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

there is nobody for many miles, she has to break branches for a bed and rest under the roots of a fallen pine.

And at last she has reached her journey’s end, the hundred and twenty miles are over, the wood opens out, and the red house stands in a snow-covered yard. The Klar River rushes foaming by in a succession of little waterfalls, and by that well-known sound she hears that she is at home. And her mother, who must have seen her coming begging, just as she had wished, comes to meet her.

When the major’s wife has got so far she always looks up, glances about her, sees the closed door, and knows where she is.

Then she wonders if she is going mad, and sits down to think and to rest. But after a time she sets out again, calculates the yards and the furlongs, the half-miles and the miles, rests for a short time in Finn huts, and sleeps neither night nor day until she has again accomplished the hundred and twenty miles.

During all the time she has been in prison she has almost never slept.

And the two women who had come to see her looked at her with anguish.

The young countess will ever afterwards remember her, as she walked there. She sees her often in her dreams, and wakes with eyes full of tears and a moan on her lips.

The old woman is so pitifully changed, her hair is so thin, and loose ends stick out from the narrow braid. Her face is relaxed and sunken, her dress is disordered and ragged. But with it all she has so much still of her lofty bearing that she inspires not only sympathy, but also respect.

But what the countess remembered most distinctly were her eyes, sunken, turned inward, not yet deprived of all the light of reason, but almost ready to be extinguished, and with a spark of wildness lurking in their depths, so that one had to shudder and fear to have the old woman in the next moment upon one, with teeth ready to bite, fingers to tear.

They have been there quite a while when the major’s wife suddenly stops before the young woman and looks at her with a stern glance. The countess takes a step backwards and seizes Madame Scharling’s arm.

The features of the major’s wife have life and expression, her eyes look out into the world with full intelligence.

“Oh, no; oh, no,” she says and smiles; “as yet it is not so bad, my dear young lady.”

She asks them to sit down, and sits down herself. She has an air of old-time stateliness, known since days of feasting at Ekeby and at the royal balls at the governor’s house at Karlstad. They forget the rags and the prison and only see the proudest and richest woman in Värmland.

“My dear countess,” she says, “what possessed you to leave the dance to visit a lonely old woman? You must be very good.”

Countess Elizabeth cannot answer. Her voice is choking with emotion. Madame Scharling answers for her, that she had not been able to dance for thinking of the major’s wife.

“Dear Madame Scharling,” answers the major’s wife, “has it gone so far with me that I disturb the young people in their pleasure? You must not weep for me, my dear young countess,” she continued. “I am a wicked old woman, who deserves all I get. You do not think it right to strike one’s mother?”

“No, but⁠—”

The major’s wife interrupts her and strokes the curly, light hair back from her forehead.

“Child, child,” she says, “how could you marry that stupid Henrik Dohna?”

“But I love him.”

“I see how it is, I see how it is,” says the major’s wife. “A kind child and nothing more; weeps with those in sorrow, and laughs with those who are glad. And obliged to say ‘yes’ to the first man who says, ‘I love you.’ Yes, of course. Go back now and dance, my dear young countess. Dance and be happy! There is nothing bad in you.”

“But I want to do something for you.”

“Child,” says the major’s wife, solemnly, “an old woman lived at Ekeby who held the winds of heaven prisoners. Now she is caught and the winds are free. Is it strange that a storm goes over the land?

“I, who am old, have seen it before, countess. I know it. I know that the storm of the thundering God is coming. Sometimes it rushes over great kingdoms, sometimes over small out-of-the-way communities. God’s storm forgets no one. It comes over the great as well as the small. It is grand to see God’s storm coming.

“Anguish shall spread itself over the land. The small birds’ nests shall fall from the branches. The hawk’s nest in the pine-tree’s top shall be shaken down to the earth with a great noise, and even the eagle’s nest in the mountain cleft shall the wind drag out with its dragon tongue.

“We thought that all was well with us; but it was not so. God’s storm is needed. I understand that, and I do not complain. I only wish that I might go to my mother.”

She suddenly sinks back.

“Go now, young woman,” she says. “I have no more time. I must go. Go now, and look out for them who ride on the storm-cloud!”

Thereupon she renews her wandering. Her features relax, her glance turns inward. The countess and Madame Scharling have to leave her.

As soon as they are back again among the dancers the young countess goes straight to Gösta Berling.

“I can greet you from the major’s wife,” she says. “She is waiting for you to get her out of prison.”

“Then she must go on waiting, countess.”

“Oh, help her, Herr Berling!”

Gösta stares gloomily before him. “No,” he says, “why should I help her? What thanks do I owe her? Everything she has done for me has been to my ruin.”

“But Herr Berling⁠—”

“If she had not existed,” he says angrily, “I would now be sleeping up there