The Saga of Gosta Berling

by Selma Lagerlof

  But the best things she owned were the quilting frame, which gave her work year-round, and the rosarium, which gave her joy as long as summer lasted.

  Now it should also be told that in Mrs. Moreus’s little cottage there was a lodger, a dry little mamsell about forty years old who lived in a gable room in the attic. Mamsell Marie, as she was always called, had her own opinions on many things, such as someone is likely to have who is often alone and lets her own thoughts revolve around what her own eyes have seen.

  Mamsell Marie believed that love was the root and the cause of all evil in this sorrow-filled world.

  Every evening before she fell asleep, she would fold her hands and say her evening prayers. After she had said the Lord’s Prayer and the benediction, she always concluded by praying to God to preserve her from love.

  “There would only be misery from it,” she said. “I am old and ugly and poor. No, may I only keep from falling in love!”

  She sat day after day up in the attic room in Mrs. Moreus’s little cottage, sewing curtains and tablecloths with scalloped edges. Then she sold all these to farmers and gentry. She was in the process of sewing together a cottage for herself.

  For a little cottage on the hill with a view across from Svartsjö church was what she wanted, a cottage sitting high on a hill, so that from there you could see far and freely; that was her dream. But she would not hear a word about love.

  When on a summer evening she heard the fiddle sounding from the crossroads, where the fiddler sat on the fence stile and the young people swung around in the polska dance so that the dust whirled, then she took a long detour through the forest to avoid hearing and seeing it.

  On the day after Christmas, when the farm brides came five or six at a time to be dressed by Mrs. Moreus and her daughters, as they were adorned with wreaths of myrtle and high crowns of silk and glass beads, with showy silk sashes and corsages of homemade roses, and the skirt hemmed with garlands of taffeta flowers, then she stayed up in her room to avoid seeing how they were decked out in honor of love.

  When the Moreus girls were sitting at the quilting frame on winter evenings and the large room on the left in the vestibule was radiant with coziness, when the white transparent apples were swinging and perspiring in the stove, hung before the blazing fire, when handsome Gösta Berling or kind Ferdinand, who had come on a visit, took the opportunity to pull the thread out of the needle for the girls or fooled them into sewing crooked stitches, and the room resounded with merriment and laughter and talking and flirtation and the pressure of hands met under the quilting frame, then in annoyance she rolled up her sewing and went her way, for she hated love and the ways of love.

  But she knew the misdeeds of Love, and she knew how to tell about those. She marveled that it still dared to show its face on the earth, that it was not frightened away by the laments of the abandoned and curses from those whom it had turned into criminals, from the cries of woe of those whom it had cast into despicable chains. She marveled that its wings could carry it so free and light, that it did not sink into the nameless depths, weighed down by anguish and shame.

  No, she must have been young at one time, like other people, but Love itself she had never loved. Never had she let herself be enticed into dancing and caresses. Her mother’s guitar hung, dusty and without strings, in the attic. Never had she strummed it in a pallid love song.

  Her mother’s rosebush stood in her window. She gave it water sparingly. She did not love the flowers, those children of love. The leaves hung dustily. Spiders played between the branches, and the buds never opened.

  And in Mrs. Moreus’s rosarium, where butterflies fluttered and birds sang, where aromatic flowers sent love notes to hovering bees, where everything spoke of the hateful thing, she seldom set foot.

  There came a time when Svartsjö parish was having an organ installed in the church. It was summer before the year when the cavaliers were in charge. A young organ builder came there. He too became a lodger with Mrs. Moreus and was housed, he too, in a small gable room in the attic.

  Then he set up this organ, which has such strange tones, whose dreadful bassoon stop intermittently bursts forth in the middle of a peaceful hymn—no one knows why or how—and causes the children to cry in church on Christmas morning.

  It may well be doubted whether this young organ builder was a master of his trade. But he was a merry fellow, with sunshine in his eyes. He had a friendly word for each and every one, for rich and poor, for old and young. He soon became good friends with his landlords, ah, more than a friend.

  When he came home from work in the evening, he held Mrs. Moreus’s skein of yarn and worked at the young girls’ side in the rosarium. Then he declaimed “Axel” and sang “Fritjof.” Then he picked up Mamsell Marie’s ball of thread, however often she dropped it, and even started her wall clock.

  He ended no ball before he had danced with all of them, from the oldest lady to the youngest lass, and if he suffered a setback, he sat down by the side of the first woman he encountered and made her his confidante. Yes, this was a man such as women create in their dreams! It should not be said of him that he spoke with anyone about love. But when he had been living in Mrs. Moreus’s little gable room a few weeks, all the girls were in love with him, and poor Mamsell Marie knew, she too, that she had said her prayers in vain.

  It was a time of sorrow and a time of joy. Tears fell upon the quilting frame and erased the chalk marks. In the evening a pale dreamer often sat in the lilac bower, and up in Mamsell Marie’s little room the newly stringed guitar was strummed to pallid love ballads, which she had learned from her mother.

  The young organ builder remained, however, just as carefree and happy, strewing out smiles and favors among these languishing women, who quarreled about him when he was away at work. And finally came the day when he must leave.

  The carriage stood by the door. The portmanteau was bound fast at the back of the cart, and the young man said farewell. He kissed Mrs. Moreus on the hand and took the weeping girls in his arms and kissed them on the cheek. He himself wept at having to leave, for he had had a sunny summer in the little gray cottage. Finally he looked around for Mamsell Marie.

  Then she came down the old attic stairs in her best finery. The guitar was hanging around her neck on a wide, green silk strap, and in her hand she held a bouquet of Chinese monthly roses, for this year her mother’s rose tree had bloomed. She stopped before the young man, strummed the guitar and sang:You’re leaving us now. Welcome back soon again!

  The voice of true friendship is speaking.

  Be happy; forget not a kindhearted friend

  In the forests and valleys of Värmland!

  Then she placed the flowers in his buttonhole and kissed him right on the mouth. Yes, and then she vanished up the attic stairs again, the old apparition.

  Love had avenged itself on her and made her into a laughing-stock. But she never complained about it anymore. She never put away the guitar and never again forgot to tend her mother’s rose tree.

  She had learned to love Love with all its torment, its tears, its longing.

  “Better mournful with him than happy without him,” she said.

  Time passed. The majoress at Ekeby was driven away, the cavaliers came to power, and it happened, as was just mentioned, that one Sunday evening Gösta Berling recited a poem for the countess at Borg and was then forbidden by her to show himself in her house.

  It is said that when Gösta closed the front door behind him, he saw some sleighs driving up to Borg. He cast a glance at the little lady who sat in the lead sleigh. Dreary as the hour was for him, it became even drearier at that sight. He hurried away so as not to be recognized, but a sense of doom filled his mind. Had the conversation within called forth this woman? One misfortune always breeds another.

  But servants hurried out, foot warmers were unbuttoned, fur rugs cast aside. Who had come? Who was the little lady who was riding in the sleigh? It was actually Märta Dohna, the notorious c
ountess herself!

  She was the most amusing and the most foolish of women. The world’s delight had raised her up onto its throne and made her its queen. Games and amusements were her subjects. When the fortunes of life were distributed, play and dance and adventures fell to her share.

  She was now not far from her fiftieth year, but she was one of the wise ones who do not count the number of years. “Anyone who cannot raise his foot in a dance or his mouth in a smile,” she would say, “he is old. He feels the horrid burden of age, not me.”

  Delight had no unshaken faith in the days of her youth, but variety and uncertainty only increased the pleasure in her amusing existence. Her majesty with the butterfly wings held a coffee party one day in the court ladies’ apartment at Stockholm’s palace and the next day danced in evening dress and knölpåk in Paris itself. She visited Napoleon’s encampments, she attended a congress in Vienna, she dared to go to Brussels to a ball the night before a famous battle.

  And wherever Happiness was, there was Märta Dohna, his chosen queen. Dancing, playing, joking pursued Countess Märta the world around. What had she not seen, what had she not experienced? Thrones toppled in dance, écarté played for prince doms, devastating wars joked away! Her life had been merriment and madness and would always remain so. Her body was not too old for the dance nor her heart for love. When did she grow tired of masquerades and comedies, of merry stories and melancholy ballads?

  When at times joy was homeless in a world transformed into a battlefield, she would drift up to the old count’s estate on Löven’s long lake for longer or shorter stays. She had likewise drifted up there when the princes and their courts had become too dreary for her in the time of the Holy Alliance. It was during such a visit that she had decided to make Gösta Berling her son’s tutor. She felt quite at home up there. Joy had never had a more magnificent realm. There was song and play, adventure-loving men and lovely, happy women. There was no lack of dinner parties and balls, boat rides across moonlit lakes, sleigh rides through dark forests, no lack of heart-stirring events and the sorrow and pain of love either.

  But when her daughter died, she stopped visiting Borg. She had not seen it in five years. Now she came to see how her daughter-in-law was enduring life among the spruce forests, bears, and snowdrifts. She considered it a duty to come and see whether stupid Henrik had tortured her to death with his tedium. Now she would be the gentle angel of domestic bliss. Sunshine and happiness were packed in her forty leather portmanteaus, Merriment was the name of her chambermaid, Joking her coachman, Play her lady’s companion.

  And as she sprang up the steps, she was met with open arms. Her old room on the bottom floor awaited her. Her servant, her lady’s companion and chambermaid, her forty portmanteaus, her thirty hatboxes, her necessaries and shawls and furs, little by little all of it came into the house. There was noise and clamor everywhere. There were slamming doors and commotion on the stairs. It was noticeable that Countess Märta had arrived.

  It was a spring evening, a really beautiful evening, although it was still only April and the ice had not broken up. Mamsell Marie had opened her window. She was sitting up in her room, strumming the guitar and singing.

  She was so occupied with the guitar and her singing that she did not notice how a carriage came driving along the road and stopped at the cottage. In the carriage sat Countess Märta, and she enjoyed seeing Mamsell Marie, who sat in the window with her guitar around her neck and, with her eyes turned toward heaven, sang old, worn-out love songs.

  At last the countess got out of the carriage and went into the cottage, where the kind girls were sitting around the quilting frame. She was never haughty: the wind of revolution had swept over her and blown fresh air into her lungs.

  She could not help it that she was a countess, she always said; but in any event she wanted to live the sort of life that pleased her. She had just as much fun at a peasant wedding as at court balls. She played comedies for her maids when no other audience was at hand, and she brought delight to all gatherings where she appeared with her beautiful small face and her overflowing intrepidness.

  She ordered quilts from Mrs. Moreus and praised the girls. She looked around in the rosarium and told about her adventures on her journey. She always had adventures, she did. And at last she ventured up the attic stairs, which were frighteningly steep and narrow, and visited Mamsell Marie in her gable room.

  There she let her black eyes flash down over the lonely little person, and the melodic voice caress her ears.

  She bought curtains from her. She could not live up there at Borg without having scalloped curtains on all her windows, and she wanted to have one of Mamsell Marie’s tablecloths on all the tables.

  Then she borrowed her guitar and sang for her a song of joy and love. And she told stories for her, so that Mamsell Marie found herself moved out into the amusing, bustling world. And the countess’s laugh was such music that the frozen birds in the rosarium started to sing when they heard it, and her face, which was scarcely beautiful anymore, for her skin was ravaged by makeup and there were features of crude sensuality around her mouth, seemed so beautiful to Mamsell Marie that she marveled how the little mirror could let it go away, once it had captured it on its shiny surface.

  When she left, she kissed Mamsell Marie and invited her to come up to Borg.

  Mamsell Marie’s heart was as empty as the little swallows’ nest at yuletide. She was free, but she sighed for bonds like a slave freed in old age.

  Now began again a time of joy and a time of sorrow for Mamsell Marie, but not for long, only eight short days.

  The countess fetched her incessantly up to Borg. She played comedy for her and told her about her suitors, and Mamsell Marie laughed like she had never laughed before. They became the best of friends. The countess soon knew all about the young organ builder and about his departure. And in the twilight she let Mamsell Marie sit in the window seat in the little blue study. Then she hung the guitar strap around her neck and got her to sing love songs. Then the countess sat and watched how the old girl’s dry, meager figure and ugly little head were outlined against the reddish evening light, and she said that the poor mamsell resembled a languishing castle maiden. But every song spoke of tender shepherds and cruel shepherdesses, and Mamsell Marie’s voice was the very thinnest of voices, and one can easily understand that the countess would be delighted by such a comedy.

  Then there was a dinner party at Borg, as was naturally the case when the count’s mother had come home. And it was merry as usual. The company, however, was not large. Only parish residents were invited.

  The dining room was on the main floor, and after supper it happened that the guests did not make their way up the stairs again, but instead took a seat in Countess Märta’s rooms, which were adjacent. Then the countess took hold of Mamsell Marie’s guitar and started to sing for the company. She was an amusing lady, Countess Märta, and she could imitate anyone. Now she got the idea of imitating Mamsell Marie. She turned her eyes toward heaven and sang in a thin, shrill child’s voice.

  “Oh no, oh no, countess!” pleaded Mamsell Marie.

  But the countess was enjoying herself, and most of them could not keep from laughing, although they probably felt sorry for Mamsell Marie.

  The countess took a handful of dry rose petals from a potpourri vase, went with tragic gestures over to Mamsell Marie, and sang with deep feeling:You’re leaving us now. Welcome back soon again!

  The voice of true friendship is speaking.

  Be happy; forget not a kindhearted friend

  In the forests and valleys of Värmland!

  Then she scattered rose petals over her head. People laughed, but Mamsell Marie became wild with rage. She looked as if she might tear the eyes out of the countess.

  “You are a bad woman, Märta Dohna,” she said. “No honorable woman ought to associate with you.”

  Countess Märta became angry too.

  “Out with you, mamsell!” she said. “I ha
ve had enough of your follies.”

  “Yes, I will leave,” said Mamsell Marie, “but first I want to be paid for my tablecloths and curtains that you have set up here.”

  “Those old rags!” cried the countess. “Do you want to be paid for those old rags! Take them with you! I never want to see them again! Take them with you at once!”

  With that the countess threw the tablecloths at her and pulled down the curtains, for now she was in a complete frenzy.

  The next day the young countess asked her mother-in-law to make amends with Mamsell Marie, but the countess did not want to. She was tired of her.

  Countess Elisabet then left and bought the entire supply of curtains from Mamsell Marie and set them up in the entire upper story. In doing so she felt that Mamsell Marie’s reputation was again restored.

  Countess Märta made many jokes with her daughter-in-law about her love for scalloped curtains. She could also conceal her wrath, keeping it healthy and fresh for years. She was a richly talented being.

  CHAPTER 14

  COUSIN KRISTOFFER

  They had an old bird of prey up in the cavaliers’ wing. He always sat in the chimney corner, keeping watch so the fire did not go out. He was ruffled and gray. The little head with the great beak and the lifeless eyes leaned sorrowfully on the long, emaciated neck, sticking up from a bushy fur collar. For that bird of prey wore furs both winter and summer.

  In times past he had been part of the swarm that swept across Europe in the wake of the great emperor, but nowadays no one dares say what name and title he bore. In Värmland it was only known that he had taken part in the great wars, that he wreaked dreadful havoc in thundering battles, and that after 1815 he had to take to his wings away from an ungrateful fatherland. He found refuge with the Swedish crown prince, who advised him to disappear in far-off Värmland. The times were such that he, whose name caused the world to tremble, must now be happy that no one knew his once feared name.