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

Melchior Sinclair’s eyes. He became thoughtful at the sight, and his heart stood still, as at a presentiment of a misfortune.

He wondered much where Marianne’s mother could be during all this. And he went out, against his will, but driven by fate, to find Madame Gustava Sinclair.

He had to go through many doors before he found her. Her husband had short patience and little fondness for wailing and women’s complaints. He had wearied of seeing her tears flow over the fate which had befallen her household treasures. He was furious that she could weep over table and bed linen, when, what was worse, his beautiful daughter was lost; and so he had hunted her, with clenched fists, before him, through the house, out into the kitchen, and all the way to the pantry.

She could not go any farther, and he had rejoiced at seeing her there, cowering behind the stepladder, awaiting heavy blows, perhaps death. He let her stay there, but he locked the door and stuffed the key in his pocket. She could sit there as long as the auction lasted. She did not need to starve, and his ears had rest from her laments.

There she still sat, imprisoned in her own pantry, when Gösta came through the corridor between the kitchen and the dining-room. He saw her face at a little window high up in the wall. She had climbed up on the stepladder, and stood staring out of her prison.

“What are you doing up there?” asked Gösta.

“He has shut me in,” she whispered.

“Your husband?”

“Yes. I thought he was going to kill me. But listen, Gösta, take the key of the dining-room door, and go into the kitchen and unlock the pantry door with it, so that I can come out. That key fits here.”

Gösta obeyed, and in a couple of minutes the little woman stood in the kitchen, which was quite deserted.

“You should have let one of the maids open the door with the dining-room key,” said Gösta.

“Do you think I want to teach them that trick? Then I should never have any peace in the pantry. And, besides, I took this chance to put the upper shelves in order. They needed it, indeed. I cannot understand how I could have let so much rubbish collect there.”

“You have so much to attend to,” said Gösta.

“Yes, that you may believe. If I were not everywhere, neither the loom nor the spinning-wheel would be going right. And if⁠—”

Here she stopped and wiped away a tear from the corner of her eye.

“God help me, how I do talk!” she said; “they say that I won’t have anything more to look after. He is selling everything we have.”

“Yes, it is a wretched business,” said Gösta.

“You know that big mirror in the drawing-room, Gösta. It was such a beauty, for the glass was whole in it, without a flaw, and there was no blemish at all on the gilding. I got it from my mother, and now he wants to sell it.”

“He is mad.”

“You may well say so. He is not much better. He won’t stop until we shall have to go and beg on the highway, we as well as the major’s wife.”

“It will never be so bad as that,” answered Gösta.

“Yes, Gösta. When the major’s wife went away from Ekeby, she foretold misfortune for us, and now it is coming. She would never have allowed him to sell Björne. And think, his own china, the old Canton cups from his own home, are to be sold. The major’s wife would never have let it happen.”

“But what is the matter with him?” asked Gösta.

“Oh, it is only because Marianne has not come back again. He has waited and waited. He has gone up and down the avenue the whole day and waited for her. He is longing himself mad, but I do not dare to say anything.”

“Marianne believes that he is angry with her.”

“She does not believe that. She knows him well enough; but she is proud and will not take the first step. They are stiff and hard, both of them, and I have to stand between them.”

“You must know that Marianne is going to marry me?”

“Alas, Gösta, she will never do that. She says that only to make him angry. She is too spoiled to marry a poor man, and too proud, too. Go home and tell her that if she does not come home soon, all her inheritance will have gone to destruction. Oh, he will throw everything away, I know, without getting anything for it.”

Gösta was really angry with her. There she sat on a big kitchen table, and had no thought for anything but her mirrors and her china.

“You ought to be ashamed!” he burst out. “You throw your daughter out into a snowdrift, and then you think that it is only temper that she does not come back. And you think that she is no better than to forsake him whom she cares for, lest she should lose her inheritance.”

“Dear Gösta, don’t be angry, you too. I don’t know what I am saying. I tried my best to open the door for Marianne, but he took me and dragged me away. They all say here that I don’t understand anything. I shall not grudge you Marianne, Gösta, if you can make her happy. It is not so easy to make a woman happy, Gösta.”

Gösta looked at her. How could he too have raised his voice in anger against such a person as she⁠—terrified and cowed, but with such a good heart!

“You do not ask how Marianne is,” he said gently.

She burst into tears.

“Will you not be angry with me if I ask you?” she said. “I have longed to ask you the whole time. Think that I know no more of her than that she is living. Not one greeting have I had from her the whole time, not once when I sent clothes to her, and so I thought that you and she did