Again she lay thinking. Her eyebrows were knitted together, her facial features were gruesomely contorted in pain.
“You are very sick, majoress,” the countess said slowly.
“That I am, sicker than ever before.”
There was silence again, but then the majoress spoke in a hard, gruff voice.
“It is strange to think that you too, countess, whom everyone loves, should be an adulteress.”
The young woman gave a start.
“Yes, if not in action, then still in thought and desire, and that makes no difference.”
“I know that, majoress.”
“And yet you are happy now, countess. You can have your beloved without sin. The dark ghost will not stand between you, when you meet. You can belong to one another before the world, love one another in the light of day, go side by side through life.”
“Oh, majoress, majoress!”
“How can you dare stay with him, countess?” the old woman cried out with increasing intensity. “Do penance, do penance in time! Go home to your father and mother, before they come and curse you! Do you dare count Gösta Berling as your spouse? Leave him! I will give him Ekeby. I will give him power and splendor. Do you dare share it with him? Do you dare receive happiness and honor? I dared it. Do you recall what happened to me? Do you remember the Christmas dinner at Ekeby? Do you remember the jail at the sheriff’s?”
“Oh, majoress, we debtors go here side by side without happiness. I am here to keep watch so that no happiness will reside at our hearth. Don’t you think I long for home, majoress? Oh, bitterly I long for the protection and support of home, but I will never again enjoy it. Here I will live in fear and trembling, knowing that everything I do leads to sin and sorrow, knowing that if I help one, I overturn another. Too weak and foolish for life here, and yet forced to live it, bound by an eternal penance.”
“We fool our hearts with such thoughts!” exclaimed the majoress. “But this is weakness. You don’t want to leave him, that is the only reason.”
Before the countess had time to answer, Gösta Berling came into the room.
“Come here, Gösta!” the majoress said at once, and her voice became even sharper and harder. “Come here, you whom everyone in Lövsjö is praising! Come, you, who will be known to posterity as the rescuer of the people! You shall now hear how things have gone for your old majoress, whom you let go around the countryside despised and abandoned.
“First I will tell you what happened last spring, when I came home to my mother, for you ought to know the end of that story.
“In the month of March I came wandering up to the ironworks in the Älvdal forests, Gösta. I looked not much better than a beggar hag then. I was told when I arrived that my mother was in the dairy room. Then I went in there and stood silently by the door a long time. Round about the room were long shelves, and on them were shiny copper pans filled with milk. And my mother, who was over ninety years of age, took down pan after pan and skimmed off the cream. She was healthy enough, the old woman, but I noticed how much effort it took for her to reach the pans. I did not know if she had seen me, but in a while she spoke to me in a peculiar, shrill voice.
“‘So things have gone for you just as I knew they would!’ she said. I wanted to speak and ask her to forgive me, but it was not worth the effort. She did not hear a word of it: she was stone-deaf. But after a while she spoke again. ‘You can come and help me,’ she said.
“Then I went over and skimmed the milk. I took down the pans in the right order and put everything in its place and dipped just right with the ladle, and she was satisfied. She had not been able to entrust the milk skimming to any servant, but I knew from long before how she wanted it done.
“‘Now you must take on this work,’ she said. And with that I knew that she had forgiven me.
“And then it was suddenly as if she wasn’t able to work anymore. She sat quietly in an armchair and mostly slept the entire day. Then she died a few weeks before Christmas. I would have preferred to have come before, Gösta, but I could not leave the old woman.”
The majoress stopped talking. She started to have difficulty breathing again, but she summoned her courage and spoke further.
“It is true, Gösta, that I wanted to have you here with me at Ekeby. It is the case with you that everyone is happy to be in your company. If you had wanted to be a settled man, I would have given you much power. My hope was always that you would find a good wife. First I believed that it would be Marianne Sinclaire, for I saw that she loved you, even when you were living as a woodcutter in the forest. Then I thought that it would be Ebba Dohna, and one day I went over to Borg and told her that if she were to take you as a husband, I would let you inherit Ekeby. If I acted badly in that, you must forgive me for it.”
Gösta was on his knees by the bed with his forehead against the edge of the bed. He let out a heavy moan.
“Tell me now, Gösta, how you mean to live! How will you support your wife? Tell me that! You do know that I have always wanted the best for you.” And Gösta answered her with a smile, while his heart wanted to burst with sorrow.
“In bygone days, when I tried to become a laborer here at Ekeby, the majoress gave me my own croft to live in, and it is still mine. This autumn I have put everything in order there. Lövenborg has helped me, and we have whitewashed the ceiling and covered the walls with paper and painted them. The small, inside room Lövenborg calls the countess’s cabinet, and he has searched in all the farms hereabouts for furniture that has come from manor auctions. These he has purchased so that now there are high-backed armchairs and chests of drawers with gleaming fittings in there. But in the outer, large room is the young woman’s loom and my lathe, household utensils, and all kinds of things are there, and Lövenborg and I have already sat there many evenings talking about what it would be like for the young countess and me in the crofter’s cottage. But my wife is only just now finding this out, majoress. We wanted to tell her this when we had to leave Ekeby.”
“Go on, Gösta!”
“Lövenborg always talked about how much a maid would be needed in the house. ‘In summer it’s blessedly beautiful here on the birch point,’ he would always say, ‘but in the winter it’s too isolated for your young wife. You will have to have a maid, Gösta.’
“And I agreed with him, but I didn’t know how I would have the means to keep one. Then one day he came carrying his music and his table with the painted keyboard and placed it in the cottage. ‘It looks like it’s you, Lövenborg, who will be the maid,’ I said to him then. He replied that he would no doubt come if needed. Did I think the young countess would prepare food and carry wood and water? No, I hadn’t thought that she would do anything at all, as long as I had a pair of arms to work with. But he still thought that it would be best that there were two of us, so that she could sit day after day in her corner, sewing tambour stitching. I could never know how much attending to such a little lady might need, he said.”
“Go on!” said the majoress. “This relieves my pains. Did you think that your young countess would want to live in a crofter’s cottage?”
He wondered at her mocking tone, but continued.
“Oh, majoress, I didn’t dare believe it, but it would have been so splendid, if she had wanted to. Here it is thirty miles to any doctor. She, who has a light hand and a tender heart, would have work enough tending wounds and lowering fever. And I thought that all distressed people would find their way to the fine lady in the crofter’s cottage. There is so much sorrow among the poor, which good words and a friendly heart can help.”
“But you yourself, Gösta Berling!”
“I will have my work at the planing bench and the lathe, majoress. From here on out I will live my own life. If my wife will not follow me, then so shall it be. If I were now to be offered all the riches of the world, they would not entice me. I want to live my own life. Now I will be and remain a poor man among farmers and help them with what I can. They need someone
who plays a polska for them at weddings and yuletide feasts, they need someone to write letters to their far-off sons, and that may as well be me. But poor I must be, majoress.”
“It will be a gloomy life for you, Gösta.”
“Oh no, majoress, it won’t be if only there were two of us who stayed together. The rich and the happy would no doubt come to us as well as the poor. We would have a good enough time in our cottage. The guests would not be concerned that the food was prepared right before their eyes, or take offense at having to share the same plate.”
“And what use would you make of all this, Gösta? What praise would you win?”
“My fame would be great, majoress, if the poor were to remember me a few years after my death. I would have been useful enough if I had planted a few apple trees by the houses, if I had taught the peasant fiddlers a few melodies of the old masters, and if the herding children could learn a few good songs to sing on the forest path.
“The majoress may believe me, I am the same crazy Gösta Berling as I was before. A peasant fiddler is all I can become, but that is enough. I have much sin to make good. Weeping and regret are not for me. I must give the poor happiness, that is my penance.”
“Gösta,” said the majoress, “this is too insignificant a life for a man with your energies. I want to give you Ekeby.”
“Oh, majoress,” he exclaimed in terror, “don’t make me rich! Don’t put such obligations on me! Don’t divide me from the poor!”
“I want to give Ekeby to you and the cavaliers,” the majoress repeated. “You are a virtuous man, Gösta, whom the people bless. I say like my mother: ‘You must take on this work.’”
“No, majoress, we cannot accept such a thing. We, who have misjudged you and caused you so much sorrow!”
“Do you hear, I want to give Ekeby to you all.”
She spoke gruffly and hard, without any friendliness. He was seized with anxiety.
“Don’t set forth such a temptation to the old men, majoress! This would turn them back into idlers and drunkards! God in heaven, rich cavaliers! What would become of us?”
“I want to give you Ekeby, Gösta, but then you must promise to give your wife her freedom. You see, such a fine little woman is not for you. She has had to suffer too much here in bear country. She is longing again for her bright homeland. You must let her go. That is why I am giving you Ekeby.”
But now Countess Elisabet came over to the majoress and knelt by the bed.
“I long no more, majoress. The man who is my husband has solved the riddle and found the life that I can live. No longer do I need to go stern and cold beside him and remind him of regret and penitence. Poverty and distress and hard labor will fulfill that mission. I can walk the roads that lead to the poor and the sick without sin. I no longer fear life up here in the north. But do not make him rich, majoress! Then I dare not remain.”
The majoress raised herself in the bed.
“You require all happiness for yourselves,” she shouted, threatening them with clenched fists, “all happiness and blessings! No, may Ekeby become the cavaliers’, so that they may be ruined! May man and wife be separated, so that they may be ruined! A witch I am, an enchantress I am, I will incite you all to evil. As my reputation is, so must I myself be.”
She grasped the letter and threw it in Gösta’s face. The black paper fluttered out and sank to the floor. Gösta recognized it well enough.
“You have sinned against me, Gösta. You have misjudged the one who has been a second mother to you. Do you dare refuse to take your punishment from me? You will accept Ekeby, and this will destroy you, for you are weak. You will send your wife home, so that no one will be able to save you. You will die with a name just as hated as mine. Margareta Celsing’s obituary is that of a witch. Yours will be that of a spendthrift and tormentor of farmers.”
She sank down again onto the pillows, and all was silent. Then through this silence sounded a muffled thud, then another and yet another. The till hammer had begun its far-thundering action.
“Hear!” Gösta Berling said then. “So sounds Margareta Celsing’s obituary! This is not the crazy prank of drunken cavaliers. This is the victory hymn of labor, sounded in honor of a good old worker. Do you hear what the hammer is saying, majoress? ‘Thanks,’ it is saying, ‘thanks for good labor, thanks for the bread that you have given to the poor, thanks for the roads that you have cleared, for ground that you have broken! Thanks for the joy that has prevailed in your halls!’—‘Thanks,’ it is saying, ‘and rest in peace! Your works will live and persist. Your estate will always be a sanctuary for work that brings happiness.’—‘Thanks,’ it is saying, ‘and do not judge us who have gone astray! You, who are now embarking on the journey to the climes of peace, think gentle thoughts of us who are still alive!’”
Gösta fell silent, but the till hammer continued to speak. All the voices that had spoken well and amiably to the majoress were blended with the till hammer’s. Gradually the tension disappeared from her features. They became slack, and it was as if the shadow of death had fallen over her.
The Broby minister’s daughter came in and informed them that the gentlemen from Högfors had arrived. The majoress let them go. She did not want to make a will.
“Oh, Gösta Berling, man of many deeds,” she said, “so you have won yet again! Bow down and let me bless you!”
The fever came back now with doubled strength. The death rattles began. Her body was dragged along through heavy suffering, but her soul soon knew nothing of it. It began to peer into the heavens that were opening for the dying woman.
An hour passed in that way, and the brief death struggle was over. Then she was lying there so peaceful and lovely that those standing around were deeply moved.
“My dear old majoress,” Gösta said then, “I saw you like this once before! Now Margareta Celsing has come back to life. Now she will never again step aside for the majoress at Ekeby.”
When the cavaliers came in from the smithy, they were met by the news of the majoress’s death.
“Did she hear the hammer?” they asked.
She had, and they had to be content with that.
They found out later that she had intended to grant Ekeby to them, but that the will had never been made. This they took as a great honor and then praised themselves for it as long as they lived. But no one ever heard them complain about the riches they had lost.
It is also said that this Christmas night Gösta Berling stood by his young spouse’s side and held his final talk to the cavaliers. He was distressed at their fate, when all of them would now have to depart from Ekeby. The pains of old age awaited them. The old and sullen encounter a cold welcome with the accustomed host. The poor cavalier, who has been forced to take lodgings at the farms, has no happy days; separated from friends and adventures, the lonely man withers.
And so he spoke to them, the carefree ones, hardened against all the vicissitudes of fortune. Once again he called them old gods and knights, who had appeared to bring delight into the land of iron and the age of iron. Yet he complained now that the paradise where butterfly-winged delight swarms is filled up with destructive larvae and its fruits are stunted.
Well he knew that delight was a good thing for the children of earth, and that it must be found. But like a difficult riddle, the question of how a man could be both happy and good still hung over the world. This he called the easiest and yet the most difficult question. Until now they had not been able to solve the riddle. Now he wanted to believe that they had learned it, that all of them had learned it during this year of happiness and distress and good fortune and grief.
Ah, you good gentlemen cavaliers, for me as well the bitterness of parting hangs over this moment! This is the last night we will have watched through together. I will no longer hear the hearty laughter and merry songs. I will now be separated from you and all the happy people on the shores of Löven.
You dear old men! In bygone ages you would have given me good gifts. T
o one living in great desolation you brought the first message of the rich variety of life. I saw you battle mighty Rag narök battles round the lake of my childhood dreams. But what have I given you?
Perhaps, however, it would please you that your names resound again in connection with the beloved estates. May all the brilliance that was part of your lives again fall upon the region where you lived! Borg still stands, Björne still stands, Ekeby is still by Löven, splendidly wreathed by rapids and lake, by grove and smiling forest meadows, and as you stand on the broad terraces, the legends swarm around you like the bees of summer.
But speaking of bees, let me tell yet another old story! Little Ruster, who marched at the head of the Swedish army as a drummer when in 1813 it advanced into Germany, never tired of telling stories about the wonderful land in the south. The people there were tall as church steeples, the swallows as large as eagles, the bees like geese.
“Well, but what about the beehives?”
“The beehives were like our ordinary beehives.”
“Then how did the bees get into them?”
“Yes, they had to keep their eyes open,” said little Ruster.
Dear reader, must I not say the same? Here the giant bees of imagination have swarmed around us during years and days, but to get into the beehive of reality, they will truly have to keep their eyes open.
THE STORY OF PENGUIN CLASSICS
Before 1946 . . . “Classics” are mainly the domain of academics and students; readable editions for everyone else are almost unheard of. This all changes when a little-known classicist, E. V. Rieu, presents Penguin founder Allen Lane with the translation of Homer’s Odyssey that he has been working on in his spare time.