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

another than he shall shoot the great forest monarch, the old bear of Gurlitta Cliff.

The sexton aims⁠—God help us! aims, as if he meant to hit the Great Bear, which high up in the sky wanders about the North Star, and not a bear wandering on the plain⁠—and the gun goes off with a bang which can be heard all the way to Gurlitta Cliff.

But however he has aimed, the bear falls. So it is when one shoots with a silver bullet. One shoots the bear through the heart, even if one aims at the Dipper.

People come rushing out from all the neighboring farmyards and wonder what is going on, for never had a shot sounded so loud nor waked so many sleeping echoes as this one, and the sexton wins much praise, for the bear had been a real pest.

Little Faber comes out too, but now is Major Fuchs sadly disappointed. There stands the sexton covered with glory, besides having saved Faber’s cows, but the little organist is neither touched nor grateful. He does not open his arms to him and greet him as brother-in-law and hero.

The major stands and frowns and stamps his foot in rage over such smallness. He wants to explain to the covetous, narrow-minded little fellow what a deed it is, but he begins to stammer, so that he cannot get out a word. And he gets angry and more angry at the thought that he has given up the glory of killing the great bear in vain.

Oh, it is quite impossible for him to comprehend that he who had done such a deed should not be worthy to win the proudest of brides.

The sexton and some of the young men are going to skin the bear; they go to the grindstone and sharpen the knives. Others go in and go to bed. Major Fuchs stands alone by the dead bear.

Then he goes to the church once more, puts the key again in the lock, climbs up the narrow stairs and the twisted ladder, wakes the sleeping pigeons, and once more comes up to the tower-room.

Afterwards, when the bear is skinned under the major’s inspection, they find between his jaws a package of notes of five hundred rix-dollars. It is impossible to say how it came there, but of course it was a marvellous bear; and as the sexton had killed him, the money is his, that is very plain.

When it is made known, little Faber too understands what a glorious deed the sexton has done, and he declares that he would be proud to be his brother-in-law.

On Friday evening Major Anders Fuchs returns to Ekeby, after having been at a feast, in honor of the lucky shot, at the sexton’s and an engagement dinner at the organist’s. He follows the road with a heavy heart; he feels no joy that his enemy is dead, and no pleasure in the magnificent bearskin which the sexton has given him.

Many perhaps will believe that he is grieving that the sweet little maiden shall be another’s. Oh no, that causes him no sorrow. But what goes to his very heart is that the old, one-eyed forest king is dead, and it was not he who shot the silver bullet at him.

So he comes into the pensioners’ wing, where the pensioners are sitting round the fire, and without a word throws the bearskin down among them. Let no one think that he told about that expedition; it was not until long, long after that anyone could get out of him the truth of it. Nor did he betray the Broby clergyman’s hiding-place, who perhaps never noticed the theft.

The pensioners examine the skin.

“It is a fine skin,” says Beerencreutz. “I would like to know why this fellow has come out of his winter sleep, or perhaps you shot him in his hole?”

“He was shot at Bro.”

“Yes, as big as the Gurlitta bear he never was,” says Gösta, “but he has been a fine beast.”

“If he had had one eye,” says Kevenhüller, “I would have thought that you had killed the old one himself, he is so big; but this one has no wound or inflammation about his eyes, so it cannot be the same.”

Fuchs swears over his stupidity, but then his face lights up so that he is really handsome. The great bear has not been killed by another man’s bullet.

“Lord God, how good thou art!” he says, and folds his hands.

IX The Auction at Björne

We young people often had to wonder at the old people’s tales. “Was there a ball every day, as long as your radiant youth lasted?” we asked them. “Was life then one long adventure?”

“Were all young women beautiful and lovely in those days, and did every feast end by Gösta Berling carrying off one of them?”

Then the old people shook their worthy heads, and began to tell of the whirring of the spinning-wheel and the clatter of the loom, of work in the kitchen, of the thud of the flail and the path of the axe through the forest; but it was not long before they harked back to the old theme. Then sledges drove up to the door, horses speeded away through the dark woods with the joyous young people; then the dance whirled and the violin-strings snapped. Adventure’s wild chase roared about Löfven’s long lake with thunder and crash. Far away could its noise be heard. The forest tottered and fell, all the powers of destruction were let loose; fire flamed out, floods laid waste the land, wild beasts roamed starving about the farmyards. Under the light-footed horses’ hoofs all quiet happiness was trampled to dust. Wherever the hunt rushed by, men’s hearts flamed up in madness, and the women in pale terror had to flee from their homes.

And we young ones sat wondering, silent, troubled, but blissful. “What people!” we thought. “We shall never see their like.”

“Did the people of those days never think of what they were