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

“You stole me,” she cried. “You came like a thief and took me. They forced me, in my home, by blows, by hunger, and hard words to be your wife. I have treated you as you deserved.”

The major’s broad fist is clenched. His wife gives way a couple of steps. Then she speaks again.

“Living eels twist under the knife; an unwilling wife takes a lover. Will you strike me now for what happened twenty years ago? Do you not remember how he lived at Ekeby, we at Sjö? Do you not remember how he helped us in our poverty? We drove in his carriages, we drank his wine. Did we hide anything from you? Were not his servants your servants? Did not his gold weigh heavy in your pocket? Did you not accept the seven estates? You held your tongue and took them; then you should have struck, Berndt Samzelius⁠—then you should have struck.”

The man turns from her and looks on all those present. He reads in their faces that they think she is right, that they all believe he took the estates in return for his silence.

“I never knew it!” he says, and stamps on the floor.

“It is well that you know it now!” she cries, in a shrill, ringing voice. “Was I not afraid lest you should die without knowing it? It is well that you know it now, so that I can speak out to you who have been my master and jailer. You know now that I, in spite of all, was his from whom you stole me. I tell you all now, you who have slandered me!”

It is the old love which exults in her voice and shines from her eyes. Her husband stands before her with lifted hand. She reads horror and scorn on the fifty faces about her. She feels that it is the last hour of her power. But she cannot help rejoicing that she may speak openly of the tenderest memory of her life.

“He was a man, a man indeed. Who were you, to come between us? I have never seen his equal. He gave me happiness, he gave me riches. Blessed be his memory!”

Then the major lets his lifted arm fall without striking her; now he knows how he shall punish her.

“Away!” he cries; “out of my house!”

She stands motionless.

But the pensioners stand with pale faces and stare at one another. Everything was going as the devil had prophesied. They now saw the consequences of the non-renewal of the contract. If that is true, so is it also true that she for more than twenty years had sent pensioners to perdition, and that they too were destined for the journey. Oh, the witch!

“Out with you!” continues the major. “Beg your bread on the highway! You shall have no pleasure of his money, you shall not live on his lands. There is no more a mistress of Ekeby. The day you set your foot in my house I will kill you.”

“Do you drive me from my home?”

“You have no home. Ekeby is mine.”

A feeling of despair comes over the major’s wife. She retreats to the door, he following close after her.

“You who have been my life’s curse,” she laments, “shall you also now have power to do this to me?”

“Out, out!”

She leans against the doorpost, clasps her hands, and holds them before her face. She thinks of her mother and murmurs to herself:⁠—

“ ‘May you be disowned, as I have been disowned; may the highway be your home, the haystack your bed!’ It is all coming true.”

The good old clergyman from Bro and the judge from Munkerud came forward now to Major Samzelius and tried to calm him. They said to him that it would be best to let all those old stories rest, to let everything be as it was, to forget and forgive.

He shakes the mild old hands from his shoulder. He is terrible to approach, just as Christian Bergh had been.

“It is no old story,” he cries. “I never knew anything till today. I have never been able before to punish the adulteress.”

At that word the major’s wife lifts her head and regains her old courage.

“You shall go out before I do. Do you think that I shall give in to you?” she says. And she comes forward from the door.

The major does not answer, but he watches her every movement, ready to strike if he finds no better way to revenge himself.

“Help me, good gentlemen,” she cries, “to get this man bound and carried out, until he gets back the use of his senses. Remember who I am and who he is! Think of it, before I must give in to him! I arrange all the work at Ekeby, and he sits the whole day long and feeds his bears. Help me, good friends and neighbors! There will be a boundless misery if I am no longer here. The peasant gets his living by cutting my wood and carting my iron. The charcoal burner lives by getting me charcoal, the lumber man by bringing down my timber. It is I who give out the work which brings prosperity. Smiths, mechanics, and carpenters live by serving me. Do you think that man can keep my work going? I tell you that if you drive me away you let famine in.”

Again are many hands lifted to help the major’s wife; again mild, persuading hands are laid on the major’s shoulders.

“No,” he says, “away with you. Who will defend an adulteress? I tell you that if she does not go of her own will I shall take her in my arms and carry her down to my bears.”

At these words the raised hands are lowered.

Then, as a last resource, she turns to the pensioners.

“Will you also allow me to be driven from my home? Have I let you freeze out in the snow in winter? Have I denied you bitter ale and sweet brandy? Did I take any pay or