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

“You have a horse and sledge outside.”

She went out, placed herself in the sledge, and drove away. No one followed her. No one knew whither she went.

Down Broby hill Don Juan speeds towards the Löfven’s ice-covered surface. The proud courser flies on. Strong, ice-cold breezes whistle by their cheeks. The bells jingle. The stars and the moon are shining. The snow lies blue-white and glitters from its own brightness.

Gösta feels poetical thoughts wake in him.

“Beerencreutz,” he says, “this is life. Just as Don Juan hurries away with this young woman, so time hurries away with man. You are necessity, who steers the journey. I am desire, who fetters the will, and she is dragged helpless, always deeper and deeper down.”

“Don’t talk!” cries Beerencreutz. “They are coming after us.”

And with a whistling cut of the whip he urges Don Juan to still wilder speed.

“Once it was wolves, now it is spoils,” cries Gösta. “Don Juan, my boy, fancy that you are a young elk. Rush through the brushwood, wade through the swamps, leap from the mountain top down into the clear lake, swim across it with bravely lifted head, and vanish, vanish in the thick pine-woods’ rescuing darkness! Spring, Don Juan! Spring like a young elk!”

Joy fills his wild heart at the mad race. The cries of the pursuers are to him a song of victory. Joy fills his wild heart when he feels the countess’s body shake with fright, when he hears her teeth chatter.

Suddenly he loosens the grip of iron with which he has held her. He stands up in the sledge and waves his cap.

“I am Gösta Berling,” he cries, “lord of ten thousand kisses and thirteen thousand love-letters! Hurra for Gösta Berling! Take him who can!”

And in the next minute he whispers in the countess’s ear:⁠—

“Is not the pace good? Is not the course kingly? Beyond Löfven lies Lake Väner. Beyond Väner lies the sea, everywhere endless stretches of clear blue-black ice, and beyond all a glowing world. Rolling thunders in the freezing ice, shrill cries behind us, shooting stars above us, and jingling bells before us! Forward! Always forward! Have you a mind to try the journey, young, beautiful lady?”

He had let her go. She pushes him roughly away. The next instant finds him on his knees at her feet.

“I am a wretch, a wretch. You ought not to have angered me, countess. You stood there so proud and fair, and never thought that a pensioner’s hand could reach you. Heaven and earth love you. You ought not to add to the burden of those whom heaven and earth scorn.”

He draws her hands to him and lifts them to his face.

“If you only knew,” he says, “what it means to be an outcast. One does not stop to think what one does. No, one does not.”

At the same moment he notices that she has nothing on her hands. He draws a pair of great fur gloves from his pocket and puts them on her.

And he has become all at once quite quiet. He places himself in the sledge, as far from the young countess as possible.

“You need not be afraid,” he says. “Do you not see where we are driving? You must understand that we do not dare to do you any harm.”

She, who has been almost out of her mind with fright, sees that they have driven across the lake and that Don Juan is struggling up the steep hill to Borg.

They stop the horse before the steps of the castle, and let the young countess get out of the sledge at the door of her own home.

When she is surrounded by attentive servants, she regains her courage and presence of mind.

“Take care of the horse, Andersson!” she says to the coachman. “These gentlemen who have driven me home will be kind enough to come in for a while. The count will soon be here.”

“As you wish, countess,” says Gösta, and instantly gets out of the sledge. Beerencreutz throws the reins to the groom without a moment’s hesitation. And the young countess goes before them and ushers them into the hall with ill-concealed malicious joy.

The countess had expected that the pensioners would hesitate at the proposition to await her husband.

They did not know perhaps what a stern and upright man he was. They were not afraid of the inquiry he should make of them, who had seized her by force and compelled her to drive with them. She longed to hear him forbid them ever again to set their foot in her house.

She wished to see him call in the servants to point out the pensioners to them as men who thereafter never should be admitted within the doors of Borg. She wished to hear him express his scorn not only of what they had done to her, but also of their conduct toward the old major’s wife, their benefactress.

He, who showed her only tenderness and consideration, would rise in just wrath against her persecutors. Love would give fire to his speech. He, who guarded and looked after her as a creature of finer stuff than any other, would not bear that rough men had fallen upon her like birds of prey upon a sparrow. She glowed with thirst of revenge.

Beerencreutz, however, walked undaunted into the dining-room, and up to the fire, which was always lighted when the countess came home from a ball.

Gösta remained in the darkness by the door and silently watched the countess, while the servant removed her outer wraps. As he sat and looked at the young woman, he rejoiced as he had not done for many years. He saw so clearly it was like a revelation, although he did not understand how he had discovered it, that she had in her one of the most beautiful of souls.

As yet it lay bound and sleeping; but it would some day show itself. He rejoiced at having discovered all the purity and gentleness and