The Saga of Gosta Berling

by Selma Lagerlof

  “Hell’s bells, Kristian Bergh, don’t swear. No one swears here but me.”

  “Do you think I’m afraid of you, troll hag? Do you think I don’t know how you got your seven ironworks?”

  “Silence, captain!”

  “When Altringer died, he gave them to your husband because you had been his lover.”

  “Won’t you be quiet!”

  “Because you had been such a faithful wife, Margareta Samzelius. And the major accepted the seven ironworks and let you run them and pretended to know nothing. And Satan has been responsible for the whole business; but now it will be over for you.”

  The majoress sits down; she is pale and trembling. Then she confirms in a soft, peculiar voice, “Yes, now it’s over for me, and this is your doing, Kristian Bergh.”

  At that tone Kristian Bergh begins to tremble, his facial features are contorted, and tears of dread come to his eyes.

  “I am drunk,” he shouts, “I don’t know what I’m saying, I haven’t said a thing. A dog and a thrall, a dog and a thrall, I’ve been nothing more to her for forty years. She is Margareta Celsing, whom I have served all my life. I say nothing bad about her. Could I say anything bad about the beautiful Margareta Celsing? I am the dog who guards her door, the thrall who carries her loads. She may kick me, she may beat me! Now you see that I endure in silence. I have loved her for forty years. How could I say anything bad about her?”

  And a strange sight it is to see how he gets down on his knees and begs for forgiveness. And as she is sitting on the other side of the table, he goes on his knees around the table, until he approaches her, when he bows down and kisses the hem of her skirt, and the floor is wet with his tears.

  But not far from the majoress sits a small, strong man. He has curly hair, small, slanted eyes, and a protruding jaw. He resembles a bear. He is a man of few words, who prefers to go his own, silent way and let the world take care of itself. He is Major Samzelius.

  He gets up, when he hears Captain Kristian’s accusatory words, and the majoress gets up, as do all fifty of the guests. The women weep with alarm for what is now to come; the men stand timidly, and at the majoress’s feet is Captain Kristian, kissing the hem of her skirt, wetting the floor with tears.

  The major’s broad, hairy hands clench slowly; his arm is raised.

  But the woman speaks first. She has a muted tone in her voice, which is not her usual.

  “You stole me,” she burst out. “You came like a robber and took me. They forced me at home with blows, with hunger and harsh words, to become your wife. I have acted toward you as you have deserved.”

  The major’s broad fist is clenched. The majoress retreats a few steps. Then she speaks again.

  “Live eels wriggle under the knife; a forced wife takes a lover. Are you going to strike me now for what happened twenty years ago? Why didn’t you strike me then? Don’t you recall how he was living at Ekeby, while we were at Sjö? Don’t you recall how he supported us in our poverty? We rode in his carriages, we drank his wine. Did we hide anything from you? Weren’t his servants your servants? Didn’t his gold weigh down your pocket? Didn’t you accept the seven ironworks? You kept silent then and accepted them, when you should have struck, Berndt Samzelius, when you should have struck.”

  The man turns away from her and looks at all those present. He reads in their faces that they agree with her, that they all thought he had taken property and gifts for his silence.

  “I didn’t know it,” he says, stomping the floor.

  “It is good that you know it now,” she interjects with a shrilly resounding voice. “I used to be afraid that you would die without having found it out. It is good that you know it now, so that I can speak freely with you who have been my lord and jailer. Know it now, that in any case I was his, from whom you stole me. May they who have slandered me all know it now!”

  It is her old love that exults in her voice and shines from her eyes. Her husband stands before her with raised fist. She discerns horror and contempt on the fifty faces before her. She senses that it is the final hour of her power. But she cannot keep from rejoicing, as she speaks openly of her life’s sweetest memory.

  “He was a man, a splendid man. Who are you, that you could put yourself between us? Never have I seen the like of him. He gave me happiness, he gave me property. Blessed be his memory!”

  Then the major lowers his raised arm without striking—now he knows how he should punish her.

  “Out,” he roars, “out of my house!”

  She stands still.

  But the cavaliers stand, faces pale, staring at each other. Now everything was about to be fulfilled as the black one had foretold. Now they saw the consequences of the majoress’s contract not having been renewed. If this is true now, then it must also be true that for more than twenty years she had sent cavaliers to hell and that journey had been prescribed for them too. Oh, that witch!

  “Out with you!” continued the major. “Beg for your bread on the highway! You shall not have any happiness from his money, you shall not be allowed to live on his estates. It is over for the majoress at Ekeby. The day you set foot in my house, I am going to kill you.”

  “Are you driving me away from my home?”

  “You have no home. Ekeby is mine.”

  A spirit of timidity comes over the majoress. She retreats all the way to the door, and he follows closely after her.

  “You, who have been the misfortune of my life,” she complains, “shall you also have the power to do this to me now?”

  “Out, out!”

  She leans against the doorpost, clasping her hands together and holding them to her face. She thinks of her mother and mumbles to herself, “May you be denied, as I have been denied, may the highway be your home, a haystack your bed! So it has come to that after all. It has come to that.”

  It was the good, old dean at Bro and the sheriff from Munkerud who now came up to Major Samzelius and tried to calm him. They told him that he would do best in letting all these old stories rest, let everything be as it was, forget and forgive.

  He shakes away the gentle hands from his shoulder. He was terrible to come near, just as Kristian Bergh had been.

  “This is not an old story,” he shouts. “I have not known a thing before today. Until now I have not been able to punish the adulteress.”

  With that word the majoress raises her head and regains her former courage.

  “Sooner you should leave than I. Do you think I’ll give in to you?” she says. And she steps away from the door.

  The major does not reply, but he watches her every movement, ready to strike, if he cannot be rid of her in any other way.

  “Help me, good gentlemen,” she cries, “to get this man bound and carried out, until he regains the use of his mind. Remember who I am and who you are! Think about that, before I have to give in to him! I run all the activities of Ekeby, and he sits all day long, feeding the bears in their cave. Help me, good friends and neighbors! There will be misery without limit here, if I am no longer here. The farmer has his livelihood from cutting my forest and driving my pig iron. The charcoal burner lives off of providing my charcoal, the log floater from transporting my timber. I am the one who doles out the work that brings in riches. Smiths, carpenters, and loggers live by serving me. Do you think that he over there can keep up my work? I am telling you, if you drive me out, you are letting famine in.”

  Once again a number of hands are raised to help the majoress; once again gentle hands are placed persuasively on the major’s shoulder.

  “No,” he says, “away with you! Who wants to defend the adulteress? I am telling you, I am, that if she does not go willingly, then I will pick her up in my arms and carry her down to my bears.”

  With these words the raised hands were lowered.

  Then, in her utmost distress, the majoress turns to the cavaliers.

  “Would you also allow me to be driven from my home, cavaliers? Have I let you freeze outside in the snow in
winter, have I denied you bitter beer and sweet liquor? Did I expect reward or work from you, because I gave you food and clothing? Have you not played at my feet, secure as children at their mother’s side? Hasn’t there been dancing in my halls? Haven’t amusements and laughter been your daily bread? Let not this man, who has been my life’s misfortune, drive me away from my home, cavaliers! Do not let me become a beggar on the highway!” With these words Gösta Berling had stolen his way over to a lovely, dark-haired girl, who was sitting at the great table.

  “You were at Borg quite a bit five years ago,” he says. “Do you know whether it was the majoress who told Ebba Dohna that I was a defrocked minister?”

  “Help the majoress, Gösta!” is all the girl can answer.

  “You may know that first I want to find out if she made me into a murderer.”

  “Ah, Gösta, what kind of thoughts are those? Help her, Gösta!”

  “You don’t want to answer, I see. So Sintram has probably told the truth.” And Gösta goes back down among the cavaliers. He does not lift a finger to help the majoress.

  Oh, if only the majoress had not sat the cavaliers at a separate table over in the corner by the tiled stove! Now the night’s thoughts have wakened in their brains; now wrath is flaring on their faces, not less than the major’s own.

  In unmerciful hardness they stand silent at her entreaties.

  Must everything they see attest to the visions of the night?

  “It shows that she hasn’t got her contract renewed,” murmurs one.

  “Go to hell, troll hag!” shrieks another. “By rights it should have been us who chased you to the door.”

  “Blockheads,” old, feeble uncle Eberhard calls to the cavaliers, “don’t you realize that it was Sintram?”

  “Of course we understand, of course we know,” answers Julius, “but what of it! Can’t it be true anyway? Doesn’t Sintram do the devil’s business? Haven’t they made an agreement?”

  “Go then, Eberhard, you go and help her!” they mock. “You don’t believe in hell. Go then!”

  And Gösta Berling stands quietly, without a word, without a movement.

  No, from this threatening, murmuring, combative cavaliers’ wing the majoress will get no help.

  Now she again backs up to the door and raises her clasped hands to her eyes.

  “May you be denied, as I have been denied!” she calls out to herself in her bitter sorrow. “May the highway be your home, a haystack your bed!”

  Then she places one hand on the door handle, but the other she raises toward the sky.

  “Mark this, you, who now let me fall! Mark this, that your hour will soon come! Now you will be scattered, and your place will stand empty. How will you stand, when I do not support you? You, Melchior Sinclaire, who has a heavy hand and lets his wife feel it, watch out! You, minister of Broby, now comes the punishment! Mrs. Captain Uggla, see to your house, poverty is coming! You young, beautiful women, Elisabet Dohna, Marianne Sinclaire, Anna Stjärnhök, do not believe that I am the only one who must flee from my home. And watch you, you cavaliers, now a storm is coming across the land. Now you will be wiped away from the earth, now your day is past, now it is truly past! I do not complain for myself, but for you, for the storm will pass over your heads, and who will stand when I have fallen? And my heart laments for the poor people. Who will give them work when I am gone?”

  Now the majoress opens the door, but then Captain Kristian raises his head and says: “How long must I lie here at your feet, Margareta Celsing? Will you not forgive me, so that I may stand up and fight for you?”

  Then the majoress fights a hard battle with herself, but she sees that if she forgives him, then he will rise up and fight with her husband, and the man who has faithfully loved her for forty years will become a murderer.

  “Shall I forgive now too?” she says. “Are you not the cause of all my misfortune, Kristian Bergh? Go to the cavaliers, and be pleased with your work!”

  Then the majoress left. She left calmly, leaving dismay behind her. She fell, but she was not without greatness even in her degradation. She did not lower herself to effeminate sorrow, but still in old age she rejoiced over the love of her youth. She did not lower herself to complaint and piteous weeping, as she left everything; she did not tremble at the thought of wandering around the countryside with walking stick and beggar’s pouch. She only felt sorry for the poor farmers and the happy, carefree people on the shore of Löven, for the poor cavaliers, for all of those whom she had protected and maintained.

  She was abandoned by everyone, and yet she had power to reject her last friend so as not to make him a murderer.

  She was a remarkable woman, great in vigor and desire for action. We will not soon see her like.

  The next day Major Samzelius departed from Ekeby and moved to his own farm, Sjö, which is very close to the main ironworks.

  In Altringer’s will, through which the major got the ironworks, it was clearly arranged that none of the works could be sold or given away, but rather after the major’s death they would all go in inheritance to his wife or her heirs. As the major thus could not embezzle the hated inheritance, he put the cavaliers to rule over it, that he might thereby do Ekeby and the other six ironworks the greatest damage.

  As no one in the province doubted that the malevolent Sintram did the devil’s business, and as everything he had promised them was so brilliantly fulfilled, the cavaliers were quite certain that the contract would be fulfilled to the letter, and they were completely decided not to do anything wise or useful or womanish during the year, completely convinced as they were that the majoress was an evil witch, who wanted their ruin.

  Old uncle Eberhard, the philosopher, ridiculed their faith, but who asked the opinion of such a person, who was so stubborn in his disbelief that if he was lying in the midst of the flames of the abyss and saw all the devils standing and sneering at him, he would still have maintained that they did not exist, because they could not exist, for uncle Eberhard was a great philosopher.

  Gösta Berling did not tell anyone what he believed. It is certain that he scarcely felt a debt of gratitude to the majoress for having made him a cavalier at Ekeby; it seemed better to him now to be dead than to continue on with the awareness that he had been guilty of Ebba Dohna’s suicide. He did not raise his hand to take revenge on the majoress, but not to help her either. He was not capable of it. But the cavaliers had come to great power and glory. Christmas was at hand with parties and amusements, the hearts of the cavaliers were filled with rejoicing, and whatever sorrow may have weighed on Gösta Berling, he did not show it on his face or on his lips.

  CHAPTER 4

  GÖSTA BERLING, THE POET

  It was Christmas, and there was to be a ball at Borg.

  At that time—and soon it will be sixty years ago—a young Count Dohna was living at Borg; he was newly married, and he had a young, beautiful countess. It would no doubt be merry at the old count’s estate.

  An invitation had also come to Ekeby, but it turned out that of all those who were celebrating Christmas there that year, Gösta Berling, whom they called “the poet,” was the only one who had any desire to go.

  Borg and Ekeby are both on Löven’s long lake, but on opposite shores. Borg is in Svartsjö parish, Ekeby in Bro. When the lake cannot be crossed, it is a six- or seven-mile journey from Ekeby to Borg.

  The impoverished Gösta Berling was outfitted for the party by the older gentlemen as if he had been a king’s son and had to bear up the honor of a kingdom.

  The tailcoat with its gleaming buttons was new; the ruffles were starched and the leather shoes shined. He wore a fur of the finest beaver skin and a sable cap over his light, curly hair. They spread out a bear hide with silver claws across his sleigh and gave him the black Don Juan, pride of the stable, to drive.

  He whistled to his white dog Tancred and grasped the braided reins. Rejoicing he drove, surrounded by the shimmer of wealth and pomp, he who shone enough alrea
dy with the beauty of his body and the playful genius of his spirit.

  He left early in the morning. It was Sunday, and as he drove past he heard hymn singing from Bro church. Then he followed the desolate forest road that leads to Berga, where Captain Uggla was then living. There he intended to stop for dinner.

  Berga was not a rich man’s home. Hunger knew the way to the turf-covered captain’s residence, but Gösta was received with humor, enjoyed songs and games like other guests, and left as unwillingly as they.

  Old Miss Ulrika Dillner, who managed chores and weaving at Berga farm, stood on the steps and welcomed Gösta Berling. She curtsied to him, and the loose curls that hung down over her brown face with its thousand wrinkles were dancing with joy. She led him into the hall, and then she started to tell about the people at the farm and their varied fates.

  Distress was at the door, she said, grim times prevailed at the Berga farm. They did not even have any horseradish for dinner with their salted meat; Ferdinand and the girls had set Disa to a sleigh and driven down to Munkerud to borrow some.

  The captain was off in the woods again and would no doubt come home with a tough rabbit, which would cost more in butter to prepare than it was worth itself. That’s the sort of thing he called getting food for the household. Somehow it would all work out, if he didn’t come back with a wretched fox, the worst animal our Lord created, useless both dead and alive.

  And the captain’s wife, well, she was not up yet. She lies there reading novels, just as she does every day. She was not created to work, that angel of God.

  No, someone who was old and gray like Ulrika Dillner would have to do that. It was tramp, tramp night and day to hold the misery together. And it wasn’t always so easy, for the truth was that one whole winter they had not had any meat there in the house other than bear ham. And she expected no great reward, nor had she seen any, but she expected they would not throw her out on the road either, when she no longer could do her share for her food. They regard even a housemaid as a person in this household, and one day they would no doubt give old Ulrika an honorable burial, if they had anything to buy a casket with.