War-horse! war-horse! Old friend, who now stand tethered in the pasture, do you remember your youth?
Do you remember the day of the battle? You sprang forward, as if you had been borne on wings, your mane fluttered about you like waving flames, on your black haunches shone drops of blood and frothy foam. In harness of gold you bounded forward; the ground thundered under you. You trembled with joy. Ah, how beautiful you were!
It is the gray hour of twilight in the pensioners’ wing. In the big room the pensioners’ red-painted chests stand against the walls, and their holiday clothes hang on hooks in the corner. The firelight plays on the whitewashed walls and on the yellow-striped curtains which conceal the beds. The pensioners’ wing is not a kingly dwelling,—no seraglio with cushioned divans and soft pillows.
But there Lilliecrona’s violin is heard. He is playing the cachucha in the dusk of the evening. And he plays it over and over again.
Cut the strings, break his bow! Why does he play that cursed dance? Why does he play it, when Örneclou, the ensign, is lying sick with the pains of gout, so severe that he cannot move in his bed? No; snatch the violin away and throw it against the wall if he will not stop.
La cachucha, is it for us, master? Shall it be danced over the shaking floor of the pensioners’ wing, between the narrow walls, black with smoke and greasy with dirt, under that low ceiling? Woe to you, to play so.
La cachucha, is it for us,—for us pensioners? Without the snow-storm howls. Do you think to teach the snow-flakes to dance in time? Are you playing for the light-footed children of the storm?
Maiden forms, which tremble with the throbbing of hot blood, small sooty hands, which have thrown aside the pot to seize the castanets, bare feet under tucked-up skirts, courts paved with marble slabs, crouching gypsies with bagpipe and tambourine, Moorish arcades, moonlight, and black eyes,—have you these, master? If not, let the violin rest.
The pensioners are drying their wet clothes by the fire. Shall they swing in high boots with iron-shod heels and inch-thick soles? Through snow yards deep they have waded the whole day to reach the bear’s lair. Do you think they will dance in wet, reeking homespun clothes, with shaggy bruin as a partner?
An evening sky glittering with stars, red roses in dark hair, troublous tenderness in the air, untutored grace in their movements, love rising from the ground, raining from the sky, floating in the air,—have you all that, master? If not, why do you force us to long for such things?
Most cruel of men, are you summoning the tethered war-horse to the combat? Rutger von Örneclou is lying in his bed, a prisoner to the gout. Spare him the pain of tender memories, master! He too has worn sombrero and bright-colored hair-net; he too has owned velvet jacket and belted poniard. Spare old Örneclou, master!
But Lilliecrona plays the cachucha, always the cachucha, and Örneclou is tortured like the lover when he sees the swallow fly away to his beloved’s distant dwelling, like the hart when he is driven by the hurrying chase past the cooling spring.
Lilliecrona takes the violin for a second from his chin.
“Ensign, do you remember Rosalie von Berger?”
Örneclou swears a solemn oath.
“She was light as a candle-flame. She sparkled and danced like the diamond in the end of the fiddle-bow. You must remember her in the theatre at Karlstad. We saw her when we were young; do you remember?”
And the ensign remembered. She was small and ardent. She was like a sparkling flame. She could dance la cachucha. She taught all the young men in Karlstad to dance cachucha and to play the castanets. At the governor’s ball a pas de deux was danced by the ensign and Mlle. von Berger, dressed as Spaniards.
And he had danced as one dances under fig-trees and magnolias, like a Spaniard,—a real Spaniard.
No one in the whole of Värmland could dance cachucha like him. No one could dance it so that it was worth speaking of it, but he.
What a cavalier Värmland lost when the gout stiffened his legs and great lumps grew out on his joints! What a cavalier he had been, so slender, so handsome, so courtly! “The handsome Örneclou” he was called by those young girls, who were ready to come to blows over a dance with him.
Then Lilliecrona begins the cachucha again, always the cachucha, and Örneclou is taken back to old times.
There he stands, and there she stands, Rosalie von Berger. Just now they were alone in the dressing-room. She was a Spaniard, he too. He was allowed to kiss her, but carefully, for she was afraid of his blackened moustache. Now they dance. Ah, as one dances under fig-trees and magnolias! She draws away, he follows; he is bold, she proud; he wounded, she conciliatory. When he at the end falls on his knees and receives her in his outstretched arms, a sigh goes through the ball-room, a sigh of rapture.
He had been like a Spaniard, a real Spaniard.
Just at that stroke had he bent so, stretched his arms so, and put out his foot to glide forward. What grace! He might have been hewn in marble.
He does not know how it happened, but he has got his foot over the edge of the bed, he stands upright, he bends, he raises his arms, snaps his fingers, and wishes to glide forward over the floor in the same way as long ago, when he wore so tight patent leather shoes the stocking feet had to be cut away.
“Bravo, Örneclou! Bravo, Lilliecrona, play life into him!”
His foot gives way; he cannot rise on his toe. He kicks a couple of times with one leg; he can do no more, he falls back on the bed.
Handsome señor, you have grown old.
Perhaps the señorita has too.
It is only under the plane-trees of Granada that the cachucha is danced by eternally young gitanas. Eternally young, because, like the roses, each spring brings new ones.
So now the time has come to cut the strings.
No, play on, Lilliecrona, play the cachucha, always the cachucha!
Teach us that, although we have got slow bodies and stiff joints, in our feelings we are always the same, always Spaniards.
War-horse, war-horse!
Say that you love the trumpet-blast, which decoys you into a gallop, even if you also cut your foot to the bone on the steel-link of the tether.
Ah, women of the olden times!
To speak of you is to speak of the kingdom of heaven; you were all beauties, ever bright, ever young, ever lovely and gentle as a mother’s eyes when she looks down on her child. Soft as young squirrels you hung on your husband’s neck. Your voice never trembled with anger, no frowns ruffled your brow, your white hand was never harsh and hard. You, sweet saints, like adored images stood in the temple of home. Incense and prayers were offered you, through you love worked its wonders, and round your temples poetry wreathed its gold, gleaming glory.
Ah, women of the past, this is the story of how one of you gave Gösta Berling her love.
Two weeks after the ball at Borg there was one at Ekeby.
What a feast it was! Old men and women become young again, smile and rejoice, only in speaking of it.
The pensioners were masters at Ekeby at that time. The major’s wife went about the country with beggar’s wallet and crutch, and the major lived at Sjö. He could not even be present at the ball, for at Sjö small-pox had broken out, and he was afraid to spread the infection.
What pleasures those twelve hours contained, from the pop of the first cork at the dinner-table to the last wail of the violins, long after midnight.
They have sunk into the background of time, those crowned hours, made magical by the most fiery wines, by the most delicate food, by the most inspiring music, by the wittiest of theatricals, by the most beautiful tableaux. They have sunk away, dizzy with the dizziest dance. Where are to be found such polished floors, such courtly knights, such lovely women?
Ah, women of the olden days, you knew well how to adorn a ball. Streams of fire, of genius, and youthful vigor thrilled each and all who approached you. It was worth wasting one’s gold on wax-candles to light up your loveliness, on wine to instil gayety into your hearts; it was worth dancing soles to dust and rubbing stiff arms which had drawn the fiddle-bow, for your sakes.
Ah, women of the olden days, it was you who owned the key to the door of Paradise.
The halls of Ekeby are crowded with the loveliest of your lovely throng. There is the young Countess Dohna, sparklingly gay and eager for game and dance, as befits her twenty years; there are the lovely daughters of the judge of Munkerud, and the lively young ladies from Berga; there is Anna Stjärnhök, a thousand times more beautiful than ever before, with that gentle dreaminess which had come over her ever since the night she had been hunted by wolves; there are many more, who are not yet forgotten but soon will be; and there is the beautiful Marianne Sinclair.
She, the famed queen of beauty, who had shone at royal courts, who had travelled the land over and received homage everywhere, she who lighted the spark of love wherever she showed herself,—she had deigned to come to the pensioners’ ball.
At that time Värmland’s glory was at its height, borne up by many proud names. Much had the beautiful land’s happy children to be proud of, but when they named their glories they never neglected to speak of Marianne Sinclair.
The tales of her conquests filled the land.
They spoke of the coronets which had floated over her head, of the millions which had been laid at her feet, of the warriors’ swords and poets’ wreaths whose splendor had tempted her.
And she possessed not only beauty. She was witty and learned. The cleverest men of the day were glad to talk with her. She was not an author herself, but many of her ideas, which she had put into the souls of her poet-friends, lived again in song.
In Värmland, in the land of the bear, she seldom stayed. Her life was spent in perpetual journeyings. Her father, the rich Melchior Sinclair, remained at home at Björne and let Marianne go to her noble friends in the large towns or at the great country-seats. He had his pleasure in telling of all the money she wasted, and both the old people lived happy in the splendor of Marianne’s glowing existence.
Her life was a life of pleasures and homage. The air about her was love—love her light and lamp, love her daily bread.
She, too, had often loved, often, often; but never had that fire lasted long enough to forge the chains which bind for life.
“I wait for him, the irresistible,” she used to say of love. “Hitherto he has not climbed over several ramparts, nor swum through several trenches. He has come tamely, without wildness in his eye and madness in his heart. I wait for the conqueror, who shall take me out of myself. I will feel love so strong within me that I must tremble before him; now I know only the love at which my good sense laughs.”
Her presence gave fire to talk, life to the wine. Her glowing spirit set the fiddle-bows going, and the dance floated in sweeter giddiness than before over the floor which she had touched with her feet. She was radiant in the tableaux, she gave genius to the comedy, her lovely lips—
Ah, hush, it was not her fault, she never meant to do it! It was the balcony, it was the moonlight, the lace veil, the knightly dress, the song, which were to blame. The poor young creatures were innocent.
All that which led to so much unhappiness was with the best intentions. Master Julius, who could do anything, had arranged a tableau especially that Marianne might shine in full glory.
In the theatre, which was set up in the great drawing-room at Ekeby, sat the hundred guests and looked at the picture, Spain’s yellow moon wandering through a dark night sky. A Don Juan came stealing along Sevilla’s street and stopped under an ivy-clad balcony. He was disguised as a monk, but one could see an embroidered cuff under the sleeve, and a gleaming sword-point under the mantle’s hem.
He raised his voice in song:—
As he finished, Marianne came out on the balcony, dressed in black velvet and lace veil. She leaned over the balustrade and sang slowly and ironically:
Then suddenly, warmly and eagerly:—
At these words the monk cast off his disguise, and Gösta Berling stood under the balcony in a knight’s dress of silk and gold. He heeded not the beauty’s warning, but climbed up one of the balcony supports, swung himself over the balustrade, and, just as Master Julius had arranged it, fell on his knees at the lovely Marianne’s feet.
Graciously she smiled on him, and gave him her hand to kiss, and while the two young people gazed at one another, absorbed in their love, the curtain fell.
And before her knelt Gösta Berling, with a face tender as a poet’s and bold as a soldier’s, with deep eyes, which glowed with wit and genius, which implored and constrained. Supple and full of strength was he, fiery and captivating.
While the curtain went up and down, the two stood always in the same position. Gösta’s eyes held the lovely Marianne fast; they implored; they constrained.
Then the applause ceased; the curtain hung quiet; no one saw them.
Then the beautiful Marianne bent down and kissed Gösta Berling. She did not know why,—she had to. He stretched up his arms about her head and held her fast. She kissed him again and again.
But it was the balcony, it was the moonlight, it was the lace veil, the knightly dress, the song, the applause, which were to blame. They had not wished it. She had not thrust aside the crowns which had hovered over her head, and spurned the millions which lay at her feet, out of love for Gösta Berling; nor had he already forgotten Anna Stjärnhök. No; they were blameless; neither of them had wished it.
It was the gentle Löwenborg,—he with the fear in his eye and the smile on his lips,—who that day was curtain-raiser. Distracted by the memory of many sorrows, he noticed little of the things of this world, and had never learned to look after them rightly. When he now saw that Gösta and Marianne had taken a new position, he thought that it also belonged to the tableau, and so he began to drag on the curtain string.
The two on the balcony observed nothing until a thunder of applause greeted them.
Marianne started back and wished to flee, but Gösta held her fast, whispering:—
“Stand still; they think it belongs to the tableau.”
He felt how her body shook with shuddering, and how the fire of her kisses died out on her lips.
“Do not be afraid,” he whispered; “lovely lips have a right to kiss.”
They had to stand while the curtain went up and went down, and each time the hundreds of eyes saw them, hundreds of hands thundered out a stormy applause.
For it was beautiful to see two fair young people represent love’s happiness. No one could think that those kisses were anything but stage delusion. No one guessed that the señora shook with embarrassment and the knight with uneasiness. No one could think that it did not all belong to the tableau.
At last Marianne and Gösta stood behind the scenes.
She pushed her hair back from her forehead.
“I don’t understand myself,” she said.
“Fie! for shame, Miss Marianne,” said he, grimacing, and stretched out his hands. “To kiss Gösta Berling; shame on you!”
Marianne had to laugh.
“Everyone knows that Gösta Berling is irresistible. My fault is no greater than others’.”
And they agreed to put a good face on it, so that no one should suspect the truth.
“Can I be sure that the truth will never come out, Herr Gösta?” she asked, before they went out among the guests.
“That you can. Gentlemen can hold their tongues. I promise you that.”
She dropped her eyes. A strange smile curved her lips.
“If the truth should come out, what would people think of me, Herr Gösta?”
“They would not think anything. They would know that it meant nothing. They would think that we entered into our parts and were going on with the play.”
Yet another question, with lowered lids and with the same forced smile,—
“But you yourself? What do you think about it, Herr Gösta?”
“I think that you are in love with me,” he jested.
“Think no such thing,” she smiled, “for then I must run you through with my stiletto to show you that you are wrong.”
“Women’s kisses are precious,” said Gösta. “Does it cost one’s life to be kissed by Marianne Sinclair?”
A glance flashed on him from Marianne’s eyes, so sharp that it felt like a blow.
“I could wish to see you dead, Gösta Berling! dead! dead!”
These words revived the old longing in the poet’s blood.
“Ah,” he said, “would that those words were more than words!—that they were arrows which came whistling from some dark ambush; that they were daggers or poison, and had the power to destroy this wretched body and set my soul free!”
She was calm and smiling now.
“Childishness!” she said, and took his arm to join the guests.
They kept their costumes, and their triumphs were renewed when they showed themselves in front of the scenes. Every one complimented them. No one suspected anything.
The ball began again, but Gösta escaped from the ball-room.
His heart ached from Marianne’s glance, as if it had been wounded by sharp steel. He understood too well the meaning of her words.
It was a disgrace to love him; it was a disgrace to be loved by him, a shame worse than death.
He would never dance again. He wished never to see them again, those lovely women.
He knew it too well. Those beautiful eyes, those red cheeks burned not for him. Not for him floated those light feet, nor rung that low laugh.
Yes, dance with him, flirt with him, that they could do, but not one of them would be his in earnest.
The poet went into the smoking-room to the old men, and sat down by one of the card-tables. He happened to throw himself down by the same table where the powerful master of Björne sat and played “baccarat” holding the bank with a great pile of silver in front of him.
The play was already high. Gösta gave it an even greater impulse. Green bank-notes appeared, and always the pile of money grew in front of the powerful Melchior Sinclair.
But before Gösta also gathered both coins and notes, and soon he was the only one who held out in the struggle against the great land-owner at Björne. Soon the great pile of money changed over from Melchior Sinclair to Gösta Berling.
“Gösta, my boy,” cried the land-owner, laughing, when he had played away everything he had in his pocket-book and purse, “what shall we do now? I am bankrupt, and I never play with borrowed money. I promised my wife that.”
He discovered a way. He played away his watch and his beaver coat, and was just going to stake his horse and sledge when Sintram checked him.
“Stake something to win on,” he advised him. “Stake something to turn the luck.”
“What the devil have I got?”
“Play your reddest heart’s blood, brother Melchior. Stake your daughter!”
“You would never venture that,” said Gösta, laughing. “That prize I would never get under my roof.”
Melchior could not help laughing also. He could not endure that Marianne’s name should be mentioned at the card-tables, but this was so insanely ridiculous that he could not be angry. To play away Marianne to Gösta, yes, that he certainly could venture.
“That is to say,” he explained, “that if you can win her consent, Gösta, I will stake my blessing to the marriage on this card.”
Gösta staked all his winnings and the play began. He won, and Sinclair stopped playing. He could not fight against such bad luck; he saw that.
The night slipped by; it was past midnight. The lovely women’s cheeks began to grow pale; curls hung straight, ruffles were crumpled. The old ladies rose up from the sofa-corners and said that as they had been there twelve hours, it was about time for them to be thinking of home.
And the beautiful ball should be over, but then Lilliecrona himself seized the fiddle and struck up the last polka. The horses stood at the door; the old ladies were dressed in their cloaks and shawls; the old men wound their plaids about them and buckled their galoshes.
But the young people could not tear themselves from the dance. They danced in their out-door wraps, and a mad dance it was. As soon as a girl stopped dancing with one partner, another came and dragged her away with him.
And even the sorrowful Gösta was dragged into the whirl. He hoped to dance away grief and humiliation; he wished to have the love of life in his blood again; he longed to be gay, he as well as the others. And he danced till the walls went round, and he no longer knew what he was doing.
Who was it he had got hold of in the crowd? She was light and supple, and he felt that streams of fire went from one to the other. Ah, Marianne!
While Gösta danced with Marianne, Sintram sat in his sledge before the door, and beside him stood Melchior Sinclair.
The great land-owner was impatient at being forced to wait for Marianne. He stamped in the snow with his great snow-boots and beat with his arms, for it was bitter cold.
“Perhaps you ought not to have played Marianne away to Gösta,” said Sintram.
“What do you mean?”
Sintram arranged his reins and lifted his whip, before he answered:—
“It did not belong to the tableau, that kissing.”
The powerful land-owner raised his arm for a death-blow, but Sintram was already gone. He drove away, whipping the horse to a wild gallop without daring to look back, for Melchior Sinclair had a heavy hand and short patience.
He went now into the dancing-room to look for his daughter, and saw how Gösta and Marianne were dancing.
Wild and giddy was that last polka.
Some of the couples were pale, others glowing red, dust lay like smoke over the hall, the wax-candles gleamed, burned down to the sockets, and in the midst of all the ghostly ruin, they flew on, Gösta and Marianne, royal in their tireless strength, no blemish on their beauty, happy in the glorious motion.
Melchior Sinclair watched them for a while; but then he went and left Marianne to dance. He slammed the door, tramped down the stairs, and placed himself in the sledge, where his wife already waited, and drove home.
When Marianne stopped dancing and asked after her parents, they were gone.
When she was certain of this she showed no surprise. She dressed herself quietly and went out in the yard. The ladies in the dressing-room thought that she drove in her own sledge.
She hurried in her thin satin shoes along the road without telling any one of her distress.
In the darkness no one recognized her, as she went by the edge of the road; no one could think that this late wanderer, who was driven up into the high drifts by the passing sledges, was the beautiful Marianne.
When she could go in the middle of the road she began to run. She ran as long as she was able, then walked for a while, then ran again. A hideous, torturing fear drove her on.
From Ekeby to Björne it cannot be farther than at most two miles. Marianne was soon at home, but she thought almost that she had come the wrong way. When she reached the house all the doors were closed, all the lights out; she wondered if her parents had not come home.
She went forward and twice knocked loudly on the front door. She seized the door-handle and shook it till the noise resounded through the whole house. No one came and opened, but when she let the iron go, which she had grasped with her bare hands, the fast-frozen skin was torn from them.
Melchior Sinclair had driven home in order to shut his door on his only child.
He was drunk with much drinking, wild with rage. He hated his daughter, because she liked Gösta Berling. He had shut the servants into the kitchen, and his wife in the bedroom. With solemn oaths he told them that the one who let Marianne in, he would beat to a jelly. And they knew that he would keep his word.
No one had ever seen him so angry. Such a grief had never come to him before. Had his daughter come into his presence, he would perhaps have killed her.
Golden ornaments, silken dresses had he given her, wit and learning had been instilled in her. She had been his pride, his glory. He had been as proud of her as if she had worn a crown. Oh, his queen, his goddess, his honored, beautiful, proud Marianne! Had he ever denied her anything? Had he not always considered himself too common to be her father? Oh, Marianne, Marianne!
Ought he not to hate her, when she is in love with Gösta Berling and kisses him? Should he not cast her out, shut his door against her, when she will disgrace her greatness by loving such a man? Let her stay at Ekeby, let her run to the neighbors for shelter, let her sleep in the snow-drifts; it’s all the same, she has already been dragged in the dirt, the lovely Marianne. The bloom is gone. The lustre of her life is gone.
He lies there in his bed, and hears how she beats on the door. What does that matter to him? He is asleep. Outside stands one who will marry a dismissed priest; he has no home for such a one. If he had loved her less, if he had been less proud of her, he could have let her come in.
Yes, his blessing he could not refuse them. He had played it away. But to open the door for her, that he would not do. Ah, Marianne!
The beautiful young woman still stood outside the door of her home. One minute she shook the lock in powerless rage, the next she fell on her knees, clasped her mangled hands, and begged for forgiveness.
But no one heard her, no one answered, no one opened to her.
Oh! was it not terrible? I am filled with horror as I tell of it. She came from a ball whose queen she had been! She had been proud, rich, happy; and in one minute she was cast into such an endless misery. Shut out from her home, exposed to the cold,—not scorned, not beaten, not cursed, but shut out with cold, immovable lovelessness.
Think of the cold, starlit night, which spread its arch above her, the great wide night with the empty, desolate snow-fields, with the silent woods. Everything slept, everything was sunk in painless sleep; only one living point in all that sleeping whiteness. All sorrow and pain and horror, which otherwise had been spread over the world, crept forward towards that one lonely point. O God, to suffer alone in the midst of this sleeping, ice-bound world!
For the first time in her life she met with unmercifulness and hardness. Her mother would not take the trouble to leave her bed to save her. The old servants, who had guided her first steps, heard her and did not move a finger for her sake. For what crime was she punished?
Where should she find compassion, if not at this door? If she had been a murderess, she would still have knocked on it, knowing that they would forgive her. If she had sunk to being the most miserable of creatures, come wasted and in rags, she would still confidently have gone up to that door, and expected a loving welcome. That door was the entrance to her home; behind it she could only meet with love.
Had not her father tried her enough? Would they not soon open to her?
“Father, father!” she called. “Let me come in! I freeze, I tremble. It is terrible out here!”
“Mother, mother! You who have gone so many steps to serve me, you who have watched so many nights over me, why do you sleep now? Mother, mother, wake just this one night, and I will never give you pain again!”
She calls, and falls into breathless silence to listen for an answer. But no one heard her, no one obeyed her, no one answered.
Then she wrings her hands in despair, but there are no tears in her eyes.
The long, dark house with its closed doors and darkened windows lay awful and motionless in the night. What would become of her, who was homeless? Branded and dishonored was she, as long as she encumbered the earth. And her father himself pressed the red-hot iron deeper into her shoulders.
“Father,” she called once more, “what will become of me? People will believe the worst of me.”
She wept and suffered; her body was stiff with cold.
Alas, that such misery can reach one, who but lately stood so high! It is so easy to be plunged into the deepest suffering! Should we not fear life? Who sails in a safe craft? Round about us swell sorrows like a heaving ocean; see how the hungry waves lick the ship’s sides, see how they rage up over her. Ah, no safe anchorage, no solid ground, no steady ship, as far as the eye can see; only an unknown sky over an ocean of sorrow!
But hush! At last, at last! A light step comes through the hall.
“Is it mother?” asked Marianne.
“Yes, my child.”
“May I come in now?”
“Father will not let you come in.”
“I have run in the snow-drifts in my thin shoes all the way from Ekeby. I have stood here an hour and knocked and called. I am freezing to death out here. Why did you drive away and leave me?”
“My child, my child, why did you kiss Gösta Berling?”
“But father must have seen that I do not like him for that. It was in fun. Does he think that I will marry Gösta?”
“Go to the gardener’s house, Marianne, and beg that you pass the night there. Your father is drunk. He will not listen to reason. He has kept me a prisoner up there. I crept out when I thought he was asleep. He will kill me, if you come in.”
“Mother, mother, shall I go to strangers when I have a home? Are you as hard as father? How can you allow me to be shut out? I will lay myself in the drift out here, if you do not let me in.”
Then Marianne’s mother laid her hand on the lock to open the door, but at the same moment a heavy step was heard on the stair, and a harsh voice called her.
Marianne listened: her mother hurried away, the harsh voice cursed her and then—
Marianne heard something terrible,—she could hear every sound in the silent house.
She heard the thud of a blow, a blow with a stick or a box on the ear; then she heard a faint noise, and then again a blow.
He struck her mother, the terrible brutal Melchior Sinclair struck his wife!
And in pale horror Marianne threw herself down on the threshold and writhed in anguish. Now she wept, and her tears froze to ice on the threshold of her home.
Grace! pity! Open, open, that she might bend her own back under the blows! Oh, that he could strike her mother, strike her, because she did not wish to see her daughter the next day lying dead in the snow-drift, because she had wished to comfort her child!
Great humiliation had come to Marianne that night. She had fancied herself a queen, and she lay there little better than a whipped slave.
But she rose up in cold rage. Once more she struck the door with her bloody hand and called:—
“Hear what I say to you,—you, who beat my mother. You shall weep for this, Melchior Sinclair, weep!”
Then she went and laid herself to rest in the snow-drift. She threw off her cloak and lay in her black velvet dress, easily distinguishable against the white snow. She lay and thought how her father would come out the next day on his early morning tour of inspection and find her there. She only hoped that he himself might find her.
O Death, pale friend, is it as true as it is consoling, that I never can escape meeting you? Even to me, the lowliest of earth’s workers, will you come, to loosen the torn leather shoes from my feet, to take the spade and the barrow from my hand, to take the working-dress from my body. With gentle force you lay me out on a lace-trimmed bed; you adorn me with draped linen sheets. My feet need no more shoes, my hands are clad in snow-white gloves, which no more work shall soil. Consecrated by thee to the sweetness of rest, I shall sleep a sleep of a thousand years. Oh deliverer! The lowliest of earth’s laborers am I, and I dream with a thrill of pleasure of the hour when I shall be received into your kingdom.
Pale friend, on me you can easily try your strength, but I tell you that the fight was harder against those women of the olden days. Life’s strength was mighty in their slender bodies, no cold could cool their hot blood. You had laid Marianne on your bed, O Death, and you sat by her side, as an old nurse sits by the cradle to lull the child to sleep. You faithful old nurse, who know what is good for the children of men, how angry you must be when playmates come, who with noise and romping wake your sleeping child. How vexed you must have been when the pensioners lifted the lovely Marianne out of the bed, when a man laid her against his breast, and warm tears fell from his eyes on to her face.
At Ekeby all lights were out, and all the guests had gone. The pensioners stood alone in the bachelors’ wing, about the last half-emptied punch bowl.
Then Gösta rung on the edge of the bowl and made a speech for you, women of the olden days. To speak of you, he said, was to speak of the kingdom of heaven: you were all beauties, ever bright, ever young, ever lovely and gentle as a mother’s eyes when she looks down on her child. Soft as young squirrels you hung on your husband’s neck, your voice never trembled with anger, no frowns ruffled your brow, your white hands were never harsh and hard. Sweet saints, you were adored images in the temple of home. Men lay at your feet, offering you incense and prayers. Through you love worked its wonders, and round your temples poetry wreathed its gold, gleaming glory.
And the pensioners sprang up, wild with wine, wild with his words, with their blood raging. Old Eberhard and the lazy Christopher drew back from the sport. In the wildest haste the pensioners harnessed horses to sledges and hurried out in the cold night to pay homage to those who never could be honored enough, to sing a serenade to each and all of them who possessed the rosy cheeks and bright eyes which had just lighted up Ekeby halls.
But the pensioners did not go far on their happy way, for when they came to Björne, they found Marianne lying in the snow-drift, just by the door of her home.
They trembled and raged to see her there. It was like finding a worshipped saint lying mangled and stripped outside the church-door.
Gösta shook his clenched hand at the dark house. “You children of hate,” he cried, “you hail-storms, you ravagers of God’s pleasure-house!”
Beerencreutz lighted his horn lantern and let it shine down on the livid face. Then the pensioners saw Marianne’s mangled hands, and the tears which had frozen to ice on her eyelashes, and they wailed like women, for she was not merely a saintly image, but a beautiful woman, who had been a joy to their old hearts.
Gösta Berling threw himself on his knees beside her.
“She is lying here, my bride,” he said. “She gave me the betrothal kiss a few hours ago, and her father has promised me his blessing. She lies and waits for me to come and share her white bed.”
And Gösta lifted up the lifeless form in his strong arms.
“Home to Ekeby with her!” he cried. “Now she is mine. In the snow-drift I have found her; no one shall take her from me. We will not wake them in there. What has she to do behind those doors, against which she has beaten her hand into blood?”
He was allowed to do as he wished. He laid Marianne in the foremost sledge and sat down at her side. Beerencreutz sat behind and took the reins.
“Take snow and rub her, Gösta!” he commanded.
The cold had paralyzed her limbs, nothing more. The wildly agitated heart still beat. She had not even lost consciousness; she knew all about the pensioners, and how they had found her, but she could not move. So she lay stiff and stark in the sledge, while Gösta Berling rubbed her with snow and alternately wept and kissed, and she felt an infinite longing to be able only to lift a hand, that she might give a caress in return.
She remembered everything. She lay there stiff and motionless and thought more clearly than ever before. Was she in love with Gösta Berling? Yes, she was. Was it merely a whim of the moment? No, it had been for many years. She compared herself with him and the other people in Värmland. They were all just like children. They followed whatever impulse came to them. They only lived the outer life, had never looked deep into their souls. But she had become what one grows to be by living in the world; she could never really lose herself in anything. If she loved, yes, whatever she did, one half of her stood and looked on with a cold scorn. She had longed for a passion which should carry her away in wild heedlessness, and now it had come. When she kissed Gösta Berling on the balcony, for the first time she had forgotten herself.
And now the passion came over her again, her heart throbbed so that she heard it beat. Should she not soon be mistress of her limbs? She felt a wild joy that she had been thrust out from her home. Now she could be Gösta’s without hesitation. How stupid she had been, to have subdued her love so many years. Ah, it is so sweet to yield to love. But shall she never, never be free from these icy chains? She has been ice within and fire on the surface; now it is the opposite, a soul of fire in a body of ice.
Then Gösta feels how two arms gently are raised about his neck in a weak, feeble pressure.
He could only just feel them, but Marianne thought that she gave expression to the suppressed passion in her by a suffocating embrace.
But when Beerencreutz saw it he let the horse go as it would along the familiar road. He raised his eyes and looked obstinately and unceasingly at the Pleiades.
If it should happen to you that you are sitting or lying and reading this at night, as I am writing it during the silent hours, then do not draw a sigh of relief here and think that the good pensioners were allowed to have an undisturbed sleep, after they had come back with Marianne and made her a good bed in the best guest-room beyond the big drawing-room.
They went to bed, and went to sleep, but it was not their lot to sleep in peace and quiet till noon, as you and I, dear reader, might have done, if we had been awake till four in the morning and our limbs ached with fatigue.
It must not be forgotten that the old major’s wife went about the country with beggar’s wallet and stick, and that it never was her way, when she had anything to do, to think of a poor tired sinner’s convenience. And now she would do it even less, as she had decided to drive the pensioners that very night from Ekeby.
Gone was the day when she sat in splendor and magnificence at Ekeby and sowed happiness over the earth, as God sows stars over the skies. And while she wandered homeless about the land, the authority and honor of the great estate was left in the pensioners’ hands to be guarded by them, as the wind guards ashes, as the spring sun guards the snow-drift.
It sometimes happened that the pensioners drove out, six or eight of them, in a long sledge drawn by four horses, with chiming bells and braided reins. If they met the major’s wife, as she went as a beggar, they did not turn away their heads.
Clenched fists were stretched against her. By a violent swing of the sledge, she was forced up into the drifts by the roadside, and Major Fuchs, the bear-killer, always took pains to spit three times to take away the evil effect of meeting the old woman.
They had no pity on her. She was as odious as a witch to them as she went along the road. If any mishap had befallen her, they would no more have grieved than he who shoots off his gun on Easter Eve, loaded with brass hooks, grieves that he has hit a witch flying by.
It was to secure their salvation that these unhappy pensioners persecuted the major’s wife. People have often been cruel and tortured one another with the greatest hardness, when they have trembled for their souls.
When the pensioners late at night reeled from the drinking-tables to the window to see if the night was calm and clear, they often noticed a dark shadow, which glided over the grass, and knew that the major’s wife had come to see her beloved home; then the bachelors’ wing rang with the pensioners’ scornful laughter, and gibes flew from the open windows down to her.
Verily, lovelessness and arrogance began to take possession of the penniless adventurers’ hearts. Sintram had planted hate. Their souls could not have been in greater danger if the major’s wife had remained at Ekeby. More die in flight than in battle.
The major’s wife cherished no great anger against the pensioners.
If she had had the power, she would have whipped them like naughty boys and then granted them her grace and favor again.
But now she feared for her beloved lands, which were in the pensioners’ hands to be guarded by them, as wolves guard the sheep, as crows guard the spring grain.
There are many who have suffered the same sorrow. She is not the only one who has seen ruin come to a beloved home and well-kept fields fall into decay. They have seen their childhood’s home look at them like a wounded animal. Many feel like culprits when they see the trees there wither away, and the paths covered with tufts of grass. They wish to throw themselves on their knees in those fields, which once boasted of rich harvests, and beg them not to blame them for the disgrace which befalls them. And they turn away from the poor old horses; they have not courage to meet their glance. And they dare not stand by the gate and see the cattle come home from pasture. There is no spot on earth so sad to visit as an old home in ruin.
When I think what that proud Ekeby must have suffered under the pensioners’ rule, I wish that the plan of the major’s wife had been fulfilled, and that Ekeby had been taken from them.
It was not her thought to take back her dominion again.
She had only one object,—to rid her home of these madmen, these locusts, these wild brigands, in whose path no grass grew.
While she went begging about the land and lived on alms, she continually thought of her mother; and the thought bit deep into her heart, that there could be no bettering for her till her mother lifted the curse from her shoulders.
No one had ever mentioned the old woman’s death, so she must be still living up there by the iron-works in the forest. Ninety years old, she still lived in unceasing labor, watching over her milk-pans in the summer, her charcoal-kilns in the winter, working till death, longing for the day when she would have completed her life’s duties.
And the major’s wife thought that her mother had lived so long in order to be able to lift the curse from her life. That mother could not die who had called down such misery on her child.
So the major’s wife wanted to go to the old woman, that they might both get rest. She wished to struggle up through the dark woods by the long river to the home of her childhood.
Till then she could not rest. There were many who offered her a warm home and all the comforts of a faithful friendship, but she would not stop anywhere. Grim and fierce, she went from house to house, for she was weighed down by the curse.
She was going to struggle up to her mother, but first she wanted to provide for her beloved home. She would not go and leave it in the hands of light-minded spendthrifts, of worthless drunkards, of good-for-nothing dispersers of God’s gifts.
Should she go to find on her return her inheritance gone to waste, her hammers silent, her horses starving, her servants scattered? Ah, no, once more she will rise in her might and drive out the pensioners.
She well understood that her husband saw with joy how her inheritance was squandered. But she knew him enough to understand, also, that if she drove away his devouring locusts, he would be too lazy to get new ones. Were the pensioners removed, then her old bailiff and overseer could carry on the work at Ekeby in the old grooves.
And so, many nights her dark shadow had glided along the black lanes. She had stolen in and out of the cottagers’ houses, she had whispered with the miller and the mill-hands in the lower floor of the great mill, she had conferred with the smith in the dark coal-house.
And they had all sworn to help her. The honor of the great estate should no longer be left in the hands of careless pensioners, to be guarded as the wind guards the ashes, as the wolf guards the flock of sheep.
And this night, when the merry gentlemen had danced, played, and drunk until they had sunk down on their beds in a dead sleep, this very night they must go. She has let them have their good time. She has sat in the smithy and awaited the end of the ball. She has waited still longer, until the pensioners should return from their nocturnal drive. She has sat in silent waiting, until the message was brought her that the last light was out in the bachelors’ wing and that the great house slept. Then she rose and went out.
The major’s wife ordered that all the workmen on the estate should be gathered together up by the bachelors’ wing; she herself went to the house. There she went to the main building, knocked, and was let in. The young daughter of the minister at Broby, whom she had trained to be a capable maid-servant, was there to meet her.
“You are so welcome, madame,” said the maid, and kissed her hand.
“Put out the light!” said the major’s wife. “Do you think I cannot find my way without a candle?”
And then she began a wandering through the silent house. She went from the cellar to the attic, and said farewell. With stealthy step they went from room to room.
The major’s wife was filled with old memories. The maid neither sighed nor sobbed, but tear after tear flowed unchecked from her eyes, while she followed her mistress. The major’s wife had her open the linen-closet and silver-chest, and passed her hand over the fine damask table-cloths and the magnificent silver service. She felt caressingly the mighty pile of pillows in the store-closet. She touched all the implements, the looms, the spinning-wheels, and winding-bobbins. She thrust her hand into the spice-box, and felt the rows of tallow candles which hung from the rafters.
“The candles are dry,” she said. “They can be taken down and put away.”
She was down in the cellar, carefully lifted the beer-casks, and groped over the rows of wine bottles.
She went into the pantry and kitchen; she felt everything, examined everything. She stretched out her hand and said farewell to everything in her house.
Last she went through the rooms. She found the long broad sofas in their places; she laid her hand on the cool slabs of the marble tables, and on the mirrors with their frames of gilded dancing nymphs.
“This is a rich house,” she said. “A noble man was he who gave me all this for my own.”
In the great drawing-room, where the dance had lately whirled, the stiff-backed arm-chairs already stood in prim order against the walls.
She went over to the piano, and very gently struck a chord.
“Joy and gladness were no strangers here in my time, either,” she said.
She went also to the guest-room beyond. It was pitch-dark. The major’s wife groped with her hands and came against the maid’s face.
“Are you weeping?” she said, for she felt her hands were wet with tears.
Then the young girl burst out sobbing.
“Madame,” she cried, “madame, they will destroy everything. Why do you leave us and let the pensioners ruin your house?”
The major’s wife drew back the curtain and pointed out into the yard.
“Is it I who have taught you to weep and lament?” she cried. “Look out! the place is full of people; to-morrow there will not be one pensioner left at Ekeby.”
“Are you coming back?” asked the maid.
“My time has not yet come,” said the major’s wife. “The highway is my home, and the hay-stack my bed. But you shall watch over Ekeby for me, child, while I am away.”
And they went on. Neither of them knew or thought that Marianne slept in that very room. But she did not sleep. She was wide awake, heard everything, and understood it all. She had lain there in bed and sung a hymn to Love.
“You conqueror, who have taken me out of myself,” she said, “I lay in fathomless misery and you have changed it to a paradise. My hands stuck fast to the iron latch of the closed door and were torn and wounded; on the threshold of my home my tears lie frozen to pearls of ice. Anger froze my heart when I heard the blows on my mother’s back. In the cold snow-drift I hoped to sleep away my anger, but you came. O Love, child of fire, to one who was frozen by much cold you came. When I compare my sufferings to the glory won by them, they seem to me as nothing. I am free of all ties. I have no father nor mother, no home. People will believe all evil of me and turn away from me. It has pleased you to do this, O Love, for why should I stand higher than my beloved? Hand in hand we will wander out into the world. Gösta Berling’s bride is penniless; he found her in a snow-drift. We shall not live in lofty halls, but in a cottage at the edge of the wood. I shall help him to watch the kiln, I shall help him to set snares for partridges and hares, I shall cook his food and mend his clothes. Oh, my beloved, how I shall long and mourn, while I sit there alone by the edge of the wood and wait for you! But not for the days of riches, only for you; only you shall I look for and miss,—your footstep on the forest path, your joyous song, as you come with your axe on your shoulder. Oh, my beloved, my beloved! As long as my life lasts, I could sit and wait for you.”
So she lay and sang hymns to the heart-conquering god, and never once had closed her eyes in sleep when the major’s wife came in.
When she had gone, Marianne got up and dressed herself. Once more must she put on the black velvet dress and the thin satin slippers. She wrapped a blanket about her like a shawl, and hurried out once again into the terrible night.
Calm, starlit, and bitingly cold the February night lay over the earth; it was as if it would never end. And the darkness and the cold of that long night lasted on the earth long, long after the sun had risen, long after the snow-drifts through which Marianne wandered had been changed to water.
Marianne hurried away from Ekeby to get help. She could not let those men who had rescued her from the snow-drift and opened their hearts and home to her be hunted away. She went down to Sjö to Major Samzelius. It would be an hour before she could be back.
When the major’s wife had said farewell to her home, she went out into the yard, where her people were waiting, and the struggle began.
She placed them round about the high, narrow house, the upper story of which was the pensioners’ far-famed home,—the great room with the whitewashed walls, the red-painted chests, and the great folding-table, where playing-cards swim in the spilled brandy, where the broad beds are hidden by yellow striped curtains where the pensioners sleep.
And in the stable before full mangers the pensioners’ horses sleep and dream of the journeys of their youth. It is sweet to dream when they know that they never again shall leave the filled cribs, the warm stalls of Ekeby.
In a musty old carriage-house, where all the broken-down coaches and worn-out sledges were stored, was a wonderful collection of old vehicles.
Many are the pensioners who have lived and died at Ekeby. Their names are forgotten on the earth, and they have no longer a place in men’s hearts; but the major’s wife has kept the vehicles in which they came to Ekeby, she has collected them all in the old carriage-house.
And there they stand and sleep, and dust falls thick, thick over them.
But now in this February night the major’s wife has the door opened to the carriage-house, and with lanterns and torches she seeks out the vehicles which belong to Ekeby’s present pensioners,—Beerencreutz’s old gig, and Örneclou’s coach, painted with coat of arms, and the narrow cutter which had brought Cousin Christopher.
She does not care if the vehicles are for summer or winter, she only sees that each one gets his own.
And in the stable they are now awake, all the pensioners’ old horses, who had so lately been dreaming before full mangers. The dream shall be true.
You shall again try the steep hills, and the musty hay in the sheds of wayside inns, and drunken horse-dealers’ sharp whips, and the mad races on ice so slippery that you tremble only to walk on it.
The old beasts mouth and snort when the bit is put into their toothless jaws; the old vehicles creak and crack. Pitiful infirmity, which should have been allowed to sleep in peace till the end of the world, was now dragged out before all eyes; stiff joints, halting forelegs, spavin, and broken-wind are shown up.
The stable grooms succeed, however, in getting the horses harnessed; then they go and ask the major’s wife in what Gösta Berling shall be put, for, as every one knows, he came to Ekeby in the coal-sledge of the major’s wife.
“Put Don Juan in our best sledge,” she says, “and spread over it the bear-skin with the silver claws!” And when the grooms grumble, she continues: “There is not a horse in my stable which I would not give to be rid of that man, remember that!”
Well, now the vehicles are waked and the horses too, but the pensioners still sleep. It is now their time to be brought out in the winter night; but it is a more perilous deed to seize them in their beds than to lead out stiff-legged horses and shaky old carriages. They are bold, strong men, tried in a hundred adventures; they are ready to defend themselves till death; it is no easy thing to take them against their will from out their beds and down to the carriages which shall carry them away.
The major’s wife has them set fire to a hay-stack, which stands so near the house that the flames must shine in to where the pensioners are sleeping.
“The hay-stack is mine, all Ekeby is mine,” she says.
And when the stack is in flames, she cries: “Wake them now!”
But the pensioners sleep behind well-closed doors. The whole mass of people begin to cry out that terrible “Fire, fire!” but the pensioners sleep on.
The master-smith’s heavy sledge-hammer thunders against the door, but the pensioners sleep.
A hard snowball breaks the window-pane and flies into the room, rebounding against the bed-curtains, but the pensioners sleep.
They dream that a lovely girl throws a handkerchief at them, they dream of applause from behind fallen curtains, they dream of gay laughter and the deafening noise of midnight feasts.
The noise of cannon at their cars, an ocean of ice-cold water were needed to awake them.
They have bowed, danced, played, acted, and sung. They are heavy with wine, exhausted, and sleep a sleep as deep as death’s.
This blessed sleep almost saves them.
The people begin to think that this quiet conceals a danger. What if it means that the pensioners are already out to get help? What if it means that they stand awake, with finger on the trigger, on guard behind windows or door, ready to fall upon the first who enters?
These men are crafty, ready to fight; they must mean something by their silence. Who can think it of them, that they would let themselves be surprised in their lairs like bears?
The people bawl their “Fire, fire!” time after time, but nothing avails.
Then when all are trembling, the major’s wife herself takes an axe and bursts open the outer door.
Then she rushes alone up the stairs, throws open the door to the bachelors’ wing, and calls into the room: “Fire!”
Hers is a voice which finds a better echo in the pensioners’ ears than the people’s outcry. Accustomed to obey that voice, twelve men at the same moment spring from their beds, see the flames, throw on their clothes, and rush down the stairs out into the yard.
But at the door stands the great master-smith and two stout mill-hands, and deep disgrace then befalls the pensioners. Each, as he comes down, is seized, thrown to the ground, and his feet bound; thereupon he is carried without ceremony to the vehicle prepared for him.
None escaped; they were all caught. Beerencreutz, the grim colonel, was bound and carried away; also Christian Bergh, the mighty captain, and Eberhard, the philosopher.
Even the invincible, the terrible Gösta Berling was caught. The major’s wife had succeeded.
She was still greater than the pensioners.
They are pitiful to see, as they sit with bound limbs in the mouldy old vehicles. There are hanging heads and angry glances, and the yard rings with oaths and wild bursts of powerless rage.
The major’s wife goes from one to the other.
“You shall swear,” she says, “never to come back to Ekeby.”
“Begone, hag!”
“You shall swear,” she says, “otherwise I will throw you into the bachelors’ wing, bound as you are, and you shall burn up in there, for to-night I am going to burn down the bachelors’ wing.”
“You dare not do that.”
“Dare not! Is not Ekeby mine? Ah, you villain! Do you think I do not remember how you spit at me on the highway? Did I not long to set fire here just now and let you all burn up? Did you lift a finger to defend me when I was driven from my home? No, swear now!”
And she stands there so terrible, although she pretends perhaps to be more angry than she is, and so many men armed with axes stand about her, that they are obliged to swear, that no worse misfortune may happen.
The major’s wife has their clothes and boxes brought down and has their hand-fetters loosened; then the reins are laid in their hands.
But much time has been consumed, and Marianne has reached Sjö.
The major was no late-riser; he was dressed when she came. She met him in the yard; he had been out with his bears’ breakfast.
He did not say anything when he heard her story. He only went in to the bears, put muzzles on them, led them out, and hurried away to Ekeby.
Marianne followed him at a distance. She was dropping with fatigue, but then she saw a bright light of fire in the sky and was frightened nearly to death.
What a night it was! A man beats his wife and leaves his child to freeze to death outside his door. Did a woman now mean to burn up her enemies; did the old major mean to let loose the bears on his own people?
She conquered her weariness, hurried past the major, and ran madly up to Ekeby.
She had a good start. When she reached the yard, she made her way through the crowd. When she stood in the middle of the ring, face to face with the major’s wife, she cried as loud as she could,—
“The major, the major is coming with the bears!”
There was consternation among the people; all eyes turned to the major’s wife.
“You have gone for him,” she said to Marianne.
“Run!” cried the latter, more earnestly. “Away, for God’s sake! I do not know what the major is thinking of, but he has the bears with him.”
All stood still and looked at the major’s wife.
“I thank you for your help, children,” she said quietly to the people. “Everything which has happened to-night has been so arranged that no one of you can be prosecuted by the law or get into trouble for it. Go home now! I do not want to see any of my people murder or be murdered. Go now!”
Still the people waited.
The major’s wife turned to Marianne.
“I know that you are in love,” she said. “You act in love’s madness. May the day never come when you must look on powerless at the ruin of your home! May you always be mistress over your tongue and your hand when anger fills the soul!”
“Dear children, come now, come!” she continued, turning to the people. “May God protect Ekeby! I must go to my mother. Oh, Marianne, when you have got back your senses, when Ekeby is ravaged, and the land sighs in want, think on what you have done this night, and look after the people!”
Thereupon she went, followed by her people.
When the major reached the yard, he found there no living thing but Marianne and a long line of horses with sledges and carriages,—a long dismal line, where the horses were not worse than the vehicles, nor the vehicles worse than their owners. Ill-used in the struggle of life were they all.