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

In a corner between the booths a group of women are wedged, and towards them the giant rages. Does he not see a tradesman in the midst of the crowd? He raises the plank and lets it fall. In pale, shuddering terror the women receive the attack, sinking under the deadly blow.

But as the board falls whistling down over them, its force is broken against a man’s upstretched arms. One man has not sunk down, but raised himself above the crowd, one man has voluntarily taken the blow to save the many. The women and children are uninjured. One man has broken the force of the blow, but he lies now unconscious on the ground.

Big Mons does not lift up his board. He has met the man’s eye, just as the counter struck his head, and it has paralyzed him. He lets himself be bound and taken away without resistance.

But the report flies about the Fair that big Mons has killed Captain Lennart. They say that he who had been the people’s friend died to save the women and defenceless children.

And a silence falls on the great square, where life had lately roared at fever pitch: trade ceases, the fighting stops, the people leave their dinners.

Their friend is dead. The silent throngs stream towards the place where he has fallen. He lies stretched out on the ground quite unconscious; no wound is visible, but his skull seems to be flattened.

Some of the men lift him carefully up on to the counter which the giant has let fall. They think they perceive that he still lives.

“Where shall we carry him?” they ask one another.

“Home,” answers a harsh voice in the crowd.

Yes, good men, carry him home! Lift him up on your shoulders and carry him home! He has been God’s plaything, he has been driven like a feather before his breath. Carry him home!

That wounded head has rested on the hard barrack-bed in the prison, on sheaves of straw in the barn. Let it now come home and rest on a soft pillow! He has suffered undeserved shame and torment, he has been hunted from his own door. He has been a wandering fugitive, following the paths of God where he could find them; but his promised land was that home whose gates God had closed to him. Perhaps his house stands open for one who has died to save women and children.

Now he does not come as a malefactor, escorted by reeling boon-companions; he is followed by a sorrowing people, in whose cottages he has lived while he helped their sufferings. Carry him home!

And so they do. Six men lift the board on which he lies on their shoulders and carry him away from the fairgrounds. Wherever they pass, the people move to one side and stand quiet; the men uncover their heads, the women courtesy as they do in church when God’s name is spoken. Many weep and dry their eyes; others begin to tell what a man he had been⁠—so kind, so gay, so full of counsel and so religious. It is wonderful to see, too, how, as soon as one of his bearers gives out, another quietly comes and puts his shoulder under the board.

So Captain Lennart comes by the place where the pensioners are standing.

“I must go and see that he comes home safely,” says Beerencreutz, and leaves his place at the roadside to follow the procession to Helgesäter. Many follow his example.

The fairgrounds are deserted. Everybody has to follow to see that Captain Lennart comes home.

When the procession reaches Helgesäter, the house is silent and deserted. Again the colonel’s fist beats on the closed door. All the servants are at the Fair; the captain’s wife is alone at home. It is she again who opens the door.

And she asks, as she asked once before⁠—

“What do you want?”

Whereupon the colonel answers, as he answered once before⁠—

“We are here with your husband.”

She looks at him, where he stands stiff and calm as usual. She looks at the bearers behind him, who are weeping, and at all that mass of people. She stands there on the steps and looks into hundreds of weeping eyes, who stare sadly up at her. Last she looks at her husband, who lies stretched out on the bier, and she presses her hand to her heart. “That is his right face,” she murmurs.

Without asking more, she bends down, draws back a bolt, opens the hall-doors wide, and then goes before the others into the bedroom.

The colonel helps her to drag out the big bed and shake up the pillows, and so Captain Lennart is once more laid on soft down and white linen.

“Is he alive?” she asks.

“Yes,” answers the colonel.

“Is there any hope?”

“No. Nothing can be done.”

There was silence for a while; then a sudden thought comes over her.

“Are they weeping for his sake, all those people?”

“Yes.”

“What has he done?”

“The last thing he did was to let big Mons kill him to save women and children from death.”

Again she sits silent for a while and thinks.

“What kind of a face did he have, colonel, when he came home two months ago?”

The colonel started. Now he understands; now at last he understands.

“Gösta had painted him.”

“So it was on account of one of your pranks that I shut him out from his home? How will you answer for that, colonel?”

Beerencreutz shrugged his broad shoulders.

“I have much to answer for.”

“But I think that this must be the worst thing you have done.”

“Nor have I ever gone a heavier way than that today up to Helgesäter. Moreover, there are two others who are guilty in this matter.”

“Who?”

“Sintram is one, you yourself are the other. You are a hard woman. I know that many have tried to speak to you of your husband.”

“It is true,” she answers.

Then she begs him to tell her all about that evening at Broby.

He tells her all he can remember, and she listens silently. Captain Lennart lies still