Then she heard the story of those two days. The first day Gösta wandered about in the wood, driven by remorse. He could not bear to meet any one’s eye. But he did not think of dying. He meant to journey to far distant lands. On Sunday, however, he came down from the hills and went to the Bro church. Once more he wished to see the people: the poor, hungry people whom he had dreamed of serving when he had sat by the Broby clergyman’s pile of shame, and whom he had learned to love when he saw them disappear into the night with the dead broom-girl.
The service had begun when he came to the church. He crept up to the gallery, and looked down on the people. He had felt bitter agony. He had wanted to speak to them, to comfort them in their poverty and hopelessness. If he had only been allowed to speak in God’s house, hopeless as he was, he would have found words of hope and salvation for them all.
Then he left the church, went into the sacristy, and wrote the message which his wife already knew. He had promised that work should be renewed at Ekeby, and grain distributed to those in greatest need. He had hoped that his wife and the pensioners would fulfil his promises when he was gone.
As he came out, he saw a coffin standing before the parish-hall. It was plain, put together in haste, but covered with black crape and wreaths. He knew that it was Captain Lennart’s. The people had begged the captain’s wife to hasten the funeral, so that all those who had come to the Fair could be at the burial.
He was standing and looking at the coffin, when a heavy hand was laid on his shoulder. Sintram had come up to him.
“Gösta,” he said, “if you want to play a regular trick on a person, lie down and die. There is nothing more clever than to die, nothing which so deceives an honest man who suspects no harm. Lie you down and die, I tell you!”
Gösta listened with horror to what he said. Sintram complained of the failure of well-laid plans. He had wanted to see a waste about the shores of the Löfven. He had made the pensioners lords of the place; he had let the Broby clergyman impoverish the people; he had called forth the drought and the famine. At the Broby Fair the decisive blow was to have fallen. Excited by their misfortunes, the people should have turned to murder and robbery. Then there should have been lawsuits to beggar them. Famine, riot, and every kind of misfortune should have ravaged them. Finally, the country would have become so odious and detestable that no one could have lived there, and it would all have been Sintram’s doing. It would have been his joy and pride, for he was evil-minded. He loved desert wastes and uncultivated fields. But this man who had known how to die at the right moment had spoiled it all for him.
Then Gösta asked him what would have been the good of it all.
“It would have pleased me, Gösta, for I am bad. I am the grizzly bear on the mountain; I am the snow-storm on the plain; I like to kill and to persecute. Away, I say, with people and their works! I don’t like them. I can let them slip from between my claws and cut their capers,—that is amusing too for a while; but now I am tired of play, Gösta, now I want to strike, now I want to kill and to destroy.”
He was mad, quite mad. He began a long time ago as a joke with those devilish tricks, and now his maliciousness had taken the upper hand; now he thought he really was a spirit from the lower regions. He had fed and fostered the evil in him until it had taken possession of his soul. For wickedness can drive people mad, as well as love and brooding.
He was furious, and in his anger he began to tear the wreaths from off the coffin; but then Gösta Berling cried: “Let the coffin be!”
“Well, well, well, so I shall not touch it! Yes; I shall throw my friend Lennart out on the ground and trample on his wreaths. Do you not see what he has done to me? Do you not see in what a fine gray coach I am riding?”
And Gösta then saw that a couple of prison-vans with the sheriff and constables of the district stood and waited outside the churchyard wall.
“I ought to send Captain Lennart’s wife thanks that she yesterday sat herself down to read through old papers in order to find proof against me in that matter of the powder, you know? Shall I not let her know that she would have done better to occupy herself with brewing and baking, than in sending the sheriff and his men after me? Shall I have nothing for the tears I have wept to induce Scharling to let me come here and read a prayer by my good friend’s coffin?”
And he began again to drag on the crape.
Then Gösta Berling came close up to him and seized his arms.
“I will give anything to make you let the coffin alone,” he said.
“Do what you like,” said the madman. “Call if you like. I can always do something before the sheriff gets here. Fight with me, if you like. That will be a pleasing sight here by the church. Let us fight among the wreaths and palls.”
“I will buy rest for the dead at any price. Take my life, take everything!”
“You promise much.”
“You can prove it.”
“Well, then, kill yourself!”
“I will do it; but first the coffin shall be safely under earth.”
And so it was. Sintram took Gösta’s oath that he would not be alive twelve hours after Captain Lennart was buried. “Then I know that you can never be good for anything,” he said.
It was easy for Gösta Berling to promise. He was glad to be able to give his wife her liberty. Remorse had made him long for death. The only thing which troubled him was, that he had promised the major’s wife not to die as long as the Broby clergyman’s daughter was a servant at Ekeby. But Sintram said that she could no longer be considered as servant, since she had inherited her father’s fortune. Gösta objected that the Broby clergyman had hidden his treasures so well that no one had been able to find them. Then Sintram laughed and said that they were hidden up among the pigeons’ nests in the church tower. Thereupon he went away. And Gösta went back to the wood again. It seemed best to him to die at the place where the broom-girl had been killed. He had wandered there the whole afternoon. He had seen his wife in the wood; and then he had not had the strength to kill himself.
All this he told his wife, while he lay bound on the floor of the cottage.
“Oh,” she said sadly, when he had finished, “how familiar it all is! Always ready to thrust your hands into the fire, Gösta, always ready to throw yourself away! How noble such things seemed to me once! How I now value calmness and good sense! What good did you do the dead by such a promise? What did it matter if Sintram had overturned the coffin and torn off the crape? It would have been picked up again; there would have been found new crape, new wreaths. If you had laid your hand on that good man’s coffin, there before Sintram’s eyes, and sworn to live to help those poor people whom he wished to ruin, that I should have commended. If you had thought, when you saw the people in the church: ‘I will help them; I will make use of all my strength to help them,’ and not laid that burden on your weak wife, and on old men with failing strength, I should also have commended that.”
Gösta Berling lay silent for a while.
“We pensioners are not free men,” he said at last. “We have promised one another to live for pleasure, and only for pleasure. Woe to us all if one breaks his word!”
“Woe to you,” said the countess, indignantly, “if you shall be the most cowardly of the pensioners, and slower to improve than any of them. Yesterday afternoon the whole eleven sat in the pensioners’ wing, and they were very sad. You were gone; Captain Lennart was gone. The glory and honor of Ekeby were gone. They left the toddy tray untouched; they would not let me see them. Then the maid, Anna Lisa, who stands here, went up to them. You know she is an energetic little woman who for years has struggled despairingly against neglect and waste.
“‘To-day I have again been at home and looked for father’s money,’ she said to the pensioners; ‘but I have not found anything. All the debts are paid, and the drawers and closets are empty.’
“‘We are sorry for you, Anna Lisa,’ said Beerencreutz.
“‘When the major’s wife left Ekeby,’ continued Anna Lisa, ‘she told me to see after her house. And if I had found father’s money, I would have built up Ekeby. But as I did not find anything else to take away with me, I took father’s shame heap; for great shame awaits me when my mistress comes again and asks me what I have done with Ekeby.’
“‘Don’t take so much to heart what is not your fault, Anna Lisa,’ said Beerencreutz again.
“‘But I did not take the shame heap for myself alone,’ said Anna Lisa. ‘I took it also for your reckoning, good gentlemen. Father is not the only one who has been the cause of shame and injury in this world.’
“And she went from one to the other of them, and laid down some of the dry sticks before each. Some of them swore, but most of them let her go on. At last Beerencreutz said, calmly:—
“‘It is well. We thank you. You may go now.’ When she had gone, he struck the table with his clenched hand till the glasses rang.
“‘From this hour,’ he said, ‘absolutely sober. Brandy shall never again cause me such shame.’ Thereupon he rose and went out.
“They followed him by degrees, all the others. Do you know where they went, Gösta? Well, down to the river, to the point where the mill and the forge had stood, and there they began to work. They began to drag away the logs and stones and clear the place. The old men have had a hard time. Many of them have had sorrow. Now they can no longer bear the disgrace of having ruined Ekeby. I know too well that you pensioners are ashamed to work; but now the others have taken that shame on them. Moreover, Gösta, they mean to send Anna Lisa up to the major’s wife to bring her home. But you, what are you doing?”
He found still an answer to give her.
“What do you want of me, of a dismissed priest? Cast off by men, hateful to God?”
“I too have been in the Bro church to-day, Gösta. I have a message to you from two women. ‘Tell Gösta,’ said Marianne Sinclair, ‘that a woman does not like to be ashamed of him she has loved.’ ‘Tell Gösta,’ said Anna Stjärnhök, ‘that all is now well with me. I manage my own estates. I do not think of love, only of work. At Berga too they have conquered the first bitterness of their sorrow. But we all grieve for Gösta. We believe in him and pray for him; but when, when will he be a man?’
“Do you hear? Are you cast off by men?” continued the countess. “Your misfortune is that you have been met with too much love. Women and men have loved you. If you only jested and laughed, if you only sang and played, they have forgiven you everything. Whatever it has pleased you to do has seemed right to them. And you dare to call yourself an outcast! Or are you hateful to God? Why did you not stay and see Captain Lennart’s burial?
“As he had died on a Fair day, his fame had gone far and wide. After the service, thousands of people came up to the church. The funeral procession was formed by the town hall. They were only waiting for the old dean. He was ill and had not preached; but he had promised to come to Captain Lennart’s funeral. And at last he came, with head sunk on his breast, and dreaming his dreams, as he is wont to do now in his old age, and placed himself at the head of the procession. He noticed nothing unusual. He walked on the familiar path and did not look up. He read the prayers, and threw the earth on the coffin, and still noticed nothing. But then the sexton began a hymn. Hundreds and hundreds of voices joined in. Men, women, and children sang. Then the dean awoke from his dreams. He passed his hand over his eyes and stepped up on the mound of earth to look. Never had he seen such a crowd of mourners. All were singing; all had tears in their eyes,—all were mourning.
“Then the old dean began to tremble. What should he say to these people? He must say a word to comfort them.
“When the song ceased, he stretched out his arms over the people.
“‘I see that you are mourning,’ he said; ‘and sorrow is heavier to bear for one who has long to live than for me who will soon be gone.’
“He stopped dismayed. His voice was too weak, and words failed him.
“But he soon began again. His voice had regained its youthful strength, and his eyes glowed.
“First, he told all he knew of God’s wayfarer. Then he reminded us that no outward polish nor great ability had made that man so honored as he now was, but only that he had always followed God’s ways. And now he asked us to do the same. Each should love the other, and help him. Each should think well of the other. And he explained everything which had happened this year. He said it was a preparation for the time of love and happiness which now was to be expected.
“And we all felt as if we had heard a prophet speak. All wished to love one another; all wished to be good.
“He lifted his eyes and hands and proclaimed peace in the neighborhood. Then he called on a helper for the people. ‘Some one will come,’ he said. ‘It is not God’s will that you shall perish. God will find some one who will feed the hungry and lead you in His ways.’
“Then we all thought of you, Gösta. We knew that the dean spoke of you. The people who had heard your message went home talking of you. And you wandered here in the wood and wanted to die! The people are waiting for you, Gösta. In all the cottages they are sitting and saying that, as the mad priest at Ekeby is going to help them, all will be well. You are their hero, Gösta.
“Yes, Gösta, it is certain that the old man meant you, and that ought to make you want to live. But I, Gösta, who am your wife, I say to you that you shall go and do your duty. You shall not dream of being sent by God,—any one can be that. You shall work without any heroics; you shall not shine and astonish; you shall so manage that your name is not too often heard on the people’s lips. But think well before you take back your promise to Sintram. You have now got a certain right to die, and life ought not to offer you many attractions. There was a time when my wish was to go home to Italy, Gösta. It seemed too much happiness for me, a sinner, to be your wife, and be with you through life. But now I shall stay. If you dare to live, I shall stop; but do not await any joy from that. I shall force you to follow the weary path of duty. You need never expect words of joy or hope from me. Can a heart which has suffered like mine love again? Tearless and joyless I shall walk beside you. Think well, Gösta, before you choose to live. We shall go the way of penance.”
She did not wait for his answer. She nodded to Anna Lisa and went. When she came out into the wood, she began to weep bitterly, and wept until she reached Ekeby. Arrived there, she remembered that she had forgotten to talk of gladder things than war to Jan Hök, the soldier.
In the cottage there was silence when she was gone.
“Glory and honor be to the Lord God!” said the old soldier, suddenly.
They looked at him. He had risen and was looking eagerly about him.
“Wicked, wicked has everything been,” he said. “Everything I have seen since I got my eyes opened has been wicked. Bad men, bad women! Hate and anger in forest and plain! But she is good. A good woman has stood in my house. When I am sitting here alone, I shall remember her. She shall be with me in the wood.”
He bent down over Gösta, untied his fetters, and lifted him up. Then he solemnly took his hand.
“Hateful to God,” he said and nodded. “That is just it. But now you are not any more; nor I either, since she has been in my house. She is good.”
The next day old Jan Hök came to the bailiff Scharling. “I will carry my cross,” he said. “I have been a bad man, therefore I have had bad sons.” And he asked to be allowed to go to prison instead of his son; but that could not be.
The best of old stories is the one which tells of how he followed his son, walking beside the prison van; how he slept outside his cell; how he did not forsake him until he had suffered his punishment.
A few days before Christmas the major’s wife started on her journey down to the Löfsjö district; but it was not till Christmas Eve that she came to Ekeby. During the whole journey she was ill. Yet, in spite of cold and fever, people had never seen her in better spirits nor heard her speak more friendly words.
The Broby clergyman’s daughter, who had been with her in the Älfdal forests ever since October, sat by her side in the sledge and wished to hasten the journey; but she could not prevent the old woman from stopping the horses and calling every wayfarer up to her to ask for news.
“How is it with you all here in Löfsjö?” she asked.
“All is well,” was the answer. “Better times are coming. The mad priest there at Ekeby and his wife help us all.”
“A good time has come,” answered another. “Sintram is gone. The Ekeby pensioners are working. The Broby clergyman’s money is found in the Bro church-tower. There is so much that the glory and power of Ekeby can be restored with it. There is enough too to get bread for the hungry.”
“Our old dean has waked to new life and strength,” said a third. “Every Sunday he speaks to us of the coming of the Kingdom of God.”
And the major’s wife drove slowly on, asking every one she met: “How is it here? Do you not suffer from want here?”
And the fever and the stabbing pain in her breast were assuaged, when they answered her: “There are two good and rich women here, Marianne Sinclair and Anna Stjärnhök. They help Gösta Berling to go from house to house and see that no one is starving. And no more brandy is made now.”
It was as if the major’s wife had sat in the sledge and listened to a long divine service. She had come to a blessed land. She saw old, furrowed faces brighten, when they spoke of the time which had come. The sick forgot their pains to tell of the day of joy.
“We all want to be like the good Captain Lennart,” they said. “We all want to be good. We want to believe good of every one. We will not injure any one. It shall hasten the coming of God’s Kingdom.”
She found them all filled with the same spirit. On the larger estates free dinners were given to those who were in greatest need. All who had work to be done had it done now.
She had never felt in better health than when she sat there and let the cold air stream into her aching breast. She could not drive by a single house without stopping and asking.
“Everything is well,” they all said. “There was great distress, but the good gentlemen from Ekeby help us. You will be surprised at everything which has been done there. The mill is almost ready, and the smithy is at work, and the burned-down house ready for the roof.”
Ah, it would only last a short time! But still it was good to return to a land where they all helped one another and all wished to do good. The major’s wife felt that she could now forgive the pensioners, and she thanked God for it.
“Anna Lisa,” she said, “I feel as if I had already come into the heaven of the blessed.”
When she at last reached Ekeby, and the pensioners hurried to help her out of the sledge, they could hardly recognize her, for she was as kind and gentle as their own young countess. The older ones, who had seen her as a young girl, whispered to one another: “It is not the major’s wife at Ekeby; it is Margareta Celsing who has come back.”
Great was the pensioners’ joy to see her come so kind and so free from all thoughts of revenge; but it was soon changed to grief when they found how ill she was. She had to be carried immediately into the guest-room in the wing, and put to bed. But on the threshold she turned and spoke to them.
“It has been God’s storm,” she said,—“God’s storm. I know now that it has all been for the best!”
Then the door to the sick-room closed, and they never saw her again.
There is so much to say to one who is dying. The words throng to the lips when one knows that in the next room lies one whose ears will soon be closed for always. “Ah, my friend, my friend,” one wants to say, “can you forgive? Can you believe that I have loved you in spite of everything! Ah, my friend, thanks for all the joy you have given me!”
That will one say and so much, much more.
But the major’s wife lay in a burning fever, and the voices of the pensioners could not reach her. Would she never know how they had worked, how they had taken up her work?
After a little while the pensioners went down to the smithy. There all work was stopped; but they threw new coal and new ore into the furnace, and made ready to smelt. They did not call the smith, who had gone home to celebrate Christmas, but worked themselves at the forge. If the major’s wife could only live until the hammer got going, it would tell her their story.
Evening came and then night, while they worked. Several of them thought, how strange it was that they should again celebrate the night before Christmas in the smithy.
Kevenhüller, who had been the architect of the mill and the smithy, and Christian Bergh stood by the forge and attended to the melting iron. Gösta and Julius were the stokers. Some of the others sat on the anvil under the raised hammer, and others sat on coal-carts and piles of pig-iron. Löwenborg was talking to Eberhard, the philosopher, who sat beside him on the anvil.
“Sintram dies to-night,” he said.
“Why just to-night?” asked Eberhard.
“You know that we made an agreement last year. Now we have done nothing which has been ungentlemanly, and therefore he has lost.”
“You who believe in such things know very well that we have done a great deal which has been ungentlemanly. First, we did not help the major’s wife; second, we began to work; third, it was not quite right that Gösta Berling did not kill himself, when he had promised.”
“I have thought of that too,” answered Löwenborg; “but my opinion is, that you do not rightly comprehend the matter. To act with the thought of our own mean advantage was forbidden us; but not to act as love or honor or our own salvation demanded. I think that Sintram has lost.”
“Perhaps you are right.”
“I tell you that I know it. I have heard his sleigh-bells the whole evening, but they are not real bells. We shall soon have him here.”
And the little old man sat and stared through the smithy door, which stood open, out at the bit of blue sky studded with stars which showed through it.
After a little while he started up.
“Do you see him?” he whispered. “There he comes creeping. Do you not see him in the doorway?”
“I see nothing,” replied Eberhard. “You are sleepy, that is the whole story.”
“I saw him so distinctly against the sky. He had on his long wolfskin coat and fur cap. Now he is over there in the dark, and I cannot see him. Look, now he is up by the furnace. He is standing close to Christian Bergh; but Christian seems not to see him. Now he is bending down and is throwing something into the fire. Oh, how wicked he looks! Take care, friends, take care!”
As he spoke, a tongue of flame burst out of the furnace, and covered the smiths and their assistants with cinders and sparks. No one, however, was injured.
“He wants to be revenged,” whispered Löwenborg.
“You too are mad!” cried Eberhard. “You ought to have had enough of such things.”
“Do you not see how he is standing there by the prop and grinning at us? But, verily, I believe that he has unfastened the hammer.”
He started up and dragged Eberhard with him. The second after the hammer fell thundering down onto the anvil. It was only a clamp which had given way; but Eberhard and Löwenborg had narrowly escaped death.
“You see that he has no power over us,” said Löwenborg, triumphantly. “But it is plain that he wants to be revenged.”
And he called Gösta Berling to him.
“Go up to the women, Gösta. Perhaps he will show himself to them too. They are not so used as I to seeing such things. They may be frightened. And take care of yourself, Gösta, for he has a special grudge against you, and perhaps he has power over you on account of that promise.”
Afterwards they heard that Löwenborg had been right, and that Sintram had died that night. Some said that he had hanged himself in his cell. Others believed that the servants of justice secretly had him killed, for the trial seemed to be going well for him, and it would never do to let him out again among the people in Löfsjö. Still others thought that a dark visitor had driven up in a black carriage, drawn by black horses, and had taken him out of prison. And Löwenborg was not the only one who saw him that night. He was also seen at Fors and in Ulrika Dillner’s dreams. Many told how he had shown himself to them, until Ulrika Dillner moved his body to the Bro churchyard. She also had the evil servants sent away from Fors and introduced there good order. After that it was no longer haunted.
It is said that before Gösta Berling reached the house, a stranger had come to the wing and had left a letter for the major’s wife. No one knew the messenger, but the letter was carried in and laid on the table beside the sick woman. Soon after she became unexpectedly better; the fever decreased, the pain abated, and she was able to read the letter.
The old people believe that her improvement depended on the influence of the powers of darkness. Sintram and his friends would profit by the reading of that letter.
It was a contract written in blood on black paper. The pensioners would have recognized it. It was composed on the last Christmas Eve in the smithy at Ekeby.
And the major’s wife lay there now and read that since she had been a witch, and had sent pensioners’ souls to hell, she was condemned to lose Ekeby. That and other similar absurdities she read. She examined the date and signatures, and found the following note beside Gösta’s name: “Because the major’s wife has taken advantage of my weakness to tempt me away from honest work, and to keep me as pensioner at Ekeby, because she has made me Ebba Dohna’s murderer by betraying to her that I am a dismissed priest, I sign my name.”
The major’s wife slowly folded the paper and put it in its envelope. Then she lay still and thought over what she had learned. She understood with bitter pain that such was the people’s thought of her. She was a witch and a sorceress to all those whom she had served, to whom she had given work and bread. This was her reward. They could not believe anything better of an adulteress.
Her thoughts flew. Wild anger and a longing for revenge flamed up in her fever-burning brain. She had Anna Lisa, who with Countess Elizabeth tended her, send a message to Hogfors to the manager and overseer. She wished to make her will.
Again she lay thinking. Her eyebrows were drawn together, her features were terribly distorted by suffering.
“You are very ill,” said the countess, softly.
“Yes, more ill than ever before.”
There was silence again, but then the major’s wife spoke in a hard, harsh voice:—
“It is strange to think that you, too, countess, you whom every one loves, are an adulteress.”
The young woman started.
“Yes, if not in deed, yet in thoughts and desire, and that makes no difference. I who lie here feel that it makes no difference.”
“I know it!”
“And yet you are happy now. You may possess him you loved without sin. That black spectre does not stand between you when you meet. You may belong to one another before the world, love one another, go side by side through life.”
“Oh, madame, madame!”
“How can you dare to stay with him?” cried the old woman, with increasing violence. “Repent, repent in time! Go home to your father and mother, before they come and curse you. Do you dare to consider Gösta Berling your husband? Leave him! I shall give him Ekeby. I shall give him power and glory. Do you dare to share that with him? Do you dare to accept happiness and honor? I did not dare to. Do you remember what happened to me? Do you remember the Christmas dinner at Ekeby? Do you remember the cell in the bailiff’s house?”
“Oh, madame, we sinners go here side by side without happiness. I am here to see that no joy shall find a home by our hearth. Do you think I do not long for my home? Oh, bitterly do I long for the protection and support of home; but I shall never again enjoy them. Here I shall live in fear and trembling, knowing that everything I do leads to sin and sorrow, knowing that if I help one, I ruin another. Too weak and foolish for the life here, and yet forced to live it, bound by an everlasting penance.”
“With such thoughts we deceive our hearts,” cried the major’s wife; “but it is weakness. You will not leave him, that is the only reason.”
Before the countess could answer, Gösta Berling came into the room.
“Come here, Gösta,” said the major’s wife instantly, and her voice grew still sharper and harder. “Come here, you whom everybody praises. You shall now hear what has happened to your old friend whom you allowed to wander about the country, despised and forsaken.
“I will first tell you what happened last spring, when I came home to my mother, for you ought to know the end of that story.
“In March I reached the iron-works in the Älfdal forest, Gösta. Little better than a beggar I looked. They told me that my mother was in the dairy. So I went there, and stood for a long while silent at the door. There were long shelves round about the room, and on them stood shining copper pans filled with milk. And my mother, who was over ninety years old, took down pan after pan and skimmed off the cream. She was active enough, the old woman; but I saw well enough how hard it was for her to straighten up her back to reach the pans. I did not know if she had seen me; but after a while she spoke to me in a curious, shrill voice.
“‘So everything has happened to you as I wished,’ she said. I wanted to speak and to ask her to forgive me, but it was a waste of trouble. She did not hear a word of it,—she was stone-deaf. But after a while she spoke again: ‘You can come and help me,’ she said.
“Then I went in and skimmed the milk. I took the pans in order, and put everything in its place, and skimmed just deep enough, and she was pleased. She had never been able to trust any of the maids to skim the milk; but I knew of old how she liked to have it.
“‘Now you can take charge of this work,’ she said. And then I knew that she had forgiven me.
“And afterwards all at once it seemed as if she could not work any more. She sat in her arm-chair and slept almost all day. She died two weeks before Christmas. I should have liked to have come before, Gösta, but I could not leave her.”
She stopped. She began to find breathing difficult; but she made an effort and went on:—
“It is true, Gösta, that I wished to keep you near me at Ekeby. There is something about you which makes every one rejoice to be with you. If you had shown a wish to be a settled man, I would have given you much power. I always hoped that you would find a good wife. First, I thought that it would be Marianne Sinclair, for I saw that she loved you already, when you lived as wood-cutter in the wood. Then I thought that it would be Ebba Dohna, and one day I drove over to Borg and told her that if she would have you for husband, I would leave you Ekeby in my will. If I did wrong in that, you must forgive me.”
Gösta was kneeling by the bed with his face hidden in the blankets, and was moaning bitterly.
“Tell me, Gösta, how you mean to live? How shall you support your wife? Tell me that. You know that I have always wished you well.” And Gösta answered her smiling, while his heart almost burst with pain.
“In the old days, when I tried to be a laborer here at Ekeby, you gave me a cottage to live in, and it is still mine. This autumn I have put it quite in order. Löwenborg has helped me, and we have whitewashed the ceilings and hung the walls with paper and painted them. The inner little room Löwenborg calls the countess’s boudoir, and he has gone through all the farm-houses round about for furniture, which has come there from manor-house auctions. He has bought them, so that there we have now high-backed arm-chairs and chests of drawers with shining mountings. But in the outer big room stands the young wife’s weaving-loom and my lathe. Household utensils and all kinds of things are there, and there Löwenborg and I have already sat many evenings and talked of how the young countess and I will have it in the cottage. But my wife did not know it till now. We wanted to tell her when we should leave Ekeby.”
“Go on, Gösta.”
“Löwenborg was always saying that a maid was needed in the house. ‘In the summer it is lovely here in the birch grove,’ he used to say; ‘but in winter it will be too lonely for the young wife. You will have to have a maid, Gösta.’
“And I agreed with him, but I did not know how I could afford to keep one. Then he came one day and carried down his music, and his table with the painted keyboard, and put it in the cottage. ‘It is you, Löwenborg, who are going to be the maid,’ I said to him. He answered that he would be needed. Did I mean the young countess to cook the food, and to carry wood and water? No, I had not meant her to do anything at all, as long as I had a pair of arms to work with. But he still thought that it would be best if there were two of us, so that she might sit the whole day on her sofa and embroider. I could never know how much waiting upon such a little woman needed, he said.”
“Go on,” said the major’s wife. “It eases my pain. Did you think that your young countess would be willing to live in a cottage?”
He wondered at her scornful tone, but continued:
“No, I did not dare to think it; but it would have been so perfect if she had been willing. It is thirty miles from any doctor. She, who has a light hand and a tender heart, would have had work enough to tend wounds and allay fevers. And I thought that everybody in trouble would find the way to the lady mistress in the forest cottage. There is so much distress among the poor which kind words and a gentle heart can help.”
“But you yourself, Gösta Berling?”
“I shall have my work at the carpenter’s bench and lathe. I shall hereafter live my own life. If my wife will not follow me, I cannot help it. If some one should offer me all the riches of the universe, it would not tempt me. I want to live my own life. Now I shall be and remain a poor man among the peasants, and help them with whatever I can. They need some one to play the polka for them at weddings and at Christmas; they need some one to write letters to their distant sons,—and that some one I will be. But I must be poor.”
“It will be a gloomy life for you, Gösta.”
“Oh, no, it would not be if we were but two who kept together. The rich and happy would come to us as well as the poor. It would be gay enough in our cottage. Our guests would not care if the food was cooked right before their eyes, or be shocked that two must eat from the same plate.”
“And what would be the good of it all, Gösta? What praise would you win?”
“Great would be my reward if the poor would remember me for a year or two after my death. I should have done some good if I had planted a couple of apple-trees at the house-corners, if I had taught the country fiddlers some of the old tunes, and if the shepherd children could have learnt a few good songs to sing in the wood-paths.
“You can believe me, I am the same mad Gösta Berling that I was before. A country fiddler is all I can be, but that is enough. I have many sins to atone for. To weep and to repent is not for me. I shall give the poor pleasure, that is my penance.”
“Gösta,” said the major’s wife, “it is too humble a life for a man with your powers. I will give you Ekeby.”
“Oh,” he cried in terror, “do not make me rich! Do not put such duties upon me! Do not part me from the poor!”
“I will give Ekeby to you and the pensioners,” repeated the major’s wife. “You are a capable man, Gösta, whom the people bless. I say like my mother, ‘You shall take charge of this work!’”
“No, we could not accept it,—we who have misjudged you and caused you such pain!”
“I will give you Ekeby, do you hear?”
She spoke bitterly and harshly, without kindness. He was filled with dismay.
“Do not tempt the old men! It would only make them idlers and drunkards again. God in Heaven, rich pensioners! What would become of us!”
“I will give you Ekeby, Gösta; but then you must promise to set your wife free. Such a delicate little woman is not for you. She has had to suffer too much here in the land of the bear. She is longing for her bright native country. You shall let her go. That is why I give you Ekeby.”
But then Countess Elizabeth came forward to the major’s wife and knelt by the bed.
“I do not long any more. He who is my husband has solved the problem, and found the life I can live. No longer shall I need to go stern and cold beside him, and remind him of repentance and atonement. Poverty and want and hard work will do that. The paths which lead to the poor and sick I can follow without sin. I am no longer afraid of the life here in the north. But do not make him rich; then I do not dare to stay.”
The major’s wife raised herself in the bed.
“You demand happiness for yourselves,” she cried, and threatened them with clenched fists,—“happiness and blessing. No, let Ekeby be the pensioners’, that they may be ruined. Let man and wife be parted, that they may be ruined! I am a witch, I am a sorceress, I shall incite you to evil-doing. I shall be what my reputation is.”
She seized the letter and flung it in Gösta’s face. The black paper fluttered out and fell on the floor. Gösta knew it too well.
“You have sinned against me, Gösta. You have misjudged one who has been a second mother to you. Do you dare to refuse your punishment? You shall accept Ekeby, and it shall ruin you, for you are weak. You shall send home your wife, so that there will be no one to save you. You shall die with a name as hated as mine. Margareta Celsing’s obituary is that of a witch. Yours shall be that of a spendthrift and an oppressor of the poor.”
She sank back on the pillows, and all was still. Through the silence rang a muffled blow, now one and then another. The sledge-hammer had begun its far-echoing work.
“Listen,” said Gösta Berling, “so sounds Margareta Celsing’s obituary! That is not a prank of drunken pensioners; that is the song of the victory of labor, raised in honor of a good, old worker. Do you hear what the hammer says? ‘Thanks,’ it says; ‘thanks for good work; thanks for bread, which you have given the poor; thanks for roads, which you have opened; thanks for districts, which you have cultivated! Thanks for pleasure, with which you have filled your halls!’—‘Thanks,’ it says, ‘and sleep in peace! Your work shall live and continue. Your house shall always be a home for happy labor.’—‘Thanks,’ it says, ‘and do not judge us who have sinned! You who are now starting on the journey to the regions of peace, think gentle thoughts of us who still live.’”
Gösta ceased, but the sledge-hammer went on speaking. All the voices which had ever spoken kindly to the major’s wife were mingled with the ring of the hammer. Gradually her features relaxed, as if the shadow of death had fallen over her.
Anna Lisa came in and announced that the gentlemen from Hogfors had come. The major’s wife let them go. She would not make any will.
“Oh, Gösta Berling, man of many deeds,” she said, “so you have conquered once more. Bend down and let me bless you!”
The fever returned with redoubled strength. The death-rattle began. The body toiled through dreary suffering; but the spirit soon knew nothing of it. It began to gaze into the heaven which is opened for the dying.
So an hour passed, and the short death-struggle was over. She lay there so peaceful and beautiful that those about her were deeply moved.
“My dear old mistress,” said Gösta, “so have I seen you once before. Now has Margareta Celsing come back to life. Now she will never again yield to the major’s wife at Ekeby.”
When the pensioners came in from the forge, they were met by the news of Margareta Celsing’s death.
“Did she hear the hammer?” they asked.
She had done so, and they could be satisfied.
They heard, too, that she had meant to give Ekeby to them; but that the will had never been drawn. That they considered a great honor, and rejoiced over it as long as they lived. But no one ever heard them lament over the riches they had lost.
It is also said that on that Christmas night Gösta Berling stood by his young wife’s side and made his last speech to the pensioners. He was grieved at their fate when they now must all leave Ekeby. The ailments of old age awaited them. The old and worn-out find a cold welcome.
And so he spoke to them. Once more he called them old gods and knights who had risen up to bring pleasure into the land of iron. But he lamented that the pleasure garden where the butterfly-winged pleasure roves is filled with destructive caterpillars, and that its fruits are withered.
Well he knew that pleasure was a good to the children of the earth, and it must exist. But, like a heavy riddle, the question always lay upon the world, how a man could be both gay and good. The easiest thing and yet the hardest, he called it. Hitherto they had not been able to solve the problem. Now he wanted to believe that they had learned it, that they had all learned it during that year of joy and sorrow, of happiness and despair.
You dear old people! In the old days you gave me precious gifts. But what have I given you?
Perhaps it may gladden you that your names sound again in connection with the dear old places? May all the brightness which belonged to your life fall again over the tracts where you have lived! Borg still stands; Björne still stands; Ekeby still lies by lake Löfven, surrounded by falls and lake, by park and smiling meadows; and when one stands on the broad terraces, legends swarm about one like the bees of summer.
But, speaking of bees, let me tell one more old story. The little Ruster, who went as a drummer at the head of the Swedish army, when in 1813 it marched into Germany, could never weary of telling stories of that wonderful land in the south. The people there were as tall as church towers, the swallows were as big as eagles, the bees as geese.
“Well, but the bee-hives?”
“The bee-hives were like our ordinary bee-hives.”
“How did the bees get in?”
“Well, that they had to look out for,” said the little Ruster.
Dear reader, must I say the same? The giant bees of fancy have now swarmed about us for a year and a day; but how they are going to come into the bee-hive of fact, that they really must find out for themselves.
THE END