On Friday Broby market began, and then Captain Lennart was killed. Strong Måns, who gave the deathblow, was the son of the old man in the forest croft. Therefore, when on Sunday afternoon the gypsies sat together up there, they handed the flask of liquor to old Jan Hök more often than usual and spoke with him about prison life and prisoners’ fare and trials, for they had often tried such things.
The old man sat on the chopping block in the chimney corner, hardly speaking. His large, lackluster eyes stared out over the wild band that filled the room. Twilight had come, but the wood fire gave light. It illuminated rags, misery, and bitter distress.
Then the door opened very slowly, and in came two women. It was young Countess Elisabet, followed by the Broby minister’s daughter. She seemed strange to the old man when, charming and radiant in gentle beauty, she entered the fire’s circle of light. She told those within that Gösta Berling had not been seen at Ekeby since Captain Lennart died. She and her servant had been in the forest looking for him the whole afternoon. Now she saw that there were men in here who were well traveled and knew all paths. Had they seen him? She had come in to rest and ask whether they had seen him.
It was a useless question. None of them had seen him.
They set out a chair for her. She sank down in it and sat quietly awhile. The clamor in the cabin had been muted. Everyone looked at her and wondered about her. Then she became frightened by the silence, sat up, and sought an indifferent matter to talk about.
She turned to the old man in the corner. “I seem to have heard that you have been a soldier, old father,” she said. “Tell about something from the war!”
The silence became even more paralyzing. The old man sat as if he hadn’t heard.
“It would amuse me greatly to hear a story about the war from someone who has been there himself,” the countess continued, but she stopped speaking abruptly, for the Broby minister’s daughter was shaking her head at her. She must have said something inappropriate. All of the assembled people were looking at her, as if she had violated the simplest rule of appropriateness. Suddenly a gypsy wife raised her sharp voice and asked, “She must be the one who has been a countess at Borg.”
“That’s the one.”
“That’s a different thing than running around the forest after the crazy minister. Ugh, what a trade!”
The countess got up and said farewell. She had rested enough. The woman who had spoken followed her out through the door.
“You understand, countess,” she said, “I had to say something, for you just can’t talk with the old man about the war. He can’t stand to hear the word. I meant well, I did.”
Countess Elisabet hurried away, but she soon stopped. She saw the threatening forest, the concealing hill, and the steaming bog. It must have been horrid living here for someone whose mind was filled with bad memories. She felt compassion for the old man sitting in there with the dark gypsies as company.
“Miss Anna Lisa,” she said, “let us turn around! They were good to us in there, but I behaved badly. I want to talk with the old man about happier things.”
And happy at having found someone to console, she went back into the cabin.
“It is the case,” she said, “that I think that Gösta Berling is here in the forest, considering taking his own life. So it is important that he is found soon and kept from doing that. I and Miss Anna Lisa thought we saw him at times, but then he disappeared from us. He is keeping in the area of the hill where the Nygård girl was killed. I just happened to think that I don’t need to go all the way down to Ekeby to get help. Here are many strong men who could easily capture him.”
“Get on your way, fellows!” exclaimed the gypsy woman. “When the countess doesn’t think she’s too good to ask forest people for a favor, you must go at once.”
The men got up at once and went to search.
Old Jan Hök sat quietly, staring ahead of him with a lackluster gaze. Terrifyingly gloomy and hard he sat there. The young woman did not find a word to say to him. Then she saw that a child was lying sick on a sheaf of straw, and that a woman had a sore hand. At once she started to see to the sick. She was soon good friends with the chattering woman and had the smallest children shown to her.
In an hour the men came back. They led Gösta Berling, bound, into the cabin. They set him down on the floor in front of the fireplace. His clothes were torn and dirty, facial features emaciated, and his eyes wild. His journey had been terrible during those days: he had lain on the damp ground, he had dug his hands and face into the mossy earth, dragged himself over flat rock, squeezed through the densest thickets. He had not gone with the men voluntarily, but they overpowered and bound him.
When his wife saw him like that, she became angry. She did not release his bound limbs, but left him lying on the floor. She turned from him with contempt.
“The way you look!”
“I had not intended to come before your eyes again,” he replied.
“Am I not your wife then? Is it not my right to expect that you come to me with your sorrows? For these two days I have waited for you in bitter anxiety.”
“I caused Captain Lennart’s misfortune. How could I dare show myself to you? How could I?”
“You were seldom afraid, Gösta.”
“The only favor I can do you, Elisabet, is to free you from me.”
Inexpressible contempt flared under her knitted eyebrows down to him.
“You would make me into the wife of a suicide!”
His facial features were contorted.
“Elisabet, let us go out in the silent forest and talk together!”
“Why shouldn’t these people hear us?” she exclaimed, speaking in shrill tones. “Are we better than any of them? Have any of them caused more sorrow and damage than we have? They are children of the forest and the highway, they are hated by everyone. Let them hear how sin and sorrow also follow the master of Ekeby, Gösta Berling, beloved by all! Do you think your wife thinks you are better than any of them—or do you?”
He rose courageously on his elbow and looked at her with heated defiance. “I am not as wretched as you think.”
Then she heard the story of those two days. The first day Gösta Berling wandered around in the forest, pursued by pangs of conscience. He could not endure meeting the gaze of a person. But he was not thinking about dying. He intended to leave for a distant land. On Sunday, however, he came down from the heights and went up to Bro church. Once again he wanted to see the people: the poor, hungry people of the Lövsjö district, whom he had dreamed of serving when he was sitting by the Broby minister’s pile of shame, and whom he had come to love when he had seen them wander forth in the night with the dead Nygård girl.
The service had begun, as he arrived at the church. He crept up into the balcony and looked down at the people. Cruel torment seized him then. He wanted to speak to them, console them in their poverty and hopelessness. If he had simply been able to speak in God’s house, as hopeless as he was, he would have had words of hope and salvation for all.
Then he left the church, went into the sacristy, and wrote the proclamation, about which his wife already knew. He had promised that work would be resumed at Ekeby and seed grain distributed there to those most in need. He hoped that his wife and the cavaliers would fulfill his promises when he was gone.
As he came out, he saw a casket standing before the parish hall. It was rough, hewn in haste, but adorned with black crepe and wreaths of lingonberry branches. He realized that it was Captain Lennart’s. The people must have asked the captain’s wife to hasten the burial, so that the large number of market visitors could attend the burial.
He was looking at the casket when a heavy hand was placed on his shoulder. Sintram had come over to him.
“Gösta,” he said, “if you want to play a real prank on someone, then lie down and die! There is nothing shrewder than dying, nothing that so fools an honorable man who suspects nothing bad. Lie down and die, I say!”
&nb
sp; Appalled, Gösta listened to what the malevolent one was saying. He was complaining about the foiling of well-laid plans. He wanted to see deserted settlements by the shore of Löven. Therefore he had made the cavaliers the masters of the area, therefore he had let the Broby minister impoverish the people, therefore he had called forth drought and starvation. The decisive blow was to have been made at Broby market. Incited by misfortunes, the people would abandon themselves to murder and theft. Then legal proceedings would have impoverished them. Starvation, disorder, and all types of misfortune would have raged. Finally the countryside would have become so wicked and hateful that no one could live there, and all this would have been the work of Sintram. This would have been his pride and joy, for he was evil. He loved desolate regions and unbroken ground. But this man, who had the wit to die at the right moment, had ruined everything for him.
Then Gösta asked him to what end all this would have served.
“It would have pleased me, Gösta, for I am evil. I am the killer bear on the fell, I am the snowstorm on the plain, I like to murder and persecute. Away, I say, away with humankind and the works of humankind! I don’t like them. I may let them run between my claws and caper about—that might be amusing too for a while—but now I am satiated with play, Gösta, now I want to strike out, now I want to kill and destroy.”
He was insane, completely insane. A long time ago he had started with these hellish tricks, and now evil had the upper hand, now he believed himself to be a spirit from the abyss. Now he had nurtured and tended the evil within himself so that it had taken dominion over his soul. So can malevolence make people crazy, just like love and brooding.
He was raging, the malevolent mill owner, and in his wrath he started to tug at the wreaths and crepe on the casket, but then Gösta Berling shouted, “Don’t touch the casket!”
“See, see, see, mustn’t I touch it? Yes, I will throw my friend Lennart on the ground and trample his wreaths. Don’t you see what he’s done to me? Don’t you see in what a fine, gray calash I come riding?”
And Gösta Berling then saw that a pair of prisoners’ carts with sheriff and district officials stood waiting outside the churchyard wall.
“See, see, see, shouldn’t I send the captain’s wife at Helgesäter a thank-you, because yesterday she sat down to read old papers to find evidence against me in that gunpowder case, you know? Shouldn’t I let her know that it would be better for her to keep busy with brewing and baking than to send the sheriff and district officials after me? Shouldn’t I have something for the tears I’ve cried to persuade Scharling to let me come here and say a prayer by my good friend’s casket?”
And he again started tugging on the crepe.
Then Gösta Berling stood close beside him and seized his arms.
“I would give anything to keep you from touching the casket!” he said.
“Do what you want!” said the lunatic. “Shout if you want! I’ll still manage something before the sheriff comes. Fight with me, if that’s what you want! That will be a happy sight here on the church green. Let’s fight among wreaths and shrouds!”
“I will purchase peace for the dead man at whatever price, Sintram. Take my life, take everything!”
“You promise a lot, my boy!”
“You can test me.”
“Well, so kill yourself then!”
“That I can do, but first the casket must be securely underground.”
So it was. Sintram took an oath from Gösta that he would not be alive twelve hours after Captain Lennart had been buried. “So I know that you can never become a good man,” he said.
This was easy to promise for Gösta Berling. He was happy to be able to give his wife freedom. Pangs of conscience had driven him dead tired. The only thing that appalled him was that he had promised the majoress not to die as long as the Broby minister’s daughter was a servant at Ekeby. But Sintram said that she could not be counted as a servant now, since she had inherited her father’s riches. Gösta objected that the Broby minister had hidden his goods so well that no one had been able to find his treasures. Then Sintram smiled and said that they were hidden among the dove nests in Broby church steeple. With that he left. After that Gösta went up to the forest again. It seemed best to him to die at the place where the Nygård girl had been killed. Up there he had wandered the whole afternoon. He had seen his wife in the forest, which was why he had not been able to kill himself at once.
This he told his wife, as he lay bound on the floor in the forest croft.
“Oh,” she said mournfully, when he had finished, “how well I recognize this! Heroic gestures, heroic ostentation! Always ready to stick your hands in the fire, Gösta, always ready to throw yourself away! How great such things once seemed to me! How I now prize calm and self-control! What good did you do the dead man with such a promise? What of it if Sintram had been able to turn over the casket and tear off the crepe! It would have been raised up again, there would have been new crepe, new wreaths. If you had placed your hand on the good man’s casket, there before Sintram’s eyes, and sworn to live to help these poor people whom he wanted to destroy, now that I would have prized. If you had thought, when you saw the people in the church, ‘I want to help them, I myself will use all my powers to help them,’ and not placed this burden on your weak wife and on old men with failing powers, then I would have prized that too.”
Gösta Berling remained silent awhile.
“We cavaliers are not free men,” he said finally. “We have promised one another to live for happiness and only for happiness. Woe to us all, if one of us fails!”
“Woe to you,” said the countess with indignation, “that you should be the most cowardly among the cavaliers and last in improvement of any of them! Yesterday afternoon they sat, all eleven of them, in the cavaliers’ wing, and they were gloomy. You were gone, Captain Lennart was gone, the luster and honor of Ekeby was gone. They left the toddy tray untouched, they would not show themselves to me. Then Miss Anna Lisa, who is standing here, went up to them. You know that she is a zealous little woman, who has fought for years to the point of desperation against negligence and waste.
“‘Today I have once again been at home and sought dear Father’s money,’ she said to the cavaliers, ‘but I have not found a thing. All promissory notes are crossed out, and drawers and cupboards are empty.’
“‘It’s too bad for you, Miss Anna Lisa,’ thought Beerencreutz.
“‘When the majoress left Ekeby,’ continued the Broby minister’s daughter, ‘she asked me to look after her house. And if I had found dear Father’s money now, then I would have built up Ekeby. But as I haven’t found anything there at home, I took Father’s pile of shame with me, for great shame awaits me when my mistress comes back and asks me what I’ve done with Ekeby.’
“‘Don’t take it so hard, Miss Anna Lisa, this is not your fault!’ Beerencreutz said again.
“‘But I have not brought the pile of shame for me alone,’ said the Broby minister’s daughter. ‘I also brought it on account of the cavaliers. Welcome, dear gentlemen! Dear Father is probably not the only one who has caused shame and harm in this world.’
“And she went from one to the other of them and set down some of the dry sticks for each of them. Some swore, but most of them let her have her way. Finally Beerencreutz said with the calm of a lofty gentleman, ‘This is good. We should thank the young lady. The young lady may go now.’
“When she was gone, he slammed his clenched fist on the table so that the glasses jumped.
“‘From this hour,’ he said, ‘absolutely sober! Liquor will not bring such a thing upon me again!’ With that he got up and went out.
“By and by they followed him, all of the others. Do you know where they went, Gösta? Yes, down to the river, to the point where Ekeby mill and smithy stood, and there they started to work. They started to move logs and stones and clear the area. The old men have had a difficult time. Several of them are in mourning. Now they can no longer endure
the dishonor of having destroyed Ekeby. I know that you cavaliers are ashamed to work, but now the others have taken this shame upon themselves. Even more, Gösta, they intend to send Miss Anna Lisa up to the majoress to fetch her. But you, what are you doing?”
He still found something to answer her.
“What do you demand of me, a defrocked minister? Rejected am I of humankind, hateful to God.”
“I too have been in Broby church today, Gösta. I have a greeting to you from two women. ‘Tell Gösta,’ said Marianne Sinclaire, ‘that a woman does not want to be ashamed of the one she has loved!’ ‘Tell Gösta,’ said Anna Stjärnhök, ‘that I’m doing well now! I govern my estates myself. People say of me that I am becoming another majoress. I don’t think about love, only about work. At Berga too they have overcome the initial bitterness of sorrow. But we all grieve over Gösta. We believe in him and pray to God for him—but when, when will he become a man?’”
“Do you see then, are you rejected by people?” continued the countess. “You have received too much love, that is your misfortune. Women and men have loved you. If only you joked and laughed, if only you sang and played, they have forgiven you everything. What it has pleased you to do has been fine with them. And you dare call yourself a reject! Or are you hateful to God? Why didn’t you stay and see Captain Lennart’s burial?
The Saga of Gosta Berling Page 43