Marianne went forward and freed them.
She noticed how they bit their lips and looked away. They were ashamed as never before. A great disgrace had befallen them.
“I was not better off when I lay on my knees on the steps at Björne a couple of hours ago,” said Marianne.
And so, dear reader, what happened afterwards that night—how the old vehicles were put into the carriage-house, the horses in the stable, and the pensioners in their house—I shall not try to relate. The dawn began to appear over the eastern hills, and the day came clear and calm. How much quieter the bright, sunny days are than the dark nights, under whose protecting wings beasts of prey hunt and owls hoot!
I will only say that when the pensioners had gone in again and had found a few drops in the last punch-bowl to fill their glasses, a sudden ecstasy came over them.
“A toast for the major’s wife!” they cried.
Ah, she is a matchless woman! What better could they wish for than to serve her, to worship her?
Was it not sad that the devil had got her in his power, and that all her endeavors were to send poor gentlemen’s souls to hell?
In the darkness of the forests dwell unholy creatures, whose jaws are armed with horrible, glittering teeth or sharp beaks, whose feet have pointed claws, which long to sink themselves in a blood-filled throat, and whose eyes shine with murderous desires.
There the wolves live, who come out at night and hunt the peasant’s sledge until the wife must take her little child, which sits upon her knee, and throw it to them, to save her own and her husband’s life.
There the lynx lives, which the people call “göpa,” for in the woods at least it is dangerous to call it by its right name. He who speaks of it during the day had best see that the doors and windows of the sheep-house are well closed towards night, for otherwise it will come. It climbs right up the walls, for its claws are strong as steel nails, glides in through the smallest hole, and throws itself on the sheep. And “göpa” hangs on their throats, and drinks their blood, and kills and tears, till every sheep is dead. He does not cease his wild death-dance among the terrified animals as long as any of them show a sign of life.
And in the morning the peasant finds all the sheep lying dead with torn throats, for “göpa” leaves nothing living where he ravages.
There the great owl lives, which hoots at dusk. If one mimics him, he comes whizzing down with outspread wings and strikes out one’s eyes, for he is no real bird, but an evil spirit.
And there lives the most terrible of them all, the bear, who has the strength of twelve men, and who, when he becomes a devil, can be killed only with a silver bullet.
And if one should chance to meet him in the wood, big and high as a wandering cliff, one must not run, nor defend one’s self; one must throw one’s self down on the ground and pretend to be dead. Many small children have imagined themselves lying on the ground with the bear over them. He has rolled them over with his paw, and they have felt his hot breath on their faces, but they have lain quiet, until he has gone away to dig a hole to bury them in. Then they have softly raised themselves up and stolen away, slowly at first, then in mad haste.
But think, think if the bear had not thought them really dead, but had taken a bite, or if he had been very hungry and wanted to eat them right up, or if he had seen them when they moved and had run after them. O God!
Terror is a witch. She sits in the dimness of the forest, sings magic songs to people, and fills their hearts with frightful thoughts. From her comes that deadly fear which weighs down life and darkens the beauty of smiling landscapes. Nature is malignant, treacherous as a sleeping snake; one can believe nothing. There lies Löfven’s lake in brilliant beauty; but trust it not, it lures to destruction. Every year it must gather its tribute of the drowned. There lies the wood temptingly peaceful; but trust it not! The wood is full of unholy things, beset with evil spirits and bloodthirsty vagrants’ souls.
Trust not the brook with its gliding waters. It is sudden sickness and death to wade in it after sunset. Trust not the cuckoo, who sings so gayly in the spring. In the autumn he becomes a hawk with fierce eyes and terrible claws. Trust not the moss, nor the heather, nor the rock. Nature is evil, full of invisible powers, who hate man. There is no spot where you can set your foot in safety; it is wonderful that your weak race can escape so much persecution.
Terror is a witch. Does she still sit in the darkness of the woods of Värmland? Does she still darken the beauty of smiling places, does she still dampen the joy of living? Great her power has been. I know it well, who have put steel in the cradle and a red-hot coal in the bath; I know it, who have felt her iron hand around my heart.
But no one shall think that I now am going to relate anything terrible or dreadful. It is only an old story of the great bear in Gurlitta Cliff which I must tell; and any one can believe it or not, as it always is with hunting stories.
The great bear has its home on the beautiful mountain summit which is called Gurlitta Cliff, and which raises itself precipitously from the shores of the Löfven.
The roots of a fallen pine between which tufts of moss are hanging make the walls and roof of his dwelling, branches and twigs protect it, the snow makes it warm. He can lie there and sleep a good quiet sleep from summer to summer.
Is he, then, a poet, a dreamer, this hairy monarch of the forest? Will he sleep away the cold winter’s chill nights and colorless days to be waked by purling brooks and the song of birds? Will he lie there and dream of blushing cranberry bogs, and of ant-hills filled with brown delicious creatures, and of the white lambs which graze on the green slopes? Does he want, happy one! to escape the winter of life?
Outside the snow-storm rages; wolves and foxes wander about, mad with hunger. Why shall the bear alone sleep? Let him get up and feel how the cold bites, how heavy it is to wade in deep snow.
He has bedded himself in so well. He is like the sleeping princess in the fairy tale; and as she was waked by love, so will he be waked by the spring. By a ray of sunlight which penetrates through the twigs and warms his nose, by the drops of melting snow which wet his fur, will he be waked. Woe to him who untimely disturbs him!
He hears, suddenly, shouts, noise, and shots. He shakes the sleep out of his joints, and pushes aside the branches to see what it is. It is not spring, which rattles and roars outside his lair, nor the wind, which overthrows pine-trees and casts up the driving snow, but it is the pensioners, the pensioners from Ekeby, old acquaintances of the forest monarch. He remembered well the night when Fuchs and Beerencreutz sat and dozed in a Nygård peasant’s barn, where they awaited a visit from him. They had just fallen asleep over their brandy-bottle, when he swung himself in through the peat-roof; but they awoke, when he was trying to lift the cow he had killed out of the stall, and fell upon him with gun and knife. They took the cow from him and one of his eyes, but he saved his life.
Yes, verily the pensioners and he are old acquaintances. He remembered how they had come on him another time, when he and his queen consort had just laid themselves down for their winter sleep in the old lair here on Gurlitta Cliff and had young ones in the hole. He remembered well how they came on them unawares. He got away all right, throwing to either side everything that stood in his path; but he must limp for life from a bullet in his thigh, and when he came back at night to the royal lair, the snow was red with his queen consort’s blood, and the royal children had been carried away to the plain, to grow up there and be man’s servants and friends.
Yes, now the ground trembles; now the snow-drift which hides his lair shakes; now he bursts out, the great bear, the pensioners’ old enemy. Look out, Fuchs, old bear-killer; look out now, Beerencreutz; look out, Gösta Berling, hero of a hundred adventures!
Woe to all poets, all dreamers, all heroes of romance! There stands Gösta Berling with finger on trigger, and the bear comes straight towards him. Why does he not shoot? What is he thinking of?
Why does he not send a bullet straight into the broad breast? He stands in just the place to do it. The others are not placed right to shoot. Does he think he is on parade before the forest monarch?
Gösta of course stood and dreamed of the lovely Marianne, who is lying at Ekeby dangerously ill, from the chill of that night when she slept in the snow-drift.
He thinks of her, who also is a sacrifice to the curse of hatred which overlies the earth, and he shudders at himself, who has come out to pursue and to kill.
And there comes the great bear right towards him, blind in one eye from the blow of a pensioner’s knife, lame in one leg from a bullet from a pensioner’s gun, fierce and shaggy, alone, since they had killed his wife and carried away his children. And Gösta sees him as he is,—a poor, persecuted beast, whom he will not deprive of life, all he has left, since people have taken from him everything else.
“Let him kill me,” thinks Gösta, “but I will not shoot.”
And while the bear breaks his way towards him, he stands quite still as if on parade, and when the forest monarch stands directly in front of him, he presents arms and takes a step to one side.
The bear continues on his way, knowing too well that he has no time to waste, breaks into the wood, ploughs his way through drifts the height of a man, rolls down the steep slopes, and escapes, while all of them, who had stood with cocked guns and waited for Gösta’s shot, shoot off their guns after him.
But it is of no avail; the ring is broken, and the bear gone. Fuchs scolds, and Beerencreutz swears, but Gösta only laughs.
How could they ask that any one so happy as he should harm one of God’s creatures?
The great bear of Gurlitta Cliff got away thus with his life, and he is waked from his winter sleep, as the peasants will find. No bear has greater skill than he to tear apart the roofs of their low, cellar-like cow-barns; none can better avoid a concealed ambush.
The people about the upper Löfven soon were at their wits’ end about him. Message after message was sent down to the pensioners, that they should come and kill the bear.
Day after day, night after night, during the whole of February, the pensioners scour the upper Löfven to find the bear, but he always escapes them. Has he learned cunning from the fox, and swiftness from the wolf? If they lie in wait at one place, he is ravaging the neighboring farmyard; if they seek him in the wood, he is pursuing the peasant, who comes driving over the ice. He has become the boldest of marauders: he creeps into the garret and empties the housewife’s honey-jar; he kills the horse in the peasant’s sledge.
But gradually they begin to understand what kind of a bear he is and why Gösta could not shoot him. Terrible to say, dreadful to believe, this is no ordinary bear. No one can hope to kill him if he does not have a silver bullet in his gun. A bullet of silver and bell-metal cast on a Thursday evening at new moon in the church-tower without the priest or the sexton or anybody knowing it would certainly kill him, but such a one is not so easy to get.
There is one man at Ekeby who, more than all the rest, would grieve over all this. It is, as one can easily guess, Anders Fuchs, the bear-killer. He loses both his appetite and his sleep in his anger at not being able to kill the great bear in Gurlitta Cliff. At last even he understands that the bear can only be killed with a silver bullet.
The grim Major Anders Fuchs was not handsome. He had a heavy, clumsy body, and a broad, red face, with hanging bags under his cheeks and several double chins. His small black moustache sat stiff as a brush above his thick lips, and his black hair stood out rough and thick from his head. Moreover, he was a man of few words and a glutton. He was not a person whom women meet with sunny smile and open arms, nor did he give them tender glances back again. One could not believe that he ever would see a woman whom he could tolerate, and everything which concerned love and enthusiasm was foreign to him.
One Thursday evening, when the moon, just two fingers wide, lingers above the horizon an hour or two after the sun has gone down, Major Fuchs betakes himself from Ekeby without telling any one where he means to go. He has flint and steel and a bullet-mould in his hunting-bag, and his gun on his back, and goes up towards the church at Bro to see what luck there may be for an honest man.
The church lies on the eastern shore of the narrow sound between the upper and lower Löfven, and Major Fuchs must go over a bridge to get there. He wends his way towards it, deep in his thoughts, without looking up towards Broby hill, where the houses cut sharply against the clear evening sky; he only looks on the ground, and wonders how he shall get hold of the key of the church without anybody’s knowing it.
When he comes down to the bridge, he hears some one screaming so despairingly that he has to look up.
At that time the little German, Faber, was organist at Bro. He was a slender man, small in body and mind. And the sexton was Jan Larsson, an energetic peasant, but poor, for the Broby clergyman had cheated him out of his patrimony, five hundred rix-dollars.
The sexton wanted to marry the organist’s sister, the little, delicate maiden Faber, but the organist would not let him have her, and therefore the two were not good friends. That evening the sexton has met the organist as he crossed the bridge and has fallen upon him. He seizes him by the shoulder, and holding him at arm’s length out over the railing tells him solemnly that he shall drop him into the sound if he does not give him the little maiden. The little German will not give in; he struggles and screams, and reiterates “No,” although far below him he sees the black water rushing between the white banks.
“No, no,” he screams; “no, no!”
And it is uncertain if the sexton in his rage would have let him down into the cold black water if Major Fuchs had not just then come over the bridge. The sexton is afraid, puts Faber down on solid ground, and runs away as fast as he can.
Little Faber falls on the major’s neck to thank him for his life, but the major pushes him away, and says that there is nothing to thank him for. The major has no love for Germans, ever since he had his quarters at Putbus on the Rügen during the Pomeranian war. He had never so nearly starved to death as in those days.
Then little Faber wants to run up to the bailiff Scharling and accuse the sexton of an attempt at murder, but the major lets him know that it is of no use here in the country, for it does not count for anything to kill a German.
Little Faber grows calmer and asks the major to come home with him to eat a bit of sausage and to taste his home-brewed ale.
The major follows him, for he thinks that the organist must have a key to the church-door; and so they go up the hill, where the Bro church stands, with the vicarage, the sexton’s cottage and the organist’s house round about it.
“You must excuse us,” says little Faber, as he and the major enter the house. “It is not really in order to-day. We have had a little to do, my sister and I. We have killed a cock.”
“The devil!” cries the major.
The little maid Faber has just come in with the ale in great earthen mugs. Now, every one knows that the major did not look upon women with a tender glance, but this little maiden he had to gaze upon with delight, as she came in so neat in lace and cap. Her light hair lay combed so smooth above her forehead, the home-woven dress was so pretty and so dazzlingly clean, her little hands were so busy and eager, and her little face so rosy and round, that he could not help thinking that if he had seen such a little woman twenty-five years ago, he must have come forward and offered himself.
She is so pretty and rosy and nimble, but her eyes are quite red with weeping. It is that which suggests such tender thoughts.
While the men eat and drink, she goes in and out of the room. Once she comes to her brother, courtesies, and says,—
“How do you wish me to place the cows in the stable?”
“Put twelve on the left and eleven on the right, then they can’t gore one another.”
“Have you so many cows, Faber?” bursts out the major.
The fact was that the organist had only two cows, but he called one eleven and the other twelve, that it might sound fine, when he spoke of them.
And then the major hears that Faber’s barn is being altered, so that the cows are out all day and at night are put into the woodshed.
The little maiden comes again to her brother, courtesies to him, and says that the carpenter had asked how high the barn should be made.
“Measure by the cows,” says the organist, “measure by the cows!”
Major Fuchs thinks that is such a good answer. However it comes to pass, the major asks the organist why his sister’s eyes are so red, and learns that she weeps because he will not let her marry the penniless sexton, in debt and without inheritance as he is.
Major Fuchs grows more and more thoughtful. He empties tankard after tankard, and eats sausage after sausage, without noticing it. Little Faber is appalled at such an appetite and thirst; but the more the major eats and drinks, the clearer and more determined his mind grows. The more decided becomes his resolution to do something for the little maiden Faber.
He has kept his eyes fixed on the great key which hangs on a knob by the door, and as soon as little Faber, who has had to keep up with the major in drinking the home-brewed ale, lays his head on the table and snores, Major Fuchs has seized the key, put on his cap, and hurried away.
A minute later he is groping his way up the tower stairs, lighted by his little horn lantern, and comes at last to the bell-room, where the bells open their wide throats over him. He scrapes off a little of the bell-metal with a file, and is just going to take the bullet-mould and melting-ladle out of his hunting-bag, when he finds that he has forgotten what is most important of all: he has no silver with him. If there shall be any power in the bullet, it must be cast there in the tower. Everything is right; it is Thursday evening and a new moon, and no one has any idea he is there, and now he cannot do anything. He sends forth into the silence of the night an oath with such a ring in it that the bells hum.
Then he hears a slight noise down in the church and thinks he hears steps on the stairs. Yes, it is true, heavy steps are coming up the stairs.
Major Fuchs, who stands there and swears so that the bells vibrate, is a little thoughtful at that. He wonders who it can be who is coming to help him with the bullet-casting. The steps come nearer and nearer. Whoever it is, is coming all the way up to the bell-room.
The major creeps far in among the beams and rafters, and puts out his lantern. He is not exactly afraid, but the whole thing would be spoiled if any one should see him there. He has scarcely had time to hide before the new-comer’s head appears above the floor.
The major knows him well; it is the miserly Broby minister. He, who is nearly mad with greed, has the habit of hiding his treasures in the strangest places. He comes now with a roll of bank-notes which he is going to hide in the tower-room. He does not know that any one sees him. He lifts up a board in the floor and puts in the money and takes himself off again.
The major is not slow; he lifts up the same board. Oh, so much money! Package after package of bank-notes, and among them brown leather bags, full of silver. The major takes just enough silver to make a bullet; the rest he leaves.
When he comes down to the earth again, he has the silver bullet in his gun. He wonders what luck has in store for him that night. It is marvellous on Thursday nights, as every one knows. He goes up towards the organist’s house. Fancy if the bear knew that Faber’s cows are in a miserable shed, no better than under the bare sky.
What! surely he sees something black and big coming over the field towards the woodshed; it must be the bear. He puts the gun to his cheek and is just going to shoot, but then he changes his mind.
The little maid’s red eyes come before him in the darkness; he thinks that he will help her and the sexton a little, but it is hard not to kill the great bear himself. He said afterwards that nothing in the world had ever been so hard, but as the little maiden was so dear and sweet, it had to be done.
He goes up to the sexton’s house, wakes him, drags him out, half dressed and half naked, and says that he shall shoot the bear which is creeping about outside of Faber’s woodshed.
“If you shoot the bear, he will surely give you his sister,” he says, “for then you will be a famous man. That is no ordinary bear, and the best men in the country would consider it an honor to kill it.”
And he puts into his hand his own gun, loaded with a bullet of silver and bell-metal cast in a church tower on a Thursday evening at the new moon, and he cannot help trembling with envy that another than he shall shoot the great forest monarch, the old bear of Gurlitta Cliff.
The sexton aims,—God help us! aims, as if he meant to hit the Great Bear, which high up in the sky wanders about the North Star, and not a bear wandering on the plain,—and the gun goes off with a bang which can be heard all the way to Gurlitta Cliff.
But however he has aimed, the bear falls. So it is when one shoots with a silver bullet. One shoots the bear through the heart, even if one aims at the Dipper.
People come rushing out from all the neighboring farmyards and wonder what is going on, for never had a shot sounded so loud nor waked so many sleeping echoes as this one, and the sexton wins much praise, for the bear had been a real pest.
Little Faber comes out too, but now is Major Fuchs sadly disappointed. There stands the sexton covered with glory, besides having saved Faber’s cows, but the little organist is neither touched nor grateful. He does not open his arms to him and greet him as brother-in-law and hero.
The major stands and frowns and stamps his foot in rage over such smallness. He wants to explain to the covetous, narrow-minded little fellow what a deed it is, but he begins to stammer, so that he cannot get out a word. And he gets angry and more angry at the thought that he has given up the glory of killing the great bear in vain.
Oh, it is quite impossible for him to comprehend that he who had done such a deed should not be worthy to win the proudest of brides.
The sexton and some of the young men are going to skin the bear; they go to the grindstone and sharpen the knives. Others go in and go to bed. Major Fuchs stands alone by the dead bear.
Then he goes to the church once more, puts the key again in the lock, climbs up the narrow stairs and the twisted ladder, wakes the sleeping pigeons, and once more comes up to the tower-room.
Afterwards, when the bear is skinned under the major’s inspection, they find between his jaws a package of notes of five hundred rix-dollars. It is impossible to say how it came there, but of course it was a marvellous bear; and as the sexton had killed him, the money is his, that is very plain.
When it is made known, little Faber too understands what a glorious deed the sexton has done, and he declares that he would be proud to be his brother-in-law.
On Friday evening Major Anders Fuchs returns to Ekeby, after having been at a feast, in honor of the lucky shot, at the sexton’s and an engagement dinner at the organist’s. He follows the road with a heavy heart; he feels no joy that his enemy is dead, and no pleasure in the magnificent bear-skin which the sexton has given him.
Many perhaps will believe that he is grieving that the sweet little maiden shall be another’s. Oh no, that causes him no sorrow. But what goes to his very heart is that the old, one-eyed forest king is dead, and it was not he who shot the silver bullet at him.
So he comes into the pensioners’ wing, where the pensioners are sitting round the fire, and without a word throws the bear-skin down among them. Let no one think that he told about that expedition; it was not until long, long after that any one could get out of him the truth of it. Nor did he betray the Broby clergyman’s hiding-place, who perhaps never noticed the theft.
The pensioners examine the skin.
“It is a fine skin,” says Beerencreutz. “I would like to know why this fellow has come out of his winter sleep, or perhaps you shot him in his hole?”
“He was shot at Bro.”
“Yes, as big as the Gurlitta bear he never was,” says Gösta, “but he has been a fine beast.”
“If he had had one eye,” says Kevenhüller, “I would have thought that you had killed the old one himself, he is so big; but this one has no wound or inflammation about his eyes, so it cannot be the same.”
Fuchs swears over his stupidity, but then his face lights up so that he is really handsome. The great bear has not been killed by another man’s bullet.
“Lord God, how good thou art!” he says, and folds his hands.
We young people often had to wonder at the old people’s tales. “Was there a ball every day, as long as your radiant youth lasted?” we asked them. “Was life then one long adventure?”
“Were all young women beautiful and lovely in those days, and did every feast end by Gösta Berling carrying off one of them?”
Then the old people shook their worthy heads, and began to tell of the whirring of the spinning-wheel and the clatter of the loom, of work in the kitchen, of the thud of the flail and the path of the axe through the forest; but it was not long before they harked back to the old theme. Then sledges drove up to the door, horses speeded away through the dark woods with the joyous young people; then the dance whirled and the violin-strings snapped. Adventure’s wild chase roared about Löfven’s long lake with thunder and crash. Far away could its noise be heard. The forest tottered and fell, all the powers of destruction were let loose; fire flamed out, floods laid waste the land, wild beasts roamed starving about the farmyards. Under the light-footed horses’ hoofs all quiet happiness was trampled to dust. Wherever the hunt rushed by, men’s hearts flamed up in madness, and the women in pale terror had to flee from their homes.
And we young ones sat wondering, silent, troubled, but blissful. “What people!” we thought. “We shall never see their like.”
“Did the people of those days never think of what they were doing?” we asked.
“Of course they thought, children,” answered the old people.
“But not as we think,” we insisted.
But the old people did not understand what we meant.
But we thought of the strange spirit of self-consciousness which had already taken possession of us. We thought of him, with his eyes of ice and his long, bent fingers,—he who sits there in the soul’s darkest corner and picks to pieces our being, just as old women pick to pieces bits of silk and wool.
Bit by bit had the long, hard, crooked fingers picked, until our whole self lay there like a pile of rags, and our best impulses, our most original thoughts, everything which we had done and said, had been examined, investigated, picked to pieces, and the icy eyes had looked on, and the toothless mouth had laughed in derision and whispered,—
“See, it is rags, only rags.”
There was also one of the people of that time who had opened her soul to the spirit with the icy eyes. In one of them he sat, watching the causes of all actions, sneering at both evil and good, understanding everything, condemning nothing, examining, seeking out, picking to pieces, paralyzing the emotions of the heart and the power of the mind by sneering unceasingly.
The beautiful Marianne bore the spirit of introspection within her. She felt his icy eyes and sneers follow every step, every word. Her life had become a drama where she was the only spectator. She had ceased to be a human being, she did not suffer, she was not glad, nor did she love; she carried out the beautiful Marianne Sinclair’s rôle, and self-consciousness sat with staring, icy eyes and busy, picking fingers, and watched her performance.
She was divided into two halves. Pale, unsympathetic, and sneering, one half sat and watched what the other half was doing; and the strange spirit who picked to pieces her being never had a word of feeling or sympathy.
But where had he been, the pale watcher of the source of deeds, that night, when she had learned to know the fulness of life? Where was he when she, the sensible Marianne, kissed Gösta Berling before a hundred pairs of eyes, and when in a gust of passion she threw herself down in the snow-drift to die? Then the icy eyes were blinded, then the sneer was weakened, for passion had raged through her soul. The roar of adventure’s wild hunt had thundered in her ears. She had been a whole person during that one terrible night.
Oh, you god of self-mockery, when Marianne with infinite difficulty succeeded in lifting her stiffened arms and putting them about Gösta’s neck, you too, like old Beerencreutz, had to turn away your eyes from the earth and look at the stars.
That night you had no power. You were dead while she sang her love-song, dead while she hurried down to Sjö after the major, dead when she saw the flames redden the sky over the tops of the trees.
For they had come, the mighty storm-birds, the griffins of demoniac passions. With wings of fire and claws of steel they had come swooping down over you, you icy-eyed spirit; they had struck their claws into your neck and flung you far into the unknown. You have been dead and crushed.
But now they had rushed on,—they whose course no sage can predict, no observer can follow; and out of the depths of the unknown had the strange spirit of self-consciousness again raised itself and had once again taken possession of Marianne’s soul.
During the whole of February Marianne lay ill at Ekeby. When she sought out the major at Sjö she had been infected with small-pox. The terrible illness had taken a great hold on her, who had been so chilled and exhausted. Death had come very near to her, but at the end of the month she had recovered. She was still very weak and much disfigured. She would never again be called the beautiful Marianne.
This, however, was as yet only known to Marianne and her nurse. The pensioners themselves did not know it. The sick-room where small-pox raged was not open to any one.
But when is the introspective power greater than during the long hours of convalescence? Then the fiend sits and stares and stares with his icy eyes, and picks and picks with his bony, hard fingers. And if one looks carefully, behind him sits a still paler creature, who stares and sneers, and behind him another and still another, sneering at one another and at the whole world.
And while Marianne lay and looked at herself with all these staring icy eyes, all natural feelings died within her.
She lay there and played she was ill; she lay there and played she was unhappy, in love, longing for revenge.
She was it all, and still it was only a play. Everything became a play and unreality under those icy eyes, which watched her while they were watched by a pair behind them, which were watched by other pairs in infinite perspective.
All the energy of life had died within her. She had found strength for glowing hate and tender love for one single night, not more.
She did not even know if she loved Gösta Berling. She longed to see him to know if he could take her out of herself.
While under the dominion of her illness, she had had only one clear thought: she had worried lest her illness should be known. She did not wish to see her parents; she wished no reconciliation with her father, and she knew that he would repent if he should know how ill she was. Therefore she ordered that her parents and every one else should only know that the troublesome irritation of the eyes, which she always had when she visited her native country, forced her to sit in a darkened room. She forbade her nurse to say how ill she was; she forbade the pensioners to go after the doctor at Karlstad. She had of course small-pox, but only very lightly; in the medicine-chest at Ekeby there were remedies enough to save her life.
She never thought of death; she only lay and waited for health, to be able to go to the clergyman with Gösta and have the banns published.
But now the sickness and the fever were gone. She was once more cold and sensible. It seemed to her as if she alone was sensible in this world of fools. She neither hated nor loved. She understood her father; she understood them all. He who understands does not hate.
She had heard that Melchior Sinclair meant to have an auction at Björne and make way with all his wealth, that she might inherit nothing after him. People said that he would make the devastation as thorough as possible; first he would sell the furniture and utensils, then the cattle and implements, and then the house itself with all its lands, and would put the money in a bag and sink it to the bottom of the Löfven. Dissipation, confusion, and devastation should be her inheritance. Marianne smiled approvingly when she heard it: such was his character, and so he must act.
It seemed strange to her that she had sung that great hymn to love. She had dreamed of love in a cottage, as others have done. Now it seemed odd to her that she had ever had a dream.
She sighed for naturalness. She was tired of this continual play. She never had a strong emotion. She only grieved for her beauty, but she shuddered at the compassion of strangers.
Oh, one second of forgetfulness of herself! One gesture, one word, one act which was not calculated!
One day, when the rooms had been disinfected and she lay dressed on a sofa, she had Gösta Berling called. They answered her that he had gone to the auction at Björne.
At Björne there was in truth a big auction. It was an old, rich home. People had come long distances to be present at the sale.
Melchior Sinclair had flung all the property in the house together in the great drawing-room. There lay thousands of articles, collected in piles, which reached from floor to ceiling.
He had himself gone about the house like an angel of destruction on the day of judgment, and dragged together what he wanted to sell. Everything in the kitchen,—the black pots, the wooden chairs, the pewter dishes, the copper kettles, all were left in peace, for among them there was nothing which recalled Marianne; but they were the only things which escaped his anger.
He burst into Marianne’s room, turning everything out. Her doll-house stood there, and her book-case, the little chair he had had made for her, her trinkets and clothes, her sofa and bed, everything must go.
And then he went from room to room. He tore down everything he found unpleasant, and carried great loads down to the auction-room. He panted under the weight of sofas and marble slabs; but he went on. He had thrown open the sideboards and taken out the magnificent family silver. Away with it! Marianne had touched it. He filled his arms with snow-white damask and with shining linen sheets with hem-stitching as wide as one’s hand,—honest home-made work, the fruit of many years of labor,—and flung them down together on the piles. Away with them! Marianne was not worthy to own them. He stormed through the rooms with piles of china, not caring if he broke the plates by the dozen, and he seized the hand-painted cups on which the family arms were burned. Away with them! Let any one who will use them! He staggered under mountains of bedding from the attic: bolsters and pillows so soft that one sunk down in them as in a wave. Away with them! Marianne had slept on them.
He cast fierce glances on the old, well-known furniture. Was there a chair where she had not sat, or a sofa which she had not used, or a picture which she had not looked at, a candlestick which had not lighted her, a mirror which had not reflected her features? Gloomily he shook his fist at this world of memories. He would have liked to have rushed on them with swinging club and to have crushed everything to small bits and splinters.
But it seemed to him a more famous revenge to sell them all at auction. They should go to strangers! Away to be soiled in the cottagers’ huts, to be in the care of indifferent strangers. Did he not know them, the dented pieces of auction furniture in the peasants’ houses, fallen into dishonor like his beautiful daughter? Away with them! May they stand with torn-out stuffing and worn-off gilding, with cracked legs and stained leaves, and long for their former home! Away with them to the ends of the earth, so that no eye can find them, no hand gather them together!
When the auction began, he had filled half the hall with an incredible confusion of piled-up articles.
Right across the room he had placed a long counter. Behind it stood the auctioneer and put up the things; there the clerks sat and kept the record, and there Melchior Sinclair had a keg of brandy standing. In the other half of the room, in the hall, and in the yard were the buyers. There were many people, and much noise and gayety. The bids followed close on one another, and the auction was lively. But by the keg of brandy, with all his possessions in endless confusion behind him, sat Melchior Sinclair, half drunk and half mad. His hair stood up in rough tufts above his red face; his eyes were rolling, fierce, and bloodshot. He shouted and laughed, as if he had been in the best of moods; and every one who had made a good bid he called up to him and offered a dram.
Among those who saw him there was Gösta Berling, who had stolen in with the crowd of buyers, but who avoided coming under Melchior Sinclair’s eyes. He became thoughtful at the sight, and his heart stood still, as at a presentiment of a misfortune.
He wondered much where Marianne’s mother could be during all this. And he went out, against his will, but driven by fate, to find Madame Gustava Sinclair.
He had to go through many doors before he found her. Her husband had short patience and little fondness for wailing and women’s complaints. He had wearied of seeing her tears flow over the fate which had befallen her household treasures. He was furious that she could weep over table and bed linen, when, what was worse, his beautiful daughter was lost; and so he had hunted her, with clenched fists, before him, through the house, out into the kitchen, and all the way to the pantry.
She could not go any farther, and he had rejoiced at seeing her there, cowering behind the step-ladder, awaiting heavy blows, perhaps death. He let her stay there, but he locked the door and stuffed the key in his pocket. She could sit there as long as the auction lasted. She did not need to starve, and his ears had rest from her laments.
There she still sat, imprisoned in her own pantry, when Gösta came through the corridor between the kitchen and the dining-room. He saw her face at a little window high up in the wall. She had climbed up on the step-ladder, and stood staring out of her prison.
“What are you doing up there?” asked Gösta.
“He has shut me in,” she whispered.
“Your husband?”
“Yes. I thought he was going to kill me. But listen, Gösta, take the key of the dining-room door, and go into the kitchen and unlock the pantry door with it, so that I can come out. That key fits here.”
Gösta obeyed, and in a couple of minutes the little woman stood in the kitchen, which was quite deserted.
“You should have let one of the maids open the door with the dining-room key,” said Gösta.
“Do you think I want to teach them that trick? Then I should never have any peace in the pantry. And, besides, I took this chance to put the upper shelves in order. They needed it, indeed. I cannot understand how I could have let so much rubbish collect there.”
“You have so much to attend to,” said Gösta.
“Yes, that you may believe. If I were not everywhere, neither the loom nor the spinning-wheel would be going right. And if—”
Here she stopped and wiped away a tear from the corner of her eye.
“God help me, how I do talk!” she said; “they say that I won’t have anything more to look after. He is selling everything we have.”
“Yes, it is a wretched business,” said Gösta.
“You know that big mirror in the drawing-room, Gösta. It was such a beauty, for the glass was whole in it, without a flaw, and there was no blemish at all on the gilding. I got it from my mother, and now he wants to sell it.”
“He is mad.”
“You may well say so. He is not much better. He won’t stop until we shall have to go and beg on the highway, we as well as the major’s wife.”
“It will never be so bad as that,” answered Gösta.
“Yes, Gösta. When the major’s wife went away from Ekeby, she foretold misfortune for us, and now it is coming. She would never have allowed him to sell Björne. And think, his own china, the old Canton cups from his own home, are to be sold. The major’s wife would never have let it happen.”
“But what is the matter with him?” asked Gösta.
“Oh, it is only because Marianne has not come back again. He has waited and waited. He has gone up and down the avenue the whole day and waited for her. He is longing himself mad, but I do not dare to say anything.”
“Marianne believes that he is angry with her.”
“She does not believe that. She knows him well enough; but she is proud and will not take the first step. They are stiff and hard, both of them, and I have to stand between them.”
“You must know that Marianne is going to marry me?”
“Alas, Gösta, she will never do that. She says that only to make him angry. She is too spoiled to marry a poor man, and too proud, too. Go home and tell her that if she does not come home soon, all her inheritance will have gone to destruction. Oh, he will throw everything away, I know, without getting anything for it.”
Gösta was really angry with her. There she sat on a big kitchen table, and had no thought for anything but her mirrors and her china.
“You ought to be ashamed!” he burst out. “You throw your daughter out into a snow-drift, and then you think that it is only temper that she does not come back. And you think that she is no better than to forsake him whom she cares for, lest she should lose her inheritance.”
“Dear Gösta, don’t be angry, you too. I don’t know what I am saying. I tried my best to open the door for Marianne, but he took me and dragged me away. They all say here that I don’t understand anything. I shall not grudge you Marianne, Gösta, if you can make her happy. It is not so easy to make a woman happy, Gösta.”
Gösta looked at her. How could he too have raised his voice in anger against such a person as she,—terrified and cowed, but with such a good heart!
“You do not ask how Marianne is,” he said gently.
She burst into tears.
“Will you not be angry with me if I ask you?” she said. “I have longed to ask you the whole time. Think that I know no more of her than that she is living. Not one greeting have I had from her the whole time, not once when I sent clothes to her, and so I thought that you and she did not want to have me know anything about her.”
Gösta could bear it no longer. He was wild, he was out of his head,—sometimes God had to send his wolves after him to force him to obedience,—but this old woman’s tears, this old woman’s laments were harder for him to bear than the howling of the wolves. He let her know the truth.
“Marianne has been ill the whole time,” he said. “She has had small-pox. She was to get up to-day and lie on the sofa. I have not seen her since the first night.”
Madame Gustava leaped with one bound to the ground. She left Gösta standing there, and rushed away without another word to her husband.
The people in the auction-room saw her come up to him and eagerly whisper something in his ear. They saw how his face grew still more flushed, and his hand, which rested on the cock, turned it round so that the brandy streamed over the floor.
It seemed to all as if Madame Gustava had come with such important news that the auction must end immediately. The auctioneer’s hammer no longer fell, the clerks’ pens stopped, there were no new bids.
Melchior Sinclair roused himself from his thoughts.
“Well,” he cried, “what is the matter?”
And the auction was in full swing once more.
Gösta still sat in the kitchen, and Madame Gustava came weeping out to him.
“It’s no use,” she said. “I thought he would stop when he heard that Marianne had been ill; but he is letting them go on. He would like to, but now he is ashamed.”
Gösta shrugged his shoulders and bade her farewell.
In the hall he met Sintram.
“This is a funny show,” exclaimed Sintram, and rubbed his hands. “You are a master, Gösta. Lord, what you have brought to pass!”
“It will be funnier in a little while,” whispered Gösta. “The Broby clergyman is here with a sledge full of money. They say that he wants to buy the whole of Björne and pay in cash. Then I would like to see Melchior Sinclair, Sintram.”
Sintram drew his head down between his shoulders and laughed internally a long time. And then he made his way into the auction-room and up to Melchior Sinclair.
“If you want a drink, Sintram, you must make a bid first.”
Sintram came close up to him.
“You are in luck to-day as always,” he said. “A fellow has come to the house with a sledge full of money. He is going to buy Björne and everything both inside and out. He has told a lot of people to bid for him. He does not want to show himself yet for a while.”
“You might say who he is; then I suppose I must give you a drink for your pains.”
Sintram took the dram and moved a couple of steps backwards, before he answered,—
“They say it is the Broby clergyman, Melchior.”
Melchior Sinclair had many better friends than the Broby clergyman. It had been a life-long feud between them. There were legends of how he had lain in wait on dark nights on the roads where the minister should pass, and how he had given him many an honest drubbing, the old fawning oppressor of the peasants.
It was well for Sintram that he had drawn back a step or two, but he did not entirely escape the big man’s anger. He got a brandy glass between his eyes and the whole brandy keg on his feet. But then followed a scene which for a long time rejoiced his heart.
“Does the Broby clergyman want my house?” roared Melchior Sinclair. “Do you stand there and bid on my things for the Broby clergyman? Oh, you ought to be ashamed! You ought to know better!”
He seized a candlestick, and an inkstand, and slung them into the crowd of people.
All the bitterness of his poor heart at last found expression. Roaring like a wild beast, he clenched his fist at those standing about, and slung at them whatever missile he could lay his hand on. Brandy glasses and bottles flew across the room. He did not know what he was doing in his rage.
“It’s the end of the auction,” he cried. “Out with you! Never while I live shall the Broby clergyman have Björne. Out! I will teach you to bid for the Broby clergyman!”
He rushed on the auctioneer and the clerks. They hurried away. In the confusion they overturned the desk, and Sinclair with unspeakable fury burst into the crowd of peaceful people.
There was a flight and wildest confusion. A couple of hundred people were crowding towards the door, fleeing before a single man. And he stood, roaring his “Out with you!” He sent curses after them, and now and again he swept about him with a chair, which he brandished like a club.
He pursued them out into the hall, but no farther. When the last stranger had left the house, he went back into the drawing-room and bolted the door after him. Then he dragged together a mattress and a couple of pillows, laid himself down on them, went to sleep in the midst of all the havoc, and never woke till the next day.
When Gösta got home, he heard that Marianne wished to speak to him. That was just what he wanted. He had been wondering how he could get a word with her.
When he came into the dim room where she lay, he had to stand a moment at the door. He could not see where she was.
“Stay where you are, Gösta,” Marianne said to him. “It may be dangerous to come near me.”
But Gösta had come up the stairs in two bounds, trembling with eagerness and longing. What did he care for the contagion? He wished to have the bliss of seeing her.
For she was so beautiful, his beloved! No one had such soft hair, such an open, radiant brow. Her whole face was a symphony of exquisite lines.
He thought of her eyebrows, sharply and clearly drawn like the honey-markings on a lily, and of the bold curve of her nose, and of her lips, as softly turned as rolling waves, and of her cheek’s long oval and her chin’s perfect shape.
And he thought of the rosy hue of her skin, of the magical effect of her coal-black eyebrows with her light hair, and of her blue irises swimming in clear white, and of the light in her eyes.
She was beautiful, his beloved! He thought of the warm heart which she hid under a proud exterior. She had strength for devotion and self-sacrifice concealed under that fine skin and her proud words. It was bliss to see her.
He had rushed up the stairs in two bounds, and she thought that he would stop at the door. He stormed through the room and fell on his knees at the head of her bed.
But he meant to see her, to kiss her, and to bid her farewell.
He loved her. He would certainly never cease to love her, but his heart was used to being trampled on. Oh, where should he find her, that rose without support or roots, which he could take and call his own? He might not keep even her whom he had found disowned and half dead at the roadside.
When should his love raise its voice in a song so loud and clear that he should hear no dissonance through it? When should his palace of happiness be built on a ground for which no other heart longed restlessly and with regret?
He thought how he would bid her farewell.
“There is great sorrow in your home,” he would say. “My heart is torn at the thought of it. You must go home and give your father his reason again. Your mother lives in continual danger of death. You must go home, my beloved.”
These were the words he had on his lips, but they were never spoken.
He fell on his knees at the head of her bed, and he took her face between his hands and kissed her; but then he could not speak. His heart began to beat so fiercely, as if it would burst his breast.
Small-pox had passed over that lovely face. Her skin had become coarse and scarred. Never again should the red blood glow in her cheeks, or the fine blue veins show on her temples. Her eyebrows had fallen out, and the shining white of her eyes had changed to yellow.
Everything was laid waste. The bold lines had become coarse and heavy.
They were not few who mourned over Marianne Sinclair’s lost beauty. In the whole of Värmland, people lamented the change in her bright color, her sparkling eyes, and blond hair. There beauty was prized as nowhere else. The joyous people grieved, as if the country had lost a precious stone from the crown of its honor, as if their life had received a blot on its glory.
But the first man who saw her after she had lost her beauty did not indulge in sorrow.
Unutterable emotion filled his soul. The more he looked at her, the warmer it grew within him. Love grew and grew, like a river in the spring. In waves of fire it welled up in his heart, it filled his whole being, it rose to his eyes as tears; it sighed on his lips, trembled in his hands, in his whole body.
Oh, to love her, to protect her, to keep her from all harm!
To be her slave, her guide!
Love is strong when it has gone through the baptismal fire of pain. He could not speak to Marianne of parting and renunciation. He could not leave her—he owed her his life. He could commit the unpardonable sin for her sake.
He could not speak a coherent word, he only wept and kissed, until at last the old nurse thought it was time to lead him out.
When he had gone, Marianne lay and thought of him and his emotion. “It is good to be so loved,” she thought.
Yes, it was good to be loved, but how was it with herself? What did she feel? Oh, nothing, less than nothing!
Was it dead, her love, or where had it taken flight? Where had it hidden itself, her heart’s child?
Did it still live? Had it crept into her heart’s darkest corner and sat there freezing under the icy eyes, frightened by the pale sneer, half suffocated under the bony fingers?
“Ah, my love,” she sighed, “child of my heart! Are you alive, or are you dead, dead as my beauty?”
The next day Melchior Sinclair went in early to his wife.
“See to it that there is order in the house again, Gustava!” he said. “I am going to bring Marianne home.”
“Yes, dear Melchior, here there will of course be order,” she answered.
Thereupon there was peace between them.
An hour afterwards he was on his way to Ekeby.
It was impossible to find a more noble and kindly old gentleman than Melchior Sinclair, as he sat in the open sledge in his best fur cloak and his best rug. His hair lay smooth on his head, but his face was pale and his eyes were sunken in their sockets.
There was no limit to the brilliancy of the clear sky on that February day. The snow sparkled like a young girl’s eyes when she hears the music of the first waltz. The birches stretched the fine lace-work of their reddish-brown twigs against the sky, and on some of them hung a fringe of little icicles.
There was a splendor and a festive glow in the day. The horses prancing threw up their forelegs, and the coachman cracked his whip in sheer pleasure of living.
After a short drive the sledge drew up before the great steps at Ekeby.
The footman came out.
“Where are your masters?” asked Melchior.
“They are hunting the great bear in Gurlitta Cliff.”
“All of them?”
“All of them, sir. Those who do not go for the sake of the bear go for the sake of the luncheon.”
Melchior laughed so that it echoed through the silent yard. He gave the man a crown for his answer.
“Go say to my daughter that I am here to take her home. She need not be afraid of the cold. I have the big sledge and a wolfskin cloak to wrap her in.”
“Will you not come in, sir?”
“Thank you! I sit very well where I am.”
The man disappeared, and Melchior began his waiting.
He was in such a genial mood that day that nothing could irritate him. He had expected to have to wait a little for Marianne; perhaps she was not even up. He would have to amuse himself by looking about him for a while.
From the cornice hung a long icicle, with which the sun had terrible trouble. It began at the upper end, melted a drop, and wanted to have it run down along the icicle and fall to the earth. But before it had gone half the way, it had frozen again. And the sun made continual new attempts, which always failed. But at last a regular freebooter of a ray hung itself on the icicle’s point, a little one, which shone and sparkled; and however it was, it accomplished its object,—a drop fell tinkling to the ground.
Melchior looked on and laughed. “You were not such a fool,” he said to the ray of sunlight.
The yard was quiet and deserted. Not a sound was heard in the big house. But he was not impatient. He knew that women needed plenty of time to make themselves ready.
He sat and looked at the dove-cote. The birds had a grating before the door. They were shut in, as long as the winter lasted, lest hawks should exterminate them. Time after time a pigeon came and stuck out its white head through the meshes.
“She is waiting for the spring,” said Melchior Sinclair, “but she must have patience for a while.”
The pigeon came so regularly that he took out his watch and followed her, with it in his hand. Exactly every third minute she stuck out her head.
“No, my little friend,” he said, “do you think spring will be ready in three minutes? You must learn to wait.”
And he had to wait himself; but he had plenty of time.
The horses first pawed impatiently in the snow, but then they grew sleepy from standing and blinking in the sun. They laid their heads together and slept.
The coachman sat straight on his box, with whip and reins in his hand and his face turned directly towards the sun, and slept, slept so that he snored.
But Melchior did not sleep. He had never felt less like sleeping. He had seldom passed pleasanter hours than during this glad waiting. Marianne had been ill. She had not been able to come before, but now she would come. Oh, of course she would. And everything would be well again.
She must understand that he was not angry with her. He had come himself with two horses and the big sledge.
It is nothing to have to wait when one is sure of one’s self, and when there is so much to distract one’s mind.
There comes the great watch-dog. He creeps forward on the tips of his toes, keeps his eyes on the ground, and wags his tail gently, as if he meant to set out on the most indifferent errand. All at once he begins to burrow eagerly in the snow. The old rascal must have hidden there some stolen goods. But just as he lifts his head to see if he can eat it now undisturbed, he is quite out of countenance to see two magpies right in front of him.
“You old thief!” say the magpies, and look like conscience itself. “We are police officers. Give up your stolen goods!”
“Oh, be quiet with your noise! I am the steward—”
“Just the right one,” they sneer.
The dog throws himself on them, and they fly away with slow flaps. The dog rushes after them, jumps, and barks. But while he is chasing one, the other is already back. She flies down into the hole, tears at the piece of meat, but cannot lift it. The dog snatches away the meat, holds it between his paws, and bites in it. The magpies place themselves close in front of him, and make disagreeable remarks. He glares fiercely at them, while he eats, and when they get too impertinent, he jumps up and drives them away.
The sun began to sink down towards the western hills. Melchior looked at his watch. It is three o’clock. And his wife, who had had dinner ready at twelve!
At the same moment the footman came out and announced that Miss Marianne wished to speak to him.
Melchior laid the wolfskin cloak over his arm and went beaming up the steps.
When Marianne heard his heavy tread on the stairs, she did not even then know if she should go home with him or not. She only knew that she must put an end to this long waiting.
She had hoped that the pensioners would come home; but they did not come. So she had to do something to put an end to it all. She could bear it no longer.
She had thought that he in a burst of anger would have driven away after he had waited five minutes, or that he would break the door in or try to set the house on fire.
But there he sat calm and smiling, and only waited. She cherished neither hatred nor love for him. But there was a voice in her which seemed to warn her against putting herself in his power again, and moreover she wished to keep her promise to Gösta.
If he had slept, if he had spoken, if he had been restless, if he had shown any sign of doubt, if he had had the carriage driven into the shade! But he was only patience and certainty.
Certain, so infectiously certain, that she would come if he only waited!
Her head ached. Every nerve quivered. She could get no rest as long as she knew that he sat there. It was as if his will dragged her bound down the stairs.
So she thought she would at least talk with him.
Before he came, she had all the curtains drawn up, and she placed herself so that her face came in the full light.
For it was her intention to put him to a sort of test; but Melchior Sinclair was a wonderful man that day.
When he saw her, he did not make a sign, nor did he exclaim. It was as if he had not seen any change in her. She knew how highly he prized her beauty. But he showed no sorrow. He controlled himself not to wound her. That touched her. She began to understand why her mother had loved him through everything.
He showed no hesitation. He came with neither reproaches nor excuses.
“I will wrap the wolfskin about you, Marianne; it is not cold. It has been on my knees the whole time.”
To make sure, he went up to the fire and warmed it.
Then he helped her to raise herself from the sofa, wrapped the cloak about her, put a shawl over her head, drew it down under her arms, and knotted it behind her back.
She let him do it. She was helpless. It was good to have everything arranged, it was good not to have to decide anything, especially good for one who was so picked to pieces as she, for one who did not possess one thought or one feeling which was her own.
Melchior lifted her up, carried her down to the sleigh, closed the top, tucked the furs in about her, and drove away from Ekeby.
She shut her eyes and sighed, partly from pleasure, partly from regret. She was leaving life, the real life; but it did not make so much difference to her,—she who could not live but only act.
A few days later her mother arranged that she should meet Gösta. She sent for him while her husband was off on his long walk to see after his timber, and took him in to Marianne.
Gösta came in; but he neither bowed nor spoke. He stood at the door and looked on the ground like an obstinate boy.
“But, Gösta!” cried Marianne. She sat in her arm-chair and looked at him half amused.
“Yes, that is my name.”
“Come here, come to me, Gösta!”
He went slowly forward to her, but did not raise his eyes.
“Come nearer! Kneel down here!”