The Story of Gösta Berling. Selma Lagerlöf
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iron. The charcoal burner lives by getting me charcoal, the lumber man by bringing down my timber. It is I who give out the work which brings prosperity. Smiths, mechanics, and carpenters live by serving me. Do you think that man can keep my work going? I tell you that if you drive me away you let famine in.”
Again are many hands lifted to help the major’s wife; again mild, persuading hands are laid on the major’s shoulders.
“No,” he says, “away with you. Who will defend an adulteress? I tell you that if she does not go of her own will I shall take her in my arms and carry her down to my bears.”
At these words the raised hands are lowered.
Then, as a last resource, she turns to the pensioners.
“Will you also allow me to be driven from my home? Have I let you freeze out in the snow in winter? Have I denied you bitter ale and sweet brandy? Did I take any pay or any work from you because I gave you food and clothes? Have you not played at my feet, safe as children at their mother’s side? Has not the dance gone through my halls? Have not merriment and laughter been your daily bread? Do not let this man, who has been my life’s misfortune, drive me from my home, gentlemen! Do not let me become a beggar on the highway!”
At these words Gösta Berling had stolen away to a beautiful dark-haired girl who sat at the big table.
“You were much at Borg five years ago, Anna,” he says. “Do you know if it was the major’s wife who told Ebba Dohna that I was a dismissed priest?”
“Help her, Gösta!” is the girl’s only answer.
“You must know that I will first hear if she has made me a murderer.”
“Oh, Gösta, what a thought! Help her, Gösta!”
“You won’t answer, I see. Then Sintram told the truth.” And Gösta goes back to the other pensioners. He does not lift a finger to help the major’s wife.
Oh, if only she had not put the pensioners at a separate table off there in the corner by the stove! Now the thoughts of the night awake in their minds, and a rage burns in their faces which is not less than the major’s own.
In pitiless hardness they stand, unmoved by her prayers.
Did not everything they saw confirm the events of the night?
“One can see that she did not get her contract renewed,” murmurs one.
“Go to hell, hag!” screams another. “By rights we ought to hunt you from the door.”
“Fools,” cries the gentle old Uncle Eberhard to the pensioners. “Don’t you understand it was Sintram?”
“Of course we understand; of course we know it,” answers Julius; “but what of that? May it not be true, at any rate? Does not Sintram go on the devil’s errands? Don’t they understand one another?”
“Go yourself, Eberhard; go and help her!” they mock. “You don’t believe in hell. You can go!”
And Gösta Berling stands, without a word, motionless.
No, from the threatening, murmuring, struggling bachelors’ wing she will get no help.
Then once again she retreats to the door and raises her clasped hands to her eyes.
“ ‘May you be disowned, as I have been disowned,’ ” she cries to herself in her bitter sorrow. “ ‘May the highway be your home, the hay-stack your bed!’ ”
Then she lays one hand on the door latch, but the other she stretches on high.
“Know you all, who now let me fall, know that your hour is soon coming! You shall be scattered, and your place shall stand empty. How can you stand when I do not hold you up? You, Melchior Sinclair, who have a heavy hand and let your wife feel it, beware! You, minister at Broby, your punishment is coming! Madame Uggla, look after your house; poverty is coming! You young, beautiful women—Elizabeth Dohna, Marianne Sinclair, Anna Stjärnhök—do not think that I am the only one who must flee from her home. And beware, pensioners, a storm is coming over the land. You will be swept away from the earth; your day is over, it is verily over! I do not lament for myself, but for you; for the storm shall pass over your heads, and who shall stand when I have fallen? And my heart bleeds for my poor people. Who will give them work when I am gone?”
She opens the door; but then Captain Christian lifts his head and says:—
“How long must I lie here at your feet, Margareta Celsing? Will you not forgive me, so that I may stand up and fight for you?”
Then the major’s wife fights a hard battle with herself; but she sees that if she forgives him he will rise up and attack her husband; and this man, who has loved her faithfully for forty years will become a murderer.
“Must I forgive, too?” she says. “Are you not the cause of all my misfortune, Christian Bergh? Go to the pensioners and rejoice over your work.”
So she went. She went calmly, leaving terror and dismay behind her. She fell, but she was not without greatness in her fall.
She did not lower herself to grieving weakly, but in her old age she still exulted over the love of her youth. She did not lower herself to lamenting and pitiable weeping when she left everything; she did not shrink from wandering about the land with beggar’s bag and crutch. She pitied only the poor peasants and the happy, careless people on the shores of the Löfven, the penniless pensioners—all those whom she had taken in and cared for.
She was abandoned by all, and yet she had strength to turn away her last friend that he should not be a murderer.
She was a woman great in strength and love of action. We shall not soon see her like again.
The next day Major Samzelius moved from Ekeby to his own farm of Sjö, which lies next to the large estate.
In Altringer’s will, by which the major had got the estates, it was clearly stated that none of them should be sold or given away, but that after the death of the major his wife and her heirs should inherit them all. So, as he could not dissipate the hated inheritance, he placed the pensioners to reign over it, thinking that he, by so doing, most injured Ekeby and the other six estates.
As no one in all the country round now doubted that the wicked Sintram went on the devil’s errands, and as everything he had promised had been so brilliantly fulfilled the pensioners were quite sure that the contract would be carried out in every point, and they were entirely decided not to do, during the year, anything sensible, or useful, or effeminate, convinced that the major’s wife was an abominable witch who sought their ruin.
The old philosopher, Eberhard, ridiculed their belief. But who paid any attention to such a man, who was so obstinate in his unbelief that if he had lain in the midst of the fires of hell and had seen all the devils standing and grinning at him, would still have insisted that they did not exist, because they could not exist?—for Uncle Eberhard was a great philosopher.
Gösta Berling told no one what he thought. It is certain that he considered he owed the major’s wife little thanks because she had made him a pensioner at Ekeby; it seemed better to him to be dead than to have on his conscience the guilt of Ebba Dohna’s suicide.
He did not lift his hand to be revenged on the major’s wife, but neither did he to help her. He could not. But the pensioners had attained great power and magnificence. Christmas was at hand, with its feasts and pleasures. The hearts of the pensioners were filled with rejoicing; and whatever sorrow weighed on Gösta Berling’s heart he did not show in face or speech.
CHAPTER IV
GÖSTA BERLING, POET
It was Christmas, and there was to be a ball at Borg.