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

stove. As if pensioners were not fit to associate with fine people!

The major’s wife is proud to sit between the Count at Borg and the Bro clergyman. The pensioners hang their heads like shamefaced children, and by degrees awake in them thoughts of the night.

Like shy guests the gay sallies, the merry stories come to the table in the corner by the stove. There the rage of the night and its promises enter into their minds. Master Julius makes the mighty captain, Christian Bergh, believe that the roasted grouse, which are being served at the big table, will not go round for all the guests; but it amuses no one.

“They won’t go round,” he says. “I know how many there are. But they’ll manage in spite of it, Captain Christian; they have some roasted crows for us here at the little table.”

But Colonel Beerencreutz’s lips are curved by only a very feeble smile, under the fierce moustaches, and Gösta has looked the whole day as if he was meditating somebody’s death.

“Any food is good enough for pensioners,” he says.

At last the dish heaped up with magnificent grouse reaches the little table.

But Captain Christian is angry. Has he not had a lifelong hate of crows⁠—those odious, cawing, winged things?

He hated them so bitterly that last autumn he had put on a woman’s trailing dress, and had fastened a cloth on his head and made himself a laughingstock for all men, only to get in range when they ate the grain in the fields.

He sought them out at their caucuses on the bare fields in the spring and killed them. He looked for their nests in the summer, and threw out the screaming, featherless young ones, or smashed the half-hatched eggs.

Now he seizes the dish of grouse.

“Do you think I don’t know them?” he cries to the servant. “Do I need to hear them caw to recognize them? Shame on you, to offer Christian Bergh crows! Shame on you!”

Thereupon he takes the grouse, one by one, and throws them against the wall.

“Shame, shame!” he reiterates, so that the whole room rings⁠—“to offer Christian Bergh crows! Shame!”

And just as he used to hurl the helpless young crows against the cliffs, so now he sends grouse after grouse whizzing against the wall.

Sauce and grease spatter about him, the crushed birds rebound to the floor.

And the bachelors’ wing rejoices.

Then the angry voice of the major’s wife penetrates to the pensioners’ ears.

“Turn him out!” she calls to the servants.

But they do not dare to touch him. He is still Christian Bergh, the mighty captain.

“Turn him out!”

He hears the command, and, terrible in his rage, he now turns upon the major’s wife as a bear turns from a fallen enemy to meet a new attack. He marches up to the horseshoe table. His heavy tread resounds through the hall. He stands opposite her, with the table between them.

“Turn him out!” cries the major’s wife again.

But he is raging; none dare to face his frowning brow and great clenched hand. He is big as a giant, and as strong. The guests and servants tremble, and dare not approach him. Who would dare to touch him now, when rage has taken away his reason?

He stands opposite the major’s wife and threatens her.

“I took the crow and threw it against the wall. And I did right.”

“Out with you, captain!”

“Shame, woman! Offer Christian Bergh crows! If I did right I would take you and your seven hell’s⁠—”

“Thousand devils, Christian Bergh! don’t swear. Nobody but I swears here.”

“Do you think I am afraid of you, hag? Don’t you think I know how you got your seven estates?”

“Silence, captain!”

“When Altringer died he gave them to your husband because you had been his mistress.”

“Will you be silent?”

“Because you had been such a faithful wife, Margareta Samzelius. And the major took the seven estates and let you manage them and pretended not to know. And the devil arranged it all; but now comes the end for you.”

The major’s wife sits down; she is pale and trembling. She assents in a strange, low voice.

“Yes, now it is the end for me, and it is your doing, Christian Bergh.”

At her voice Captain Christian trembles, his face works, and his eyes are filled with tears of anguish.

“I am drunk,” he cries. “I don’t know what I am saying; I haven’t said anything. Dog and slave, dog and slave, and nothing more have I been for her for forty years. She is Margareta Celsing, whom I have served my whole life. I say nothing against her. What should I have to say against the beautiful Margareta Celsing! I am the dog which guards her door, the slave who bears her burdens. She may strike me, she may kick me! You see how I hold my tongue and bear it. I have loved her for forty years. How could I say anything against her?”

And a wonderful sight it is to see how he kneels and begs for forgiveness. And as she is sitting on the other side of the table, he goes on his knees round the table till he comes to her; then he bends down and kisses the hem of her dress, and the floor is wet with his tears.

But not far from the major’s wife sits a small, strong man. He has shaggy hair, small, squinting eyes, and a protruding under-jaw. He looks like a bear. He is a man of few words, who likes to go his own quiet way and let the world take care of itself. He is Major Samzelius.

He rises when he hears Captain Christian’s accusing words, and the major’s wife rises, and all the fifty guests. The women are weeping in terror of what is coming, the men stand dejected, and at the feet of the major’s wife lies Captain Christian, kissing the hem of her dress, wetting the floor with his tears.

The major slowly clenches his broad, hairy hands, and lifts his arm.

But the woman speaks first. Her voice sounds hollow