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

stared before him with lustreless eyes. Terrifyingly gloomy and hard, he sat there. The young woman could think of nothing to say to him. Then she saw that a child lay sick on a sheaf of straw, and noticed that a woman had hurt her hand. Instantly she began to care for the sick. She was soon friends with the gossiping women, and had them show her the smallest children.

In an hour the men came back. They carried Gösta Berling bound into the room. They laid him down on the floor before the fire. His clothes were torn and dirty, his cheeks sunken, and his eyes wild. Terrible had been his ways during those days; he had lain on the damp ground; he had burrowed with his hands and face in bogs, dragged himself over rocks, forced his way through the thickest underbrush. Of his own will he had never come with the men; but they had overpowered and bound him.

When his wife saw him so, she was angry. She did not free his bound limbs; she let him lie where he was on the floor. With scorn she turned from him.

“How you look!” she said.

“I had never meant to come again before your eyes,” he answered.

“Am I not your wife? Is it not my right to expect you to come to me with your troubles? In bitter sorrow I have waited for you these two days.”

“I was the cause of Captain Lennart’s misfortunes. How could I dare to show myself to you?”

“You are not often afraid, Gösta.”

“The only service I can do you, Elizabeth, is to rid you of myself.”

Unspeakable contempt flashed from under her frowning brows at him.

“You wish to make me a suicide’s wife!”

His face was distorted.

“Elizabeth, let us go out into the silent forest and talk.”

“Why should not these people hear us?” she cried, speaking in a shrill voice. “Are we better than any of them? Has any one of them caused more sorrow and injury than we? They are the children of the forest, and of the highway; they are hated by every man. Let them hear how sin and sorrow also follows the lord of Ekeby, the beloved of all, Gösta Berling! Do you think your wife considers herself better than any one of them⁠—or do you?”

He raised himself with difficulty onto his elbow, and looked at her with sudden defiance. “I am not such a wretch as you think.”

Then she heard the story of those two days. The first day Gösta wandered about in the wood, driven by remorse. He could not bear to meet anyone’s eye. But he did not think of dying. He meant to journey to far distant lands. On Sunday, however, he came down from the hills and went to the Bro church. Once more he wished to see the people: the poor, hungry people whom he had dreamed of serving when he had sat by the Broby clergyman’s pile of shame, and whom he had learned to love when he saw them disappear into the night with the dead broom-girl.

The service had begun when he came to the church. He crept up to the gallery, and looked down on the people. He had felt bitter agony. He had wanted to speak to them, to comfort them in their poverty and hopelessness. If he had only been allowed to speak in God’s house, hopeless as he was, he would have found words of hope and salvation for them all.

Then he left the church, went into the sacristy, and wrote the message which his wife already knew. He had promised that work should be renewed at Ekeby, and grain distributed to those in greatest need. He had hoped that his wife and the pensioners would fulfil his promises when he was gone.

As he came out, he saw a coffin standing before the parish-hall. It was plain, put together in haste, but covered with black crape and wreaths. He knew that it was Captain Lennart’s. The people had begged the captain’s wife to hasten the funeral, so that all those who had come to the Fair could be at the burial.

He was standing and looking at the coffin, when a heavy hand was laid on his shoulder. Sintram had come up to him.

“Gösta,” he said, “if you want to play a regular trick on a person, lie down and die. There is nothing more clever than to die, nothing which so deceives an honest man who suspects no harm. Lie you down and die, I tell you!”

Gösta listened with horror to what he said. Sintram complained of the failure of well-laid plans. He had wanted to see a waste about the shores of the Löfven. He had made the pensioners lords of the place; he had let the Broby clergyman impoverish the people; he had called forth the drought and the famine. At the Broby Fair the decisive blow was to have fallen. Excited by their misfortunes, the people should have turned to murder and robbery. Then there should have been lawsuits to beggar them. Famine, riot, and every kind of misfortune should have ravaged them. Finally, the country would have become so odious and detestable that no one could have lived there, and it would all have been Sintram’s doing. It would have been his joy and pride, for he was evil-minded. He loved desert wastes and uncultivated fields. But this man who had known how to die at the right moment had spoiled it all for him.

Then Gösta asked him what would have been the good of it all.

“It would have pleased me, Gösta, for I am bad. I am the grizzly bear on the mountain; I am the snowstorm on the plain; I like to kill and to persecute. Away, I say, with people and their works! I don’t like them. I can let them slip from between my claws and cut their capers⁠—that is amusing too for a while; but now I am tired of play, Gösta,