The Saga of Gosta Berling

by Selma Lagerlof

  She had been shrewd enough to come to the farm barefoot, with her shoes under her arms; she had rough hands, she spoke the dialect of the province, and she wore the clothes of a farm woman. She was believed.

  The farmer thought she looked frail, and didn’t count much on her capacity for work. But the poor thing had to be somewhere. And so she was allowed to stay.

  There was something about her that made everyone on the farm be friendly to her. She had come to a good place. The people were serious and taciturn. The farmwife liked her, once she discovered that she could do drill weaving. They borrowed a drill loom from the parsonage, and the child’s mother sat at the loom the whole summer.

  It occurred to no one that she needed to be spared. She had to work like a farmwife the whole time. She herself also liked working the best. Life among the peasants pleased her, although she had to do without all accustomed comforts. But everything was taken simply and calmly there. Everyone’s thoughts revolved around work, and the days passed so evenly and uniformly that you lost track of the days and thought it was the middle of the week when Sunday came.

  One day at the end of August there had been some urgency with the rye harvest, and the child’s mother had gone out with them to bind on the field. Then she had overexerted herself, and the child had been born, but too early. She had expected it in October.

  Now the farmwife was standing with the child in the main room to warm it by the fire, for the poor thing was shivering in the midst of the August heat. The child’s mother was lying in the bedroom within, listening to what was being said about the little boy. She could imagine how farmhands and maids stepped forward and observed him.

  “Such a poor little thing!” they would always say, and then it came, consistently and unmistakably: “Poor baby, who has no father!”

  They were not exactly complaining about the child’s wailing. In a certain respect they were convinced that children must wail, and, all things considered, the child was sturdy for its age. If it had only had a father, all would have been good and well, it seemed.

  Lying in bed, the mother listened, and wondered. The matter suddenly seemed unbelievably important to her. How would he get through life, the poor little thing?

  She had drawn up her plans before. She would stay at the farm the first year. Then she would rent a room and earn her bread at the loom. She intended to earn enough herself to feed and clothe the child. Her husband might continue to believe that she was unworthy of him. She had thought that perhaps the child might become a better person by being brought up by her alone than if a stupid, conceited father were to guide it.

  But now, since the child was born, she could not see things that way. Now she thought that she had been selfish. “The child must have a father,” she said to herself.

  If the little boy had not been such a deplorable thing, if he had been able to eat and sleep like other children, if its head had not constantly hung down on one shoulder, and if he had not been so close to dying that the spasms came, the question would not have had such an immense weight.

  It was not so easy to make a decision, and she must make a decision at once. The child was three days old, and the peasants in Värmland seldom wait longer than that to take their children to baptism.

  Under what name would the little boy now be entered into the church register, and what would the minister want to know about the child’s mother? It would be an injustice to the child to have it registered as fatherless. If this child were to turn out to be a weak and sickly man, how then could she answer for having deprived it of the advantages of lineage and wealth?

  The child’s mother had probably noticed that there is usually great happiness and excitement when a child comes into the world. Now it seemed to her that living must be a burden for the little boy whom everyone pitied. She wanted to see him sleep on silk and lace, as befits a count’s son. She wanted to see him surrounded by happiness and pride.

  The child’s mother also began to think that she had committed a great injustice against its father. Did she have the right to keep it for herself alone? She could not have that right. Such a precious little thing, whose value is not in the power of man to assess—should she take it for herself? That would not have been a just action.

  But she would prefer not to go back to her husband. She feared that would be her demise. But the little boy was in greater peril than she. He might die at any moment, and he was not baptized.

  What had driven her away from home, the difficult sin that had dwelled in her heart, was gone. Now surely she had no love for anyone other than the little boy. It was not too heavy a duty to try to get him his rightful place in life.

  The child’s mother summoned the farmer and his wife and told them everything. The man traveled to Borg to tell Count Dohna that his countess lived, and that there was a child.

  The farmer came home late in the evening. He had not seen the count, for he was away, but he had been with the minister in Svartsjö and spoken with him about the matter.

  So the countess found out that her marriage had been declared unlawful, and that she no longer had a husband.

  The minister wrote a friendly letter to her and offered her a home in his house.

  A letter from her own father to Count Henrik, which must have arrived at Borg a few days after her flight, was also sent to her. It was probably this very letter, in which the old man had asked the count to hasten the legalization, which had shown the count the easiest way to be rid of his wife.

  One might imagine that the child’s mother was seized with rage, even more than with sorrow, when she heard the farmer’s story.

  The whole night sleep stayed away from her bed. “The child must have a father!” she thought, over and over again.

  The next morning the farmer had to travel to Ekeby on her behalf and fetch Gösta Berling.

  Gösta placed many questions to the taciturn man, but found out nothing. Yes, the countess had been in his house the whole summer. She had been healthy and worked. Now a child was born. The child was frail, but the mother would soon be healthy again.

  Gösta asked if the countess knew that the marriage had been annulled.

  Yes, she knew that now. She had found out yesterday.

  And as long as the journey lasted, Gösta alternated between fever and chills.

  What did she want from him? Why had she sent for him?

  He thought about summer life up there on the shores of Löven. With joking and play and parties they had let the days go by, and during that time she had worked and suffered.

  Never had he imagined the possibility of getting to see her again. Oh, if he still had dared to hope! Then he could have appeared before her as a better man. What did he have to look back on now other than the usual follies?

  At about eight in the evening he was there and was brought at once to the child’s mother. It was murky in the room. He could hardly see her, where she was lying. The farmwife and farmer also came in.

  Now it should be known that she, whose white face shone toward him from the twilight, was still the highest and purest he knew, the loveliest soul who had taken on earthly form. When he again felt the blessing of her presence, he wanted to get down on his knees and thank her for revealing herself to him anew, but he was so overwhelmed with happiness that he could say or do nothing.

  “Dear Countess Elisabet!” he simply exclaimed.

  “Good evening, Gösta!”

  She extended her hand to him, which again seemed to have become soft and transparent. She was lying quietly, while he struggled with his emotions.

  The child’s mother was not shaken by any powerful, surging feelings when she saw Gösta. It simply astonished her that he seemed to attach most importance to her, when he really ought to comprehend that it now only concerned the child.

  “Gösta,” she said gently, “now you must help me, as you once promised. You know that my husband has abandoned me, so that my child does not have a father.”

  “Yes, countess,
but this must of course be changed. Now that there is a child, the count can certainly be forced to legalize the marriage. Be assured that I will help you, countess!”

  The countess smiled. “Do you think that I want to force myself on Count Dohna?”

  The blood rushed to Gösta’s head. What did she want from him then? What was she asking of him?

  “Come here, Gösta,” she said, again extending her hand. “You must not get angry at me for what I am saying now, but I was thinking that you, who are, who are . . .”

  “A defrocked minister, a drinker, a cavalier, Ebba Dohna’s murderer, I know the whole litany. . . .”

  “Are you already angry, Gösta?”

  “I would prefer that you did not say anything more, countess.”

  But the child’s mother continued.

  “There are many, Gösta, who would have wanted to be your wife for the sake of love, but that is not the case with me. If I loved you, I would not dare speak the way I am now speaking. For my own sake I would not ask for such a thing, Gösta, but, you see, for the child’s sake I can do it. You surely understand already what I intend to ask you. It is no doubt a great humiliation for you, because I am an unmarried woman who has a child. I was not thinking that you would want to do it because you are worse than others, although yes! I was also thinking of that. But mostly I was thinking that you might want to do it because you are good, Gösta, because you are a hero and can sacrifice yourself. But perhaps that is too much to ask. Such a thing is perhaps impossible for a man. If you despise me too much, if it is too repulsive to you to be named as father of another’s child, then just say so! I will not be angry. I understand well enough that this is too much to ask, but the child is so sick, Gösta. It is so cruel not to be able to mention the name of his mother’s husband at his baptism.”

  He who was listening to her had the same feeling as on that spring day when he had to take her ashore and abandon her to her fate. Now he must help her destroy her future, her whole future. He, who loved her, must do this.

  “I will do everything you want, countess,” he said.

  The next day he spoke with the dean in Bro, for Bro is the mother parish to Svartsjö, and the banns must be read there.

  The old, good dean was moved by his story and promised to take on all the responsibility of arranging for a guardian and the like.

  “Yes,” he said, “you must help her, Gösta, you must. Otherwise she might go crazy. She thinks she has harmed the child by depriving it of its station in life. She has an extremely sensitive conscience, that woman.”

  “But I know that I will make her unhappy,” Gösta exclaimed.

  “You will certainly do no such thing, Gösta. You will become a levelheaded man now, with a wife and child to care for.”

  In the meantime the dean would go down to Svartsjö and speak with both the minister and the judge. The result of it all was that the next Sunday, the first of September, banns were read in Svartsjö between Gösta Berling and Elisabet von Thurn.

  So the child’s mother was conveyed with the greatest care to Ekeby, and there the child was baptized.

  The dean spoke with her then and told her that she could still retract her decision to marry such a man as Gösta Berling. She ought to write to her father first.

  “I cannot change my mind,” she said. “Think if my child were to die, before it has gotten a father!”

  When the third day for reading the banns came, the child’s mother had already been healthy and out of bed for several days. In the afternoon the dean came to Ekeby and wed her to Gösta Berling. But there was no one who thought of this as a wedding. No guests were invited. The child was simply getting a father, nothing else.

  The child’s mother radiated a quiet happiness, as if she had reached a great goal in life. The bridegroom was distressed. He thought about how she was throwing away her future in a marriage with him. He noticed with dismay how he actually scarcely existed for her. All her thoughts were with the child.

  A few days afterward the father and mother were bereaved. The child had died during a spasm.

  It seemed to many as if the child’s mother did not grieve as powerfully and as deeply as might have been expected. There was a shimmer of triumph over her. It was as if she rejoiced that she had been able to throw away her entire future for the child’s sake. When the little boy came up to the angels, he would remember, however, that on earth he had a mother who had loved him.

  Everything happened quietly and unnoticed. When the banns were read for Gösta Berling and Elisabet von Thurn down in Svartsjö, most people did not even know who the bride was. The ministers and gentry, who did know about the matter, spoke little about it. It was as if they feared that someone who had lost faith in the power of conscience would interpret the young woman’s course of action badly. They were so afraid, so afraid that someone might come and say, “Look here, it was still the case that she couldn’t overcome her love for Gösta! Now she has married him under a fraudulent pretext.” Oh, the old people were still so careful about the young woman. They could never tolerate it if anyone said anything bad about her. They hardly wanted to admit that she had sinned. They did not want to see that any guilt stained this soul, which was so afraid of evil.

  Another great event occurred just then, which also meant that Gösta’s marriage was little discussed.

  It happened that Major Samzelius met with an accident. He had become more and more strange and shy of people. He mostly associated with animals and had gathered an entire little zoo down at Sjö.

  He was also dangerous, because he always had his loaded shotgun with him and fired it again and again without paying any particular heed to where he was aiming. One day he was bitten by a tame bear, which he had shot unintentionally. The wounded animal pounced on him, where he was standing close by the grating, and managed to give him a massive bite on the arm. The animal then broke out and ran off into the forest.

  The major was confined to bed and died from this wound, but not until right before Christmas. If the majoress had known he was sick, she could have retaken dominion over Ekeby. But the cavaliers realized that she would not come until their year was out.

  CHAPTER 31

  AMOR VINCIT OMNIA

  Under the balcony staircase in Svartsjö church is a rubbish room, filled with the gravediggers’ worn-out spades, with broken church pews, with discarded tin nameplates and other rubbish.

  Inside there, where the dust lies thick and conceals it, as it were, from every human eye, is a chest, inset with mother-of-pearl in an elaborate mosaic. If you scrape the dust from it, it seems to shine and glitter like a mountain wall in a fairy tale. The chest is locked, and the key is in safekeeping; it may not be used. No mortal may take a look in the chest. No one knows what is in it. Only when the nineteenth century has reached its end may the key be set in the lock, the lid raised, and the treasures it has guarded be viewed by people.

  It has been decreed so by the man who owned the chest.

  On the brass plate on the lid is an inscription: Labor vincit omnia. But a different inscription would have been more suitable. It ought to read, Amor vincit omnia. Even the old chest in the rubbish room under the balcony staircase is testimony of the omnipotence of love.

  Oh Eros, all-governing god!

  You, oh love, are the assuredly eternal. Old is humankind upon the earth, but you have followed them through the ages.

  Where are the gods of the east, the strong heroes who carried lightning as a weapon, those who on the shores of sacred rivers took offerings of honey and milk? They are dead. Dead is Bel, the strong warrior, and Thot, the hawk-headed champion. Dead are the magnificents who rested on the cloud beds of Olympus, as are the adventurers who lived in walled Valhalla. All the gods of the ancients are dead except Eros, Eros the all-governing.

  His work is everything that you see. He upholds the races. Make note of him everywhere! Where can you go, where you do not find the track of his naked foot? What has your ear perceive
d, where the rushing of his wings has not been the keynote? He lives in people’s hearts and in the slumbering seed of grain. Make note, with trembling, of his presence in dead things!

  What exists that does not long and is not enticed? What is there that escapes his dominion? All the gods of vengeance will fall, all the powers of strength and violence. You, oh love, are the assuredly eternal.

  Old uncle Eberhard sits at his writing desk, a magnificent piece of furniture with a hundred drawers, marble top, and darkened brass fittings. He works with eagerness and diligence, alone up in the cavaliers’ wing.

  Oh, Eberhard, why do you not swarm around forest and field during the vanishing last days of summer like the other cavaliers? No one, you know, worships the goddess of wisdom unpunished. Your back is bent at sixty and some-odd years, the hair covering your skull is not your own, wrinkles crowd your forehead, which arches over sunken eye sockets, and the decline of age is indicated in the thousand creases around your empty mouth.

  Oh, Eberhard, why do you not swarm around forest and field? Death will separate you even sooner from your writing desk, because you did not let life beckon you away from it.

  Uncle Eberhard draws a thick ink stroke under his final line. From the writing desk’s innumerable drawers he takes out yellowed, fully scribbled-on bundles, all the various parts of his great work, the work that will carry the name of Eberhard Berggren through the ages. But just as he has piled bundle upon bundle and is gazing at them in silent enjoyment, the door opens, and in comes the young countess.