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

Now what they had sown began to come up.

God bless them! they stood there so bravely, both peas and beans with their two thick cotyledons; and how thick and nice had both carrots and beets come up! The funniest of all were the little crinkled parsley leaves, which lifted a little earth above them and played bopeep with life as yet.

And here was a little bed where the lines did not go so evenly and where the small squares seemed to be an experiment map of everything which could be set or sowed. That was the children’s garden.

And Lilliecrona put his violin hastily up to his chin and began to play. The birds began to sing in the big shrubbery which protected the garden from the north wind. It was not possible for anything gifted with voice to be silent, so glorious was the morning. The fiddle-bow moved quite of itself.

Lilliecrona walked up and down the paths and played. “No,” he thought, “there is no more beautiful place.” What was Ekeby compared to Löfdala. His home had a thatched roof and was only one story high. It lay at the edge of the wood, with the mountain above it and the long valley below it. There was nothing wonderful about it; there was no lake there, no waterfall, no park, but it was beautiful just the same. It was beautiful because it was a good, peaceful home. Life was easy to live there. Everything which in other places caused bitterness and hate was there smoothed away with gentleness. So shall it be in a home.

Within, in the house, the mistress lies and sleeps in a room which opens on the garden. She wakes suddenly and listens, but she does not move. She lies smiling and listening. Then the musician comes nearer and nearer, and at last it sounds as if he had stopped under her window. It is indeed not the first time she has heard the violin under her window. He was in the habit of coming so, her husband, when they had done something unusually wild there at Ekeby.

He stands there and confesses and begs for forgiveness. He describes to her the dark powers which tempt him away from what he loves best⁠—from her and the children. But he loves them. Oh, of course he loves them!

While he plays she gets up and puts on her clothes without quite knowing what she is doing. She is so taken up with his playing.

“It is not luxury and good cheer, which tempt me away,” he plays “not love for other women, nor glory, but life’s seductive changes: its sweetness, its bitterness, its riches, I must feel about me. But now I have had enough of it, now I am tired and satisfied. I shall never again leave my home. Forgive me; have mercy upon me!”

Then she draws aside the curtain and opens the window, and he sees her beautiful, kind face.

She is good, and she is wise. Her glances bring blessings like the sun’s on everything they meet. She directs and tends. Where she is, everything grows and flourishes. She bears happiness within her.

He swings himself up on to the windowsill to her, and is happy as a young lover.

Then he lifts her out into the garden and carries her down under the apple-trees. There he explains for her how beautiful everything is, and shows her the vegetable beds and the children’s garden and the funny little parsley leaves.

When the children awake, there is joy and rapture that father has come. They take possession of him. He must see all that is new and wonderful: the little nail-manufactory which pounds away in the brook, the bird’s-nest in the willow, and the little minnows in the pond, which swim in thousands near the surface of the water.

Then father, mother, and children take a long walk in the fields. He wants to see how close the rye stands, how the clover is growing, and how the potatoes are beginning to poke up their crumpled leaves.

He must see the cows when they come in from the pasture, visit the newcomers in the barn and sheep-house, look for eggs, and give all the horses sugar.

The children hang at his heels the whole day. No lessons, no work; only to wander about with their father!

In the evening he plays polkas for them, and all day he has been such a good comrade and playfellow that they fall asleep with a pious prayer that father may always stay with them.

He stays eight long days, and is joyous as a boy the whole time. He could stand it no longer, it was too much happiness for him. Ekeby was a thousand times worse, but Ekeby lay in the midst of the whirl of events. Oh, how much there was there to dream of and to play of! How could he live separated from the pensioners’ deeds, and from Löfven’s long lake, about which adventure’s wild chase rushed onward?

On his own estate everything went on in its calm, wonted way. Everything flourished and grew under the gentle mistress’s care. Everyone was happy there. Everything which anywhere else could have caused discord and bitterness passed over there without complaints or pain. Everything was as it should be. If now the master of the house longed to live as pensioner at Ekeby, what then? Does it help to complain of heaven’s sun because it disappears every evening in the west, and leaves the earth in darkness?

What is so unconquerable as submission? What is so certain of victory as patience?

The witch of Dovre walks on Löfven’s shores. People have seen her there, little and bent, in a leather skirt and a belt of silver plates. Why has she come out of the wolf-holes to a human world? What does the old creature of the mountains want in the green of the valley?

She comes begging. She is mean, greedy for gifts,