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

unconscious on the bed. The room is full of weeping people; no one thinks of shutting out that mourning crowd. All the doors stand open, the stairs and the halls are filled with silent, grieving people; far out in the yard they stand in close masses.

When the colonel has finished, she raises her voice and says⁠—

“If there are any pensioners here, I ask them to go. It is hard for me to see them when I am sitting by my husband’s deathbed.”

Without another word the colonel rises and goes out. So do Gösta Berling and several of the other pensioners who had followed Captain Lennart. The people move aside for the little group of humiliated men.

When they are gone the captain’s wife says: “Will some of them who have seen my husband during this time tell me where he has lived, and what he has done?” Then they begin to give testimony of Captain Lennart to his wife, who has misjudged him and sternly hardened her heart against him.

It lasted a long time before they all were done. All through the twilight and the evening they stand and speak; one after another steps forward and tells of him to his wife, who would not hear his name mentioned.

Some tell how he found them on a sickbed and cured them. There are wild brawlers whom he has tamed. There are mourners whom he has cheered, drunkards whom he had led to sobriety. Everyone who had been in unbearable distress had sent a message to God’s wayfarer, and he had helped them, or at least he had waked hope and faith.

Out in the yard the crowd stands and waits. They know what is going on inside: that which is said aloud by the deathbed is whispered from man to man outside. He who has something to say pushes gently forward. “Here is one who can bear witness,” they say, and let him pass. And they step forward out of the darkness, give their testimony, and disappear again into the darkness.

“What does she say now?” those standing outside ask when someone comes out. “What does she say?”

“She shines like a queen. She smiles like a bride. She has moved his armchair up to the bed and laid on it the clothes which she herself had woven for him.”

But then a silence falls on the people. No one says it, all know it at the same time: “He is dying.”

Captain Lennart opens his eyes and sees everything.

He sees his home, the people, his wife, his children, the clothes; and he smiles. But he has only waked to die. He draws a rattling breath and gives up the ghost.

Then the stories cease, but a voice takes up a death-hymn. All join in, and, borne on hundreds of strong voices, the song rises on high.

It is earth’s farewell greeting to the departing soul.

XXII The Forest Cottage

It was many years before the pensioners’ reign at Ekeby.

The shepherd’s boy and girl played together in the wood, built houses with flat stones, and picked cloudberries. They were both born in the wood. The wood was their home and mansion. They lived in peace with everything there.

The children looked upon the lynx and the fox as their watchdogs, the weasel was their cat, hares and squirrels their cattle, owls and grouse sat in their birdcage, the pines were their servants, and the young birch-trees guests at their feasts. They knew the hole where the viper lay curled up in his winter rest; and when they had bathed they had seen the water-snake come swimming through the clear water; but they feared neither snake nor wild creature; they belonged to the wood and it was their home. There nothing could frighten them.

Deep in the wood lay the cottage where the boy lived. A hilly wood-path led to it; mountains closed it in and shut out the sun; a bottomless swamp lay near by and gave out the whole year round an icy mist. Such a dwelling seemed far from attractive to the people on the plain.

The shepherd’s boy and girl were some day to be married, live there in the forest cottage, and support themselves by the work of their hands. But before they were married, war passed over the land, and the boy enlisted. He came home again without wound or injured limb; but he had been changed for life by the campaign. He had seen too much of the world’s wickedness and man’s cruel activity against man. He could no longer see the good.

At first no one saw any change in him. With the love of his childhood he went to the clergyman and had the banns published. The forest cottage above Ekeby was their home, as they had planned long before; but it was not a happy home.

The wife looked at her husband as at a stranger. Since he had come from the wars, she could not recognize him. His laugh was hard, and he spoke but little. She was afraid of him.

He did no harm, and worked hard. Still he was not liked, for he thought evil of everybody. He felt himself like a hated stranger. Now the forest animals were his enemies. The mountain, which shut out the sun, and the swamp, which sent up the mist, were his foes. The forest is a terrible place for one who has evil thoughts.

He who will live in the wilderness should have bright memories. Otherwise he sees only murder and oppression among plants and animals, just as he had seen it before among men. He expects evil from everything he meets.

The soldier, Jan Hök, could not explain what was the matter with him; but he felt that nothing went well with him. There was little peace in his home. His sons who grew up there were strong, but wild. They were hardy and brave men, but they too lived at enmity with all men.

His wife was tempted by her sorrow to seek out the