood, without any compelling reason. No, the bitterest and worst of all was that she had lowered herself to deceit, that she had freed herself in such a ghastly manner; had taken a miserable vagabond into her confidence, and fallen at last into the hands of such a man as Sven Elversson—a man whom he had himself driven forth from among his congregation. This it was that filled his cup of shame to overflowing.
"She came to the right man at last," he thought. "She is dead, and he is an outcast, who dare not show himself among his fellows."
But again he was led from the agony of his thoughts by the recollection of his forefathers and their home.
Over the treeless wastes where he now drove, the west wind, the strong wind from the sea, whined sharp and biting. "It is very cold up here," he thought. "It must be better on the other side of the range. Hånger lies in shelter of the eastern slopes; it would be warm and spring-like on such an evening as this."
Once again he was thinking of his race.
All of them had been marked by some trait which distinguished them from those around them.
One of them had had a horse which he loved beyond all else, and he was rarely seen except in the saddle. He went to his work and to his pleasures on horseback, and had even one Sunday ridden into the church and demanded to receive the Holy Sacrament without dismounting.
A faint smile passed over the priest's face at the thought of that remarkable scene. It had often amused him in former days to imagine it to himself. But he had never thought such a thing could be true; he had always regarded it as invention and fable.
That same horseman had once had a quarrel with his wife. "Folks should use their wits at times," she had said, "and not trust only to their strength." But this had angered him, and he had hoisted her up and set her to ride astride of the roof-beam. "Now I've set you there by strength," he said. "Let's see if you can get down again by your wits."
It must have been no easy matter at times to be the wife of one of those Hånger folk. They had been violent, jealous, and obstinate. Strong and able men, indeed, hospitable and magnificent, but given to coarse jesting that might well prove more trying than many other faults.
One of them once took it into his head to have everything he owned in pairs. It was not sufficient to have one bell in his room; he must have two. One window was never enough for a room; there must be two or four or six. Two chimneys, two doors, two barns, two haylofts. Never one lad or girl, but always two or four of them. It might seem an innocent whim enough, but he had nearly brought Hånger to ruin with his alterations and rebuilding.
Among the cattle, too, he would have as many bulls as cows, and he ordered his wife to bear him a boy and a girl, a boy and a girl, and so on in regular succession. And when she did not obey him, he was not to be trifled with.
Again the Pastor smiled. No, clearly it was no light matter at times to be mistress of Hånger.
One of the men there had been who was always singing. He came to church singing, and went away singing; he sang when he answered any who spoke to him; sang when he went to bed and when he got up.
But for all his singing, he had been a hard and unreasonable man, and it was with him that the misfortune had come. He had once tried to cheat his brother over some inheritance, but his own wife had discovered the fraud, and asked their priest to come to Hånger to talk over the matter with him. But the Master of Hånger thought there was something more behind the visit, and, inflamed with jealousy, had lain in wait for the priest on the way home and killed him.
Yes, it was true, as he had just said: no easy matter to be wife to one of the ancient race of Hånger.
And yet, none of their womenfolk had ever given themselves out for dead in order to escape.
He laughed a short, harsh laugh. It might seem as if he had been the worst of them all. Otherwise, his wife would hardly have had recourse to such desperate means.
And what had she to reproach him for after all? Nothing but having loved her too much. He had asked nothing of her but the one thing, that she should be his alone, entirely and without reserve.
But suppose that had been in itself too much to ask? If it had been harder to fulfil than that of the mad demands of those wild forefathers of his? Can one human being demand of another such utter and complete surrender of self? Not only in love, but in all else?
Pastor Rhånge remembered how he had often thought Sigrun was a being of a different sort, unlike all others; that she had seemed to have a nature of her own, though she could never find expression for it.
And that nature of hers, he knew now, was pity. To do good, to sacrifice herself for others, to care for the sick, that had been all her natural craving, but he had set himself against it. He could not endure it. He would have her all to himself, and not share her with any besides.
And the thing that had happened, that had seemed so abominable to him before, was there, after all, anything in it but what must necessarily come? It was the steel spring, long compressed, which had unfolded as soon as the pressure was released.
"Sigrun is pity itself," he thought. "Mercy is her aim, her task. I should have realized it."
The sudden acknowledgment of his own fault comforted him now. Sigrun no longer appeared to have sunk so low, to be so unspeakably hard and without feeling.
He turned the thought over in his mind. "Yes," he said to himself. "That must be why we were never happy together. I hindered her from being what her nature commanded her to be."
Then, suddenly, the old agony returned. "This fellow, Sven Elversson, he cares for her better than I. He too is given up to works of charity. And that is why she stays with him."
He had not thought of Sven Elversson with any jealousy before. "Sigrun knows what he has done," he had said to himself. "She could never love him."
But now, the whole thing seemed more than suspicious. Why had Sven Elversson not told him at once that Sigrun had come to Hånger? Was he in love with her, and had he thought to keep her for himself?
But in the midst of his anger came one of those thoughts that seemed to hover in the air above that desolate land, and refreshed the soul of the unhappy man like cool summer rain.
"Have you any right to expect service and aid from Sven Elversson?" said the thought.
And the priest remembered how he had sinned against Sven Elversson, and ruined his life, and condemned him to nameless misery.
But this consciousness of his own guilt brought a strange soothing calm in the midst of his anger—at the wrong he had suffered from others. It was like a cooling drink to one in fever.
And a new humility, a self-knowledge, woke in his mind.
He no longer felt himself as the punishing avenger with all right on his side.
He was prepared now, not to forgive, but to search and examine with care before passing his final judgment.
THE LIFTING OF THE CURSE
THE priest checked his horse. There below him, in the glow of the evening sun, was Hånger itself.
For a moment he doubted whether it could be right. He had always heard the place described as consisting of large buildings. Here, the main part was certainly of decent size, but all the rest seemed small and insignificant.
But the orchard was there. On the slope between the small houses grew tall, century-old apple trees, now in their finest bloom, making a roof of delicate white and pink above the lawn.
And the old oak was there, not yet in full leaf, but well on the way to clothe its wrinkled, knotty branches with soft, leafy green.
And the view was there, too. A view out over a marvellously fine and light and softly drawn landscape, where the ten mountain ridges and the ten lakes lay now, at the hour of sunset, decked in every imaginable hue, one height a brilliant white, and another threateningly dark; one lake like a sheet of polished steel, and its fellow behind the next hill glittering all in gold.
It was impossible to think that men who had lived all their lives within sight of such beauty could remain harsh, rough, and wild; without any thought beyond gaining riches and lands. Here, in the wonder of these surroundings, he seemed to find the explanation of all that joyous delight in splendour and magnificence that had marked his forefathers.
He sat for a long while looking at it all; at last, however, he jumped down from his seat and walked into the wood close by. Here he tied up his horse to a tree, spread out some fodder before it, and set off quietly and thoughtfully toward the house.
When he was near enough to see in between the buildings, he noticed a man and a woman sitting in the soft, bright spring evening under the great oak, on either side of a garden table. The man was reading aloud, the woman sewing. Neither had noticed him as yet.
He stopped, and walked round behind one of the outbuildings, approaching them from another direction. Close by where the two were sitting, there grew a hedge of fir trees, thick and tall. He stole along under shelter of this, coming up noiselessly and unseen. When he was near enough to hear distinctly the voice of the man reading, he lay down quietly on the ground, and moved a few twigs cautiously aside, so as to see all he wished.
He had not the slightest qualm of conscience in listening thus. "Sigrun's whole future and my own are at stake," he thought. "I must know the truth, by whatever means."
At first, however, he found himself listening to nothing more than a little poem by Snoilsky. It was the story of the prisoner of war, who, when released at last, after a toilsome journey over unknown ways, finds himself one dark evening outside the poor cottage where years ago he had left his wife. Then, looking in through the window, he sees another man by her side. He understands that she has believed him dead, and he goes away into the night, preferring to disappear rather than cause her suffering. And before he goes, he fastens to the door a small leather pouch containing all the little money he has, as a gift to the poor home.
Sven Elversson read this story of love and resignation very beautifully, but the Pastor heard the words without properly grasping their meaning. His whole soul was concentrated on his wife.
Sigrun was sitting so that he could not see her face. But it was at least herself, he saw. He recognized her hair, the pretty curve of the neck; every movement of hand and arm as she sat at her work was familiar to him.
"She lives!" he said to himself, folding his hands. "It is true—it is true that she is alive."
His heart melted with emotion. He had seen her again, but it was not as he had thought it would be. He felt no anger, no wish to call her to account for all she had made him suffer; he would not speak to her of the shame she had brought upon herself; he could only thank God with tears that she was alive, and wished to return to him.
He laid one hand over his eyes, and thought what would have become of him if Sigrun had really been dead. A bitter misanthrope, dragging through life without hope, with no interest beyond guarding his memories; a man who sought the society of other women only to deride them for not being as she, the only one in the world for him. He could see no bottom to the depth into which he must have sunk.
On the way here, he had wished in his despair that Sigrun had never made herself known. A cruel and senseless thought—how could he ever have entertained it for a moment?
All this passed through his soul now like a storm. And the voice of the reader was lost in its fury.
In the first transport of joy he had been almost on the point of springing up and hurrying forward to his wife. But he restrained himself. "No," he thought; "there must be no trace of doubt or suspicion between us. For the sake of our happiness, I must stay here now."
"We will not read any more this evening," said Sigrun, when Sven Elversson had finished the poem. "I have something to say to you."
And her voice reached the listener behind the trees, full of the ring of life. Sweet as before, low and touching, with the faint little lisp.
Sven Elversson raised his head from the book and turned toward her. The Pastor saw at once that he was greatly changed. He carried his head as high as any other, and had the easy, untroubled bearing of an educated man. The slight stamp of the lay preacher, the exaggerated humility that had marked him before, were gone now.
"Yes, it is almost a pity to sit over a book on such an evening as this," said Sven Elversson. "Better to talk."
Sigrun hesitated a little before beginning what she had to say. She folded up her work, and put it away carefully. Then in a firm and resolute voice she said:
"It is done now, Herr Elversson."
"What is done?" he asked carelessly. "Your work, you mean?"
"No. The thing you have asked me to do every day since I have lived under your roof. I have done it now."
"You have ..."
He had risen, greatly moved, and did not complete his sentence.
But Sigrun's voice answered him firmly and clearly, without a tremor:
"I have written to Lotta Hedman and asked her to tell Edward the whole story. At this moment he knows I am alive. And to-morrow he is coming here to fetch me."
"He is coming here?" Sven Elversson repeated. His voice was not firm and clear. It was faint and troubled.
"Yes," she answered. "I have asked him to come here to Hånger. I will tell you why later on. But, first of all, I want you to tell me now if you are pleased."
To the watcher it seemed as if the man before him changed his form and appearance before his eyes. He seemed to shrink, and the patient smile showed full and distinctly about his mouth. His eyes, that had shone so cheerfully a moment before, looked down at the ground; his arms hung loosely at his sides. And as he spoke, in answer to Sigrun's question, his voice had the old ring of painful humility.
"Surely I am pleased, Fru Rhånge," he said. "But it is overkind of you to speak of this as if it were my doing. I know—or I should say, I have always believed, that after the first excitement had passed over, there had not been a day but you have repented, and longed to go back. But you are thinking, perhaps, of your fear of your husband's anger, and the harsh judgment of the world, and how I have tried to give you courage to face it all. That is all I can claim credit for."
The listener heard and understood now, not with his ears alone, but with his whole soul. "What is true, and what is false in this?" he wondered. "God help me to find out the truth!"
Sigrun's face he could not see, but he fancied she shrugged her shoulders a little.
"Yes, of course," she said. "What else could there be for you to help me with?"
"It is good to remember that it is so," said Sven Elversson, in his gentle voice. "You realized, almost at once, the great wrong you had done your husband. It was impossible that you could condemn one who loved you to a whole life of solitude and longing. I am sure, I am convinced, that you would have taken this step months before, if it had not been for your illness. You have not, until now, had strength to face the gossip and scandal it would mean. And I should be the last to blame you for the delay. I know what it is to be an outcast and disowned by one's equals."
There was something in Sigrun's manner suggestive of impatience. Her voice had a touch of mischief as she answered:
"Oh, yes, I knew, Herr Elversson, that you would be pleased. But since this is the last time we shall speak together alone, I should like to tell you that it was not you alone who persuaded me to go back to my home. Your wife, too, has helped me very greatly—more, perhaps, than you yourself. I think she must have loved unspeakably," Sigrun continued in a gentle voice; "and I have tried to learn from her how one should love."
Sven Elversson's face darkened.
"She was a good woman," he said, simply, without his usual wealth of words. "We were very fond of her while she lived here among us."
"Mor Thala has told me a great deal about her," said Sigrun. "She went out to Grimön, it seems, the day after the schoolhouse was burnt down. She wanted to tell you that both she and the schoolmaster had done their best to make the children comfortable there. And she begged you not to take the misfortune too much to heart. You had already gained friends through that work; people had begun to realize what sort of man you were."
Sven Elversson made a gesture as if to indicate that he would rather hear no more of this. But Sigrun went on:
"I saw your wife at Applum, and I remember she was very plain to look at. Perhaps it was this, or perhaps something else that annoyed you, for Mor Thala says you spoke to her unkindly; more so than you had ever done to anyone else. 'If I came to you and asked you to be my wife,' you said scornfully, 'then we should see how much you respected me yourself.' And she neither blushed nor paled, but her face went ashen gray, and she stood up. 'You say that to me in jest and without meaning,' she said. 'But if ever you asked me in earnest, it would be the happiest day of my life.' And that seemed to touch you, and a couple of years after, you married her in reality, because her answer then had shown you she was a good and noble woman."
"True, she was good and noble," said Sven Elversson. "I must do her justice. It was strange that she should be willing to marry a man like me."
"Mor Thala has told me," went on Sigrun, "that it was she who advised you to move out here to Hånger. She knew the place, and knew it was all going to ruin, so you could buy it for next to nothing. She made peace about you, looked after your business, sold timber, I think it was, so that you should have money enough to live on, arranged all things in your home so as to answer more or less to the habits and needs of your upbringing, and she took in all those in need whenever you found them, and looked after them until you could find them work elsewhere. Do you not think that woman loved you?"
"No," said Sven Elversson. "I think she was trying to love me. She fought against all that she disliked in me, but at last it was beyond her power to go on, and then she went off with Gustavsson."
"It was not so," said Sigrun—"not that way at all. That was not why she went. But she knew you loved someone else. You had betrayed it somehow or other. There is a book of poems that is always on your table. Mor Thala says you often read in it, but only one of them all, an Icelandic love song, by Bjarni Thorarensen."
Sven Elversson sprang to his feet, and clutched at his breast. "What do you mean?" he cried, almost threateningly.
Sigrun lifted her hand. "I wanted to talk to you about your wife," she said. "I shall be gone to-morrow," she added appealingly.
He sat down once more, humble and resigned. But his eyes had lost their wonted brightness; they looked at Sigrun solemnly and sternly.
The listener bent forward in tense eagerness. He recognized Sigrun's voice, but there was much in her manner that was strange to him. There was something about her now, a calm self-possession, a mature womanliness, that she had not had before. "She has gone through much since I last saw her," he thought. "She never had that power of control over one who spoke with her before. No one can resist her now."
"Let us say," went on Sigrun again, "that your wife noticed last autumn, more distinctly than before, that you did not love her. Perhaps you read that poem oftener—how can I tell? And so she went away, but she did it in such a manner that you should not think she had gone for love of you, to make life easier for you. That was why she went with Gustavsson. I have spoken of this with your mother, and she agrees with me entirely. And Gustavsson himself told me so. 'She came to me because Sven Elversson did not care for her'—that was what he said."
Sven Elversson raised his hands deprecatingly.
"Why must I hear all this?" he said. "How can you think it will make me happier to know it?"
"Yes," said Sigrun; "it is always good to know that one has been loved by one who was good. And well, too, that you need not now suspect her of deceit or fickleness. You see what it was: she was made of the same stuff as that soldier we have just read of, who came home from the wars. And so you see," Sigrun went on, "it was she who taught me how to love. How love can pass all understanding, how it can fill one's soul to such a degree that it lets its own body be destroyed."
She rose up, and stood behind Sven Elversson's chair. And in so doing, she turned so that her husband, from where he was, could see her face. At sight of it, he almost started back, before the supernatural beauty that shone in her lovely features.
She spoke quickly now, following up her thoughts without waiting for reply.
"The poem in that book of yours, Herr Elversson, that you are always reading, is called 'A Song to Sigrun.' And whether it were because of the name, or for some other reason, your wife believed she knew who it was you loved."
Sven Elversson would have spoken, made some protest, or assurance, but she stopped him.
"Let me finish, that you may know how your wife could love in death as in life. Try to imagine her as a soul that is nothing but love, right down to the most unconscious depths, nothing but love, and that this soul determines to sacrifice itself for the one she loves. Finds ways and means that another would never have thought of, takes possession of another human being's will, leads, guides, accomplishes, whispering thoughts, dictating speech, compelling all things to her wish."
Sven Elversson shook his head. Very gently, but immovably, he said:
"Now you are talking like Lotta Hedman."
"Yes," said Sigrun, "I am talking like Lotta Hedman. I know it. And I will not deny that it was Lotta Hedman who taught me to believe in the power of the dead. But how do you know she is not right? What star was it that led the dying woman to me of all others? And whence came the thought that so compelled me? You know how timid and sensitive I am. It is true that I had been lying there thinking of flight, but what made me do it in such a way? There were other means I could have chosen. But from the moment your wife lay there dead in my bed, I could not think of any other. And why was Lotta Hedman unable to resist? Why did Gustavsson come after I had gone, and not before? What made him so quiet and submissive all that day? Why were we not discovered? Why was my money stolen? Why was nothing found out after? I had certainly no deep-laid plans of my own. How did all this come about, Herr Elversson, unless it were that the woman who loved you, in the power of her endless love, had resolved to lead the woman you loved to you?"
She had spoken eagerly, as one inspired, overwhelmed by the miracle she felt she had shared. But there was no trace of passion in her voice. The listener behind the trees marked that well. Sigrun was speaking to the man who loved her in the firm assurance that he understood she did not love him.
Sven Elversson felt the same. His voice was thick with emotion, but it never changed into the tone of passion.
"Be it so then! Let us talk like Lotta Hedman, if you wish. But if the dead woman's soul sent you here, might it not be as well for torture and punishment? She knew that my love could only increase, just as she knew that you could never come to love me in return."
"Yes," said Sigrun, with the same strange note of lofty inspiration, almost as if she were speaking to one from another world, "she knew that, yes. And she knew, too, that, if there had not been something in you that protected you against all love but hers, you would not have allowed me to stay here at Hånger. But she believed, perhaps, that some sweetness might come into your life by your teaching me how life should be lived. Might not that have been her aim? Afterward, when you are old, when all that flames and burns now is cooled, then you will think of this winter at Hånger as a time of happiness."
He shook his head.
"Not now," she said, "but after, and to your last hour. For I believe, as I said just now, that it was all to this one end, that you might teach me how life should be lived. What was I, a few months back, before I came here? I was not wicked; I meant well to all, but I was timid; I tried to do well, but mostly it went as best might be. There was no plan in my life. I did not know that one could be good and true, faithful and kind, under whatever circumstances. And that is what I have learned here with you; to detest all that pollutes the soul. That is what I take with me now, back to my home and my husband. He shall see that I am changed, and he will have more trust in me than before. We shall be happy now, and we have you to thank for our happiness. And you must think of us and be glad."
He took one of her hands in his, bent over it, and wept.
"To-morrow, when Edward comes," she said, "I will tell him all this, and he will understand and thank you."
Sven Elversson started up in dismay.
"Is he to know ..."
"Yes," she said. "I shall tell him that you love me, and he shall learn how she who is dead loved you. I will tell him all. You must see that there can be no more darkness, no more secrets between us. He shall know how it was I learned the secret of love. I will tell him that it does not care for promises and commandments, but knows its own law only. It cares for nothing, thinks of nothing, but the beloved. And it goes away when it is best; when it would bring suffering to stay. And I will tell Edward of all this here, at Hånger, where his fathers lived, in a place where nature itself is at once gentle and great. For he can be so, too—gentle and great."
The listener moved in his place. He felt shame at spying thus upon these two. He would have stepped forward and spoken openly and freely with Sigrun and the man who loved her, whom she tried to comfort and give courage now she was about to leave him.
But as he looked about for a way to go, he noticed something he had not seen before; out of a heap of stones immediately before him stood an old gatepost.
There was no gate, and no post on the other side. The thing stood there alone, so rotten and decayed that it needed all the struts and supports about it to keep it standing.
Pastor Rhånge started. He had not seen the thing before, but he had not been looking that way. At first, he was convinced that it must be hallucination; that there was no gatepost there in reality; then it occurred to him that it might have been left standing as a curiosity.
But while he was looking at the post, the opportunity for declaring himself had passed.
The two had gone on speaking; he perceived now that Sigrun was talking of another subject altogether.
"But is it possible," she was saying, "that you do not know how it all happened? Mor Thala told me once that you were ill with fever at the time, and delirious; that you could remember nothing of it all."
Sven Elversson made no answer.
"I understand you do not wish me to speak of this at all," said Sigrun, "but I do so want to speak to you about it. Remember, to-morrow I shall not be here."
"I took my part in it, of course," said Sven Elversson, "but I was so ill I remember nothing. Afterward, I heard the others talking about it, and I reproached them. But then they said I had no call to say anything, for I had been in it, too. And then I remembered, that they had forced me to ..."
He had spoken with the greatest effort, the words seeming to force themselves painfully through his lips. And he could not finish.
"You fancied you remembered," said Sigrun. "You know well enough it is impossible that you should have done it really. You would rather have died."
"I did it," he said. "Do not try to think otherwise."
"But I do think otherwise," said Sigrun, "and I want you to know that. All the time I have been here under your roof, I have felt convinced that it was not true. No one who knows you could believe it."
Sven Elversson bent forward and grasped her hand. And very earnestly and simply he said:
"You have been very good to me this evening. I can never thank you enough for this hour."
She understood his meaning, and refrained from pursuing the subject further.
"But at least you must let me thank you for these months at Hånger. I shall always think of this as the true home of charity. And I will try to make my own home like yours."
"You can leave that till to-morrow," he said.
She rose to her feet.
"Do not go yet. It is the last evening."
"Then read a little of Snoilsky."
He opened the book, but closed it again.
"It is too dark to read."
"Then say something you know without the book. Let me hear Bjarni Thorarensen's 'Song to Sigrun.' I have often wanted to ask you, but I never dared."
Sven Elversson made a gesture as if to refuse.
"I shall not be here to-morrow," she said again, with a note in her voice impossible to resist.
And he began to recite the Icelandic poet's passionate prayer to his love not to forsake him even though she should die and go to dwell in the mansions of heaven. "'Do not think I could not kiss a dead bride, or that I could not lay my arm about the waist of one pale in death and wrapped for burial.'"
He sat with his face turned away from her, his head bowed forward, his eyes resting on some point in the far distance.
But all that he had kept in check so well while they had been speaking, all that the soft enchantment of the evening, and the presence of the woman he loved, had not availed to loose, was freed in him now by the wild and powerful fervour of love that glowed through the poet's word. All his pent-up feeling poured out now in his voice.
"'Does not the summer sun kiss with like warmth the ice-clad mountain peak and the reddest rose? Are not white lilies loveliest of all flowers?'" Sven Elversson's voice trembled in the rush of the storm of love that raged within him.
Sigrun listened tensely for a few moments. Then suddenly she turned away, so that he should not see her face.
It was turned now toward the listener behind the trees. And he saw how, with features convulsed with passion, she, too, gave way to an outburst of feeling. Her eyes closed in pain, her hands were clenched together and her lips moved in silent plaint. Her husband could not hear the words, but from the movement of her lips he fancied he could read what she said.
"And I can never tell him—never!"
"'Come to me in autumn, when the winds rage over black waters,'" Sven Elversson went on, his voice one impassioned cry. "'At midnight, when the moon is hidden in stormy clouds.'"
The listener in his hiding-place shuddered with chilly dread. He saw Sigrun lift her arms with a gesture of intense longing. He saw how the whispering lips again and again shaped their cry of agony:
"And I can never tell him—never!"
"'Sink with thy snow-cold breast to my heart,'" murmured Sven Elversson, in a breaking voice, "'and rest there, maiden from the grave, till thou hast loosed my soul from the fetters of life.'"
The Pastor glanced away from his wife, and looked toward the post. It seemed as if it had stood there till this hour for a single purpose—to remind him that he came of a race never known to endure a wrong—a race that knew how to take vengeance.
The two by the table said no word after the poem was finished. Sigrun rose hurriedly and went into the house. Sven Elversson walked the opposite way, through the trees, and past the gatepost, down to a little quiet pool, where he stood, looking down into the water. He had passed within a few steps of the listener, but without noticing him.
And Rhånge felt that this man who loved Sigrun must die.
It would be easy enough. Just creep up behind him and throw him into the water. He felt, too, that this man would not even attempt to defend himself. He would greet death as a welcome friend.
It was a perilous moment. Then to the mind of the excited man came a thought which saved him. It had lain, no doubt, all ready in the depths of his soul for long, but only now did it rise up to his consciousness.
"Once you drove out that man from your church because of what he had done to the dead; what is this you would do yourself to the living?"
This thought it was that restrained him in that difficult hour. Was not life a thousand times more sacred than death? How could he, who had refused to admit Sven Elversson into his church, be now so savage as to entertain the thought of ending a fellow creature's life, of separating soul from body, to commit an act which held more than any could understand, and the consequences of which might go on through an eternity of eternities?
When he looked again toward the pool where Sven Elversson had stood, he was gone.
And something more was gone—the gatepost. Afterward, he thought that, in the struggle with temptation, he must have gone over to it himself, and flung it down with its supports; that it had fallen, and had been so utterly rotten and decayed that it had dropped with out a sound, leaving nothing but crumbling dust behind.
But he was not sure that it was so. He thought also that the thing had stood in his own soul; that it was his own violent, reckless, savage nature, with its supports of inherited habit and ingrown prejudice and sense of rights long held, that had fallen.
For that it had fallen, he felt now with wonder and relief. He knew it, from the mighty train of gentle thoughts that flowed through his soul.
He knew it, from the power of self-sacrificing love that filled him now.
He realized it from the joy he now felt in being a priest. He thought of his life, how he was at once a husbandman tending the fruits of the earth, and a shepherd of souls, head of a household and leader of a congregation, master and ruler and the helping minister of all—and now, for the first time, he felt that he truly loved his work, as the noblest and greatest and happiest of all.
He was happy, on this lovely evening in spring, as he drove back alone over the desolate, barren, unbeautiful mountain tract, toward his own poor home.
And he looked back, marvelling, at the thing which had saved him; for it was not his love, nor his priestly office, but the thought of the sacredness and majesty of life. A thought that had grown up slowly out of Sven Elversson's ill-fate and now stood firm and clear in its maturity.