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

“ ‘And servants, and courtiers, and a golden crown?’

“ ‘Yes.’

“ ‘Will he come soon, grandmother?’

“ ‘No one knows when he will come.’

“ ‘May I sit on a stool at his feet?’

“ ‘You may.’

“ ‘Grandmother, I am so happy,’ says the little one.

“Evening after evening, through many winters, they both sat by the fire and talked of the good King and his kingdom. The little one dreamed of the kingdom which should last a thousand years, both by night and by day. She never wearied of adorning it with everything beautiful which she could think of.

“Ebba Dohna never dared to speak of it to anyone; but from that evening she only lived for the Lord’s kingdom, and to await his coming.

“When the evening sun crimsoned the western sky, she wondered if he would ever appear there, glowing with a mild splendor, followed by a host of millions of angels, and march by her, allowing her to touch the hem of his garment.

“She often thought, too, of those pious women who had hung a veil over their heads, and never lifted their eyes from the ground, but shut themselves in in the gray cloister’s calm, in the darkness of little cells, to always contemplate the glowing visions which appear from the night of the soul.

“Such had she grown up; such she was when she and the new tutor met in the lonely paths of the park.

“I will not speak more harshly of him than I must. I will believe that he loved that child, who soon chose him for companion in her lonely wanderings. I think that his soul got back its wings when he walked by the side of that quiet girl, who had never confided in any other. I think that he felt himself a child again, good, gentle, virtuous.

“But if he really loved her, why did he not remember that he could not give her a worse gift than his love? He, one of the world’s outcasts, what did he want, what did he think of when he walked at the side of the count’s daughter? What did the dismissed clergyman think when she confided to him her gentle dreams? What did he want, who had been a drunkard, and would be again when he got the chance, at the side of her who dreamed of a bridegroom in heaven? Why did he not fly far, far away from her? Would it not have been better for him to wander begging and stealing about the land than to walk under the silent pines and again be good, gentle, virtuous, when it could not change the life he had led, nor make it right that Ebba Dohna should love him?

“Do not think that he looked like a drunkard, with livid cheeks and red eyes. He was always a splendid man, handsome and unbroken in soul and body. He had the bearing of a king and a body of steel, which was not hurt by the wildest life.”

“Is he still living?” asks the countess.

“Oh, no, he must be dead now. All that happened so long ago.”

There is something in Anna Stjärnhök which begins to tremble at what she is doing. She begins to think that she will never tell the countess who the man is of whom she speaks; that she will let her believe that he is dead.

“At that time he was still young;” and she begins her story again. “The joy of living was kindled in him. He had the gift of eloquence, and a fiery, impulsive heart.

“One evening he spoke to Ebba Dohna of love. She did not answer; she only told him what her grandmother had told her that winter evening, and described to him the land of her dreams. Then she exacted a promise from him. She made him swear that he would be a proclaimer of the word of God; one of those who would prepare the way for the Lord, so that his coming might be hastened.

“What could he do? He was a dismissed clergyman, and no way was so closed to him as that on which she wanted him to enter. But he did not dare to tell her the truth. He did not have the heart to grieve that gentle child whom he loved. He promised everything she wished.

“After that few words were needed. It went without saying that some day she should be his wife. It was not a love of kisses and caresses. He hardly dared come near her. She was as sensitive as a fragile flower. But her brown eyes were sometimes raised from the ground to seek his. On moonlit evenings, when they sat on the veranda, she would creep close to him, and then he would kiss her hair without her noticing it.

“But you understand that his sin was in his forgetting both the past and the future. That he was poor and humble he could forget; but he ought always to have remembered that a day must come when in her soul love would rise against love, earth against heaven, when she would be obliged to choose between him and the glorious Lord of the kingdom of the thousand years. And she was not one who could endure such a struggle.

“A summer went by, an autumn, a winter. When the spring came, and the ice melted, Ebba Dohna fell ill. It was thawing in the valleys; there were streams down all the hills, the ice was unsafe, the roads almost impassable both for sledge and cart.

“Countess Dohna wanted to get a doctor from Karlstad; there was none nearer. But she commanded in vain. She could not, either with prayers or threats, induce a servant to go. She threw herself on her knees before the coachman, but he refused. She went into hysterics of grief over her daughter⁠—she was always immoderate, in sorrow as in joy, Countess Märta.

“Ebba Dohna lay ill with pneumonia, and her life was in danger; but no doctor could be got.

“Then the tutor drove to Karlstad. To take that