The Story of Gösta Berling by Selma Lagerlöf (readnow txt) 📕

“There are those who have stood out,” says Gösta. “God’s grace has been so great to some that they have not returned from such a life broken men. They have had strength; they have borne the loneliness, the poverty, the hopelessness. They have done what little good they could and have not despaired. Such men have always been and still are. I greet them as heroes. I will honor them as long as I live. I was not able to stand out.”

“I could not,” added the clergyman.

“The minister up there thinks,” says Gösta, musingly, “that he will be a rich man, an exceedingly rich man. No one who is poor can struggle against evil. And so he begins to hoard.”

“If he had not hoarded he would have drunk,” answers the old man; “he sees so much misery.”

“Or he would become dull and lazy, and lose all strength. It is dangerous for him who is not born there to come thither.”

“He has to harden himself to hoard. He pretends at first; then it becomes a habit.”

“He has to be hard both to himself and to others,” continues Gösta; “it is hard to amass. He must endure hate and scorn; he must go cold and hungry and harden his heart: it almost seems as if he had forgotten why he began to hoard.”

The Broby clergyman looked startled at him. He wondered if Gösta sat there and made a fool of him. But Gösta was only eager and earnest. It was as if he was speaking of his own life.

“It was so with me,” says the old man quietly.

“But God watches over him,” interrupts Gösta. “He wakes in him the thoughts of his youth when he has amassed enough. He gives the minister a sign when His people need him.”

“But if the minister does not obey the sign, Gösta Berling?”

“He cannot withstand it,” says Gösta, and smiles. “He is so moved by the thought of the warm cottages which he will help the poor to build.”

The clergyman looks down on the little heaps he had raised from the sticks of the pile of shame. The longer he talks with Gösta, the more he is convinced that the latter is right. He had always had the thought of doing good some day, when he had enough⁠—of course he had had that thought.

“Why does he never build the cottages?” he asks shyly.

“He is ashamed. Many would think that he did what he always had meant to do through fear of the people.”

“He cannot bear to be forced, is that it?”

“He can however do much good secretly. Much help is needed this year. He can find someone who will dispense his gifts. I understand what it all means,” cries Gösta, and his eyes shone. “Thousands shall get bread this year from one whom they load with curses.”

“It shall be so, Gösta.”

A feeling of transport came over the two who had so failed in the vocation they had chosen. The desire of their youthful days to serve God and man filled them. They gloated over the good deeds they would do. Gösta would help the minister.

“We will get bread to begin with,” says the clergyman.

“We will get teachers. We will have a surveyor come, and divide up the land. Then the people shall learn how to till their fields and tend their cattle.”

“We will build roads and open new districts.”

“We will make locks at the falls at Berg, so that there will be an open way between Löfven and Väner.”

“All the riches of the forest will be of double blessing when the way to the sea is opened.”

“Your head shall be weighed down by blessings,” cries Gösta.

The clergyman looks up. They read in one another’s eyes the same burning enthusiasm.

But at the same moment the eyes of both fall on the pile of shame.

“Gösta,” says the old man, “all that needs a young man’s strength, but I am dying. You see what is killing me.”

“Get rid of it!”

“How, Gösta Berling?”

Gösta moves close up to him and looks sharply into his eyes. “Pray to God for rain,” he says. “You are going to preach next Sunday. Pray for rain.”

The old clergyman sinks down in terror.

“If you are in earnest, if you are not he who has brought the drought to the land, if you had meant to serve the Most High with your hardness, pray God for rain. That shall be the token; by that we shall know if God wishes what we wish.”

When Gösta drove down Broby hill, he was astonished at himself and at the enthusiasm which had taken hold of him. But it could be a beautiful life⁠—yes, but not for him. Up there they would have none of his services.

In the Broby church the sermon was over and the usual prayers read. The minister was just going to step down from the pulpit, but he hesitated, finally he fell on his knees and prayed for rain.

He prayed as a desperate man prays, with few words, without coherency.

“If it is my sin which has called down Thy wrath, let me alone suffer! If there is any pity in Thee, Thou God of mercy, let it rain! Take the shame from me! Let it rain in answer to my prayer! Let the rain fall on the fields of the poor! Give Thy people bread!”

The day was hot; the sultriness was intolerable. The congregation sat as if in a torpor; but at these broken words, this hoarse despair, everyone had awakened.

“If there is a way of expiation for me, give rain⁠—”

He stopped speaking. The doors stood open. There came a violent gust of wind. It rushed along the ground, whirled into the church, in a cloud of dust, full of sticks and straw. The clergyman could not continue; he staggered down from the pulpit.

The people trembled. Could that be an answer?

But the gust was only the forerunner of the thunderstorm. It came rushing with an unheard-of violence. When the psalm was sung,