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

is stopped by Gösta Berling, who is looking for the young ladies.

“You must have patience with me,” he says, laughing. “I shall only torment you for ten minutes; but you must hear my verses.”

He tells them that in the night he had had a dream more vivid than ever before; he had dreamt that he had written verse. He, whom the world called “poet,” although he had always been undeserving of the title, had got up in the middle of the night, and, half asleep, half awake, had begun to write. It was a whole poem, which he had found the next morning on his writing-table. He could never have believed it of himself. Now the ladies should hear it.

And he reads:⁠—

“The moon rose, and with her came the sweetest hour of the day.
From the clear, pale-blue, lofty vault
She flooded the leafy veranda with her light.
On the broad steps we were sitting, both old and young,
Silent at first to let the emotions sing
The heart’s old song in that tender hour.

“From the mignonette rose a sweet perfume,
And from dark thickets shadows crept over the dewy grass.
Oh, who can be safe from emotion
When the night’s shadows play, when the mignonette sheds its heavy perfume?

“The last faded petal dropped from the rose,
Although the offering was not sought by the wind.
So⁠—we thought⁠—will we give up our life,
Vanish into space like a sound,
Like autumn’s yellowed leaf go without a moan.
Death is the reward of life; may we meet it quietly,
Just as a rose lets its last faded petal fall.

“On its fluttering wing a bat flew by us,
Flew and was seen, wherever the moon shone;
Then the question arose in our oppressed hearts⁠—

“The question which none can answer,
The question, heavy as sorrow, old as pain:
‘Oh, whither go we, what paths shall we wander
When we no longer walk on earth’s green pastures?’
Is there no one to show our spirits the way?
Easier were it to show a way to the bat who fluttered by us.

“She laid her head on my shoulder, her soft hair,
She, who loved me, and whispered softly:
‘Think not that souls fly to far-distant places;
When I am dead, think not that I am far away.
Into my beloved’s soul my homeless spirit will creep
And I will come and live in thee.’

“Oh what anguish! With sorrow my heart will break.
Was she to die, die soon? Was this night to be her last?
Did I press my last kiss on my beloved’s waving hair?

“Years have gone by since then. I still sit many times
In the old place, when the night is dark and silent.
But I tremble when the moon shines on the leafy veranda,
For her who alone knows how often I kissed my darling there,
For her who blended her quivering light with my tears,
Which fell on my darling’s hair.
Alas, for memory’s pain! Oh, ’tis the grief of my poor, sinful soul
That it should be her home! What punishment may he not await
Who has bound to himself a soul so pure, so innocent.”

“Gösta,” says Anna, jestingly, while her throat contracts with pain, “people say of you that you have lived through more poems than others have written, who have not done anything else all their lives; but do you know, you will do best to compose poems your own way. That was night work.”

“You are not kind.”

“To come and read such a thing, on death and suffering⁠—you ought to be ashamed!”

Gösta is not listening to her. His eyes are fixed on the young countess. She sits quite stiff, motionless as a statue. He thinks she is going to faint.

But with infinite difficulty her lips form one word.

“Go!” she says.

“Who shall go? Shall I go?”

“The priest shall go,” she stammers out.

“Elizabeth, be silent!”

“The drunken priest shall leave my house!”

“Anna, Anna,” Gösta asks, “what does she mean?”

“You had better go, Gösta.”

“Why shall I go? What does all this mean?”

“Anna,” says Countess Elizabeth, “tell him, tell him!”

“No, countess, tell him yourself!”

The countess sets her teeth, and masters her emotion.

“Herr Berling,” she says, and goes up to him, “you have a wonderful power of making people forget who you are. I did not know it till today. I have just heard the story of Ebba Dohna’s death, and that it was the discovery that she loved one who was unworthy which killed her. Your poem has made me understand that you are that man. I cannot understand how anyone with your antecedents can show himself in the presence of an honorable woman. I cannot understand it, Herr Berling. Do I speak plainly enough?”

“You do, Countess. I will only say one word in my defence. I was convinced, I thought the whole time that you knew everything about me. I have never tried to hide anything; but it is not so pleasant to cry out one’s life’s bitterest sorrow on the highways.”

He goes.

And in the same instant Countess Dohna sets her little foot on the bunch of blue stars.

“You have now done what I wished,” says Anna Stjärnhök sternly to the countess; “but it is also the end of our friendship. You need not think that I can forgive your having been cruel to him. You have turned him away, scorned, and wounded him, and I⁠—I will follow him into captivity; to the scaffold if need be. I will watch over him, protect him. You have done what I wished, but I shall never forgive you.”

“But, Anna, Anna!”

“Because I told you all that do you think that I did it with a glad spirit? Have I not sat here and bit by bit torn my heart out of my breast?”

“Why did you do it?”

“Why? Because I did not wish⁠—that he should be a married woman’s lover.”

XIII Mamselle Marie

There is a buzzing over my head. It must be a bumblebee. And such a perfume! As true as I live, it is sweet marjoram and lavender and hawthorn and lilacs and Easter lilies. It is glorious to feel it on a gray autumn evening in the midst of the town. I only have to