The Saga of Gosta Berling

by Selma Lagerlof

  “There came an evening when he talked with Ebba Dohna about love. She did not reply, she said to him only what her grandmother had told her on the winter evening and described for him the land of her dreams. Then she took a promise from him. She let him swear that he would become a herald of God’s word, one of those who would prepare the way of the Lord, so that his arrival would be hastened.

  “What should he do? He was a defrocked minister, and no way was so barred for him as the one that she wanted him to embark on. But he dared not tell her the truth. He did not have the heart to distress this kindly child, whom he loved. He promised everything that she wanted.

  “Then no further words were required between them. It was clear that she would one day become his wife. This was not a love with kisses and embraces. He hardly dared get close to her. She was as delicate as a fragile flower. But her brown eyes were lifted at times from the ground to seek his. On moonlit evenings as they sat on the veranda, she crept close to him, and then he kissed her hair, without her noticing it.

  “But you realize that his sin was that he forgot both past and future. That he was poor and insignificant, he would of course prefer to forget, but he ought always to have known that a day must come when in her awareness love would rise up against love, earth against heaven, and when she would be forced to choose between him and the radiant lord of the thousand-year realm. And she was not one who could endure such a struggle.

  “A summer passed, an autumn, a winter. When spring came and the ice melted, Ebba Dohna became ill. The ground was thawing in the valleys, the brooks were swelling, the lakes were unsafe, the roads impossible to travel either by sleigh or cart.

  “Then Countess Dohna wanted to have the doctor fetched from Karlstad. There was no one closer. But she commanded in vain. She could not induce a servant to go, either with prayers or threats. She fell on her knees for the coachman, but he refused. She had cramps and convulsions from sorrow over her daughter. She is wild in sorrow as well as in happiness, Countess Märta.

  “Ebba Dohna had pneumonia, and her life was in danger, but no doctor could be fetched.

  “Then the tutor went to Karlstad. Making that journey with the roads in such a state was gambling with your life, but he did it. The journey went across buckling ice and breakneck swells; at times he had to cut stair steps for the horse in the ice, at times pull the horse out of the road’s deep clay. It was said that the doctor refused to come with him, but that with pistol in hand he forced him to go along.

  “When he came back, the countess was ready to throw herself at his feet. ‘Take everything!’ she said. ‘Say what you want, what you desire, my daughter, my estate, my money!’

  “‘Your daughter,’ replied the tutor.”

  Anna Stjärnhök suddenly falls silent.

  “Well, what then, what happens next?” asks Countess Elisabet.

  “That’s enough for now,” answers Anna, for she is one of those pitiful people who live under the anxiety and fear of doubt. For an entire week now she has been like that. She does not know what she wants. What seems right to her one moment becomes wrong the next. Now she wishes she had never started this story.

  “I am starting to think that you want to make fun of me, Anna. Don’t you understand that I must hear the end of this story?”

  “There is not much left to tell. The hour of struggle had come for the young Ebba Dohna. Love raised up against love, earth against heaven.

  “Countess Märta told her about the marvelous journey which the young man had made for her sake, and she told her that as a reward she had therefore granted him her hand.

  “The young Miss Ebba was then so far advanced on the way to improvement that she was lying dressed on a sofa. She was weak and tired and even more silent than usual.

  “When she heard these words, she raised her brown eyes reproachfully toward her mother and said to her, ‘Mama, have you given me away to a defrocked minister, to one who has forfeited his right to be God’s servant, to a man who has been a thief, a beggar?’

  “‘But, child, who told you this? I thought you didn’t know anything.’

  “‘I found out. I heard your guests talking about him, the same day I got sick.’

  “‘But child, keep in mind that he saved your life!’

  “‘I am keeping in mind that he has deceived me. He should have told me who he was.’

  “‘He says that you love him.’

  “‘I did love him. I cannot love anyone who has deceived me.’

  “‘In what way has he deceived you?’

  “‘You will not understand, Mama.’

  “She did not want to speak with her mother about the thousand-year realm of her dreams, which her beloved would have helped her to make a reality.

  “‘Ebba,’ said the countess, ‘if you love him, then you should not ask about what he has been, but rather marry him. The husband of a Countess Dohna will be rich and powerful enough, so that the sins of his youth will be excused.’

  “‘I do not care about the sins of his youth, Mama; it is because he can never become what I wanted him to become that I cannot marry him.’

  “‘Ebba, don’t forget that I have given him my word!’

  “The girl turned corpse white.

  “‘Mama, I am telling you that if you marry me to him, you are separating me from God.’

  “‘I have decided to make you happy,’ says the countess. ‘I am certain that you will be happy with this man. Haven’t you already succeeded in making a saint out of him? I have decided to overlook the demands of ancestry and forget that he is poor and despised, to give you the opportunity to restore his reputation. I know that I am doing what is right. You know that I despise all ancient prejudices.’

  “But she is saying all this simply because she does not tolerate anyone setting herself against her will. Perhaps also because she meant it, when she said it. Countess Märta is not easy to understand.

  “The young woman remained lying on her sofa a long while after the countess had left her. She fought her battle. Earth rose up against heaven, love against love, but her childhood’s beloved won the victory. Where she lay, right here on the sofa, she saw the western sky glowing with a magnificent sunset. She thought that this was a greeting from the good king, and as she would not have been able to remain faithful to him if she had lived, she decided to die. She could do nothing else, when her mother wanted her to belong to one who could not be the good king’s servant.

  “She went over to the window, opened it, and let the twilight’s cold, damp air thoroughly chill her poor, weak body.

  “It was an easy task for her to bring death on herself. It was certain, if the illness were to begin anew, and it did.

  “There is no one other than myself who knows that she sought death out, Elisabet. I found her by the window. I heard her feverish fantasies. She liked having me by her side during her final days.

  “It was I who saw her die, who saw how one evening hour she extended her arms toward the glowing west and died, smiling, as if she had seen someone appear from the brilliance of the sunset to meet her. I was also the one who had to convey her final greeting to the one whom she had loved. I was to ask him to forgive that she could not become his wife. The good king did not allow it.

  “But I have not dared tell that man that he was her murderer. I have not dared set the weight of such agony on his shoulders. And yet, he, who lied his way to her love, was he not her murderer? Wasn’t he, Elisabet?”

  The Countess Dohna had long ceased stroking the blue flowers. Now she gets up, and the bouquet falls to the floor.

  “Anna, you are still making fun of me. You say that the story is old, and that the man was dead a long time ago. But I know that it is scarcely five years since Ebba Dohna died, and you are telling about it as if you yourself have been part of the whole thing. You are not old. Tell me who the man is!”

  Anna Stjärnhök started to laugh.

  “You wanted a love story. Now you’ve got on
e, which has cost you both tears and worry.”

  “Do you mean that you have lied?”

  “Nothing other than poetry and lies, the whole thing!”

  “You are mean, Anna.”

  “That may be. I am not altogether happy either, I should say. But the wives are awake, and the gentlemen have come into the drawing room. Let us go out there!”

  On the threshold she is stopped by Gösta Berling, who is coming to look for the young ladies.

  “You must have patience with me,” he says laughing. “I will only bother you for ten minutes, but you must hear some verse.”

  He tells them that last night he dreamed as vividly as seldom before, dreamed that he had written verse. He, whom people called “the poet,” although up until now he had not deserved such a nickname, got up in the middle of the night and, half asleep, half awake, started to write. It was a complete poem that he found on his writing table in the morning. He would never have believed any such thing about himself. Now the ladies would hear it.

  And he reads:Now the moon came up, and with it came the sweetest hour of

  the day.

  From the clear, pale blue, high arch

  he molded his shimmer onto vine-encircled terrace,

  at whose foot trembled in its garden urn

  a yellow-red lily, whose cup is edged by golden rays.

  On the broad staircase’s solid surface

  we had all sat down, the old ones and the young ones,

  silent at first to let our feelings sing

  the heart’s old ballads in the sweetest hour of day.

  From the mignonette cluster its sweet aroma spread to us,

  and from the dark thicket of the bushes

  shadows stole across glistening, dew-drenched lawn.

  Then from the darkness of the bodies

  the spirit dances to the realm of light,

  to the regions he can scarce perceive,

  to the light, pale blue, high loft,

  in whose clarity a star can almost be discerned.

  Oh, who against the play of feelings can defend

  the play of night shadows, with the sorrow-laden odor

  of mignonette?

  A French rose lets fall its final, pallid petal,

  without the play of wind forcing its offering.

  So, we thought, would we our own lives give,

  vanish in space like the sound of notes,

  like autumn’s yellowed leaves without complaint becoming

  nothing.

  Oh, we extend the row of years,

  disturb the peace of nature to enjoy the illusion

  of living.

  Death is life’s reward. So we must leave it quietly,

  as a French rose lets fall its final, pallid petal.

  On its fluttering wing a bat flew past us,

  flew and was seen again there, where’er the moon shone.

  But then it rose up from distressed hearts,

  the question, that no one had yet answered,

  the question, like sorrow heavy, the question, old as pain:

  “Oh, where are we going, what paths shall we wander, we,

  when we no longer on earth’s verdant meadows walk?”

  If anyone can show the spirit’s path to another,

  he more easily shows the way to the animal that just

  fluttered past us.

  Then she leaned her head against my shoulder, her soft hair,

  she, who loved me, and whispered quietly to me:

  “Do not believe that souls fly off to distant realms of space,

  when I have died, do not believe that I am far away!

  Into a beloved person’s soul my homeless spirit will slip,

  and I will come and live in you.”

  Oh, what anxiety! From sorrow my heart would burst.

  She would die then, die soon. Was this night her last?

  Did I give my last kiss to my beloved’s billowing hair?

  Years have vanished since. Still I sit many a time

  at the old place, when the night is dark and silent.

  But I shudder at the moon’s sheen on vine-encircled terrace.

  He who alone knows how often there my love I kissed,

  he, who would blend his trembling light among the tears

  that fell down on my beloved’s hair.

  Woe to the torment of memory! Oh, this is the torment of my

  poor, sinful spirit,

  that he is her home! What punishment can he expect to risk,

  who once bound himself to a soul, so pure, so sinless?

  “Gösta,” says Anna in a joking tone, while her voice is about to be tied in knots by anxiety, “they say that you have experienced more poems than others, who have done nothing else their whole lives, have written, but do you know, you do best composing in your own way. That poem should never see the light of day, you know.”

  “You are not gentle.”

  “Coming and reading such things about death and misery! Aren’t you ashamed?”

  Gösta is no longer listening to her. His eyes are directed at the young countess. She is sitting completely rigid, immobile as a statue. He thinks she is going to faint.

  But with endless difficulty a word passes across her lips.

  “Go!” she says.

  “Who should go? Should I go?”

  “The minister must go!” she stammers out.

  “Elisabet, be quiet now!”

  “The drunken minister must get out of my house!”

  “Anna, Anna,” asks Gösta, “what does she mean?”

  “It’s best that you go, Gösta.”

  “Why should I go? What does all this mean?”

  “Anna,” says the Countess Elisabet, “tell him, tell him. . . .”

  The countess bites her teeth together and overcomes her agitation.

  “Mr. Berling,” she says, going over to him, “you have a remarkable ability to cause people to forget who you are. I have not known it before today. I have just heard the story about the death of Ebba Dohna, and that it was the information that she loved an unworthy man that killed her. Your poem has let me understand that this man is you. I cannot understand how anyone with the past you have lived can show himself in the company of an honorable woman. I cannot understand it, Mr. Berling. Am I clear enough now?”

  “Yes, you are, countess. I only want to say a single word in defense. I was convinced, I have been convinced the entire time, that you have known everything about me. I have never tried to conceal anything, but it cannot of course be amusing to shout out the bitterest misfortunes of your life on the roads, least of all to do it yourself.”

  He leaves.

  And at the same moment Countess Dohna sets her narrow foot on the little bouquet with the blue stars.

  “You have now done what I have wanted,” says Anna Stjärnhök harshly to the countess, “but now our friendship is also at an end. You must not think that I can forgive that you have been cruel to him. You have turned him away, mocked and wounded him, and I, I would follow him into prison, to the pillory, if such were the case. It is I who will guard him, preserve him. You have done what I wanted, but I will never forgive you.”

  “But Anna, Anna!”

  “If I told you this, do you think I did it with a happy heart? Have I not been sitting here and, piece by piece, tearing the heart out of my chest?”

  “So why did you do it?”

  “Why? Because, you, I did not want—did not want him to become a married woman’s lover. . . .”

  CHAPTER 13

  MAMSELL MARIE

  Silence, by all means, silence!

  There is a buzzing over my head. It must be a bumblebee flying around. No, just be quiet! Such an aroma! As sure as I’m alive, if it isn’t southernwood and lavender and bird cherry and lilac and narcissus. It is a glory to sense this on a gray autumn evening in the heart of the city. Simply by setting out that blessed little patch of earth in my thoughts, right away there is
buzzing and scents around me, and without noticing it I move into a small, square rosarium, filled with flowers and sheltered by a privet hedge. In the corners are lilac bowers with narrow wooden benches, and around the flower beds, shaped like hearts and stars, are narrow paths, strewn with white sand. The forest is on three sides of the rosarium. The rowan and bird cherry, which are half-domesticated and have beautiful blossoms, stand closest, blending their scents with the lilacs. Beyond them stand a few lines of birches, and then the spruce forest begins, the real forest, silent and dark, bearded and pungent.

  And on the fourth side stands a little gray cottage.

  Sixty years ago the rosarium I am thinking about was owned by old Mrs. Moreus in Svartsjö; she made a living by stitching quilts for the farmers and preparing food for their feasts.

  Dear friends! Among all the good things I wish for you, I would first mention a quilting frame and a rosarium. I wish you a large, rickety, old-fashioned quilting frame with worn grooves and chipped spools, the kind at which five, six persons could work at one time, where you sew in teams and compete in making beautiful stitches on the reverse side, where you eat baked apples and talk and “travel to Greenland” and “hide the thimble” and laugh so that the squirrels off in the forest fall headlong to the ground in fright. A quilting frame for winter, dear friends, and a rosarium for summer! Not a garden, where you have to lay out more money than the enjoyment is worth, no, a rosarium, as it was called in former times! You should have such a thing, to care for with your own hands. Small briar-rose bushes should sit atop the small mounds of earth, and a wreath of forget-me-not wind around its foot; there the big, flighty poppy, which seeds itself, could come up everywhere, both on the grass strip and the sand path, and there should be a dried-out turf bank in which there should be columbines and crown imperials, both on the seat and on the back support.

  In her day old Mrs. Moreus was the owner of many things. She had three happy and industrious daughters and a little cottage by the roadside. She had a stash of coins at the bottom of a chest, starched silk scarves, straight-backed armchairs, and knowledge of many things that are useful to know by anyone who must earn her bread herself.