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.
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.
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!