Lagerlöf Selma
Invisible Links
Within it was more attractive than she had expected. Rushes were strewed over the floor. It was full of the fresh fragrance of pine and resin. The sunshine that played through the windows and cracks made bands of light through the air. It looked as if she had been expected; in the crannies of the wall green branches were stuck, and in the fireplace stood a newly cut fir-tree. Tönne had not moved in his old furniture. There was nothing but a new table and a bench, over which an elk skin was thrown.
As soon as Jofrid had crossed the threshold, she felt the pleasant cosiness of home surrounding her. She was happy and content while she stood there, but to leave it seemed to her as hard as to go away and serve strangers. It happened that Jofrid had expended much hard work in procuring a kind of dower for herself. With skilful hands she had woven bright colored fabrics, such as are used to adorn a room, and she wanted to put them up in her own home, when she got one. Now she wondered how those cloths would look here. She wished she could try them in the new house.
She hurried quickly home, fetched her roll of weavings and began to fasten the bright-colored pieces of cloth up under the roof. She threw open the door to let the big setting sun shine on her and her work. She moved eagerly about the cottage, brisk, gay, bumming a merry tune. She was perfectly happy. It looked so fine. The woven roses and stars shone as never before.
While she worked she kept a good look-out over the moor and the graves, for it seemed to her as if Tönne might now too be lying hidden behind one of the cairns and laughing at her. The king's grave lay opposite the door and behind it she saw the sun setting. Time after time she looked out. She felt as if some one was sitting there and watching her.
Just as the sun was so low that only a few blood-red beams filtered over the old stone heap, she saw who it was who was watching her. The whole pile of stones was no longer stones, but a mighty, old warrior, who was sitting there, scarred and gray, and staring at her. Round about his head the rays of the sun made a crown, and his red mantle was so wide that it spread over the whole moor. His head was big and heavy, his face gray as stone. His clothes and weapons were also stone-colored, and repeated so exactly the shadings and mossiness of the rock, that one had to look closely to see that it was a warrior and not a pile of stones. It was like those insects which resemble tree-twigs. One can go by them twenty times before one sees that it is a soft animal body one has taken for hard wood.
But Jofrid could no longer be mistaken. It was the old King Atle himself sitting there. She stood in the doorway, shaded her eyes with her hand, and looked right into his stony face. He had very small, oblique eyes under a dome-like brow, a broad nose and a long beard. And he was alive, that man of stone. He smiled and winked at her. She was afraid, and what terrified her most of all were his thick, muscular arms and hairy hands. The longer she looked at him the broader grew his smile, and at last he lifted one of his mighty arms to beckon her to him. Then Jofrid took flight towards home.
But when Tönne came home and saw the housc adorned with starry weavings, he found courage to send a friend to Jofrid's father. The latter asked Jofrid what she thought about it and she gave her consent. She was well pleased with the way it had turned out, even if she had been half forced to give her hand. She could not say no to the man, to whose house she had already carried her dower. Still she looked first to see that old King Atle had again become a pile of stones.
***
Tönne and Jofrid lived happily for many years. They earned a good reputation. "They are good," people said. "See how they stand by one another, see how they work together, see how one cannot live apart from the other!"
Tönne grew stronger, more enduring and less heavy-witted every day. Jofrid seemed to have made a whole man of him. Almost always he let her rule, but he also understood how to carry out his own will with tenacious obstinacy.
Jests and merriment followed Jofrid wherever she went. Her clothes became more vivid the older she grew. Her whole face was bright red. But in Tönne's eyes she was beautiful.
They were not so poor as many others of their class. They ate butter with their porridge and mixed neither bran nor bark in their bread. Myrtle ale foamed in their tankards. Their flocks of sheep and goats increased so quickly that they could allow themselves meat.
Tönne once worked for a peasant in the valley. The latter, who saw how he and his wife worked together with great gaiety, thought like many another: "See, these are good people."
The peasant had lately lost his wife, and she had left behind her a child six months old. He asked Tönne and Jofrid to take his son as a foster-child.
"The child is very dear to me," he said, "therefore I give it to you, for you are good people."
They had no children of their own, so that it seemed very fitting for them to take it. They accepted it too without hesitation. They thought it would be to their advantage to bring up a peasant's child, besides which they expected to be cheered in their old age by their foster-son.
But the child did not live to grow up with them. Before the year was out it was dead. It was said by many that it was the fault of the foster-parents, for the child had been unusually strong before it came to them. By that no one meant, however, that they had killed it intentionally, but rather that they had undertaken something beyond their powers. They had not had sense or love enough to give it the care it needed. They were accustomed only to think of themselves and to look out for themselves. They had no time to care for a child. They wished to go together to their work every day and to sleep a quiet sleep at night. They thought that the child drank too much of their good milk and did not allow him as much as themselves. They had no idea that they were treating the boy badly. They thought that they were just as tender to him as parents generally are. It seemed more to them as if their foster-son had been a punishment and a torment. They did not mourn him when he died.
Women usually enjoy nothing better than to take care of a child; but Jofrid had a husband, whom she often had to care for like a mother, so that she desired no one else. They also love to see their children's quick growth; but Jofrid had pleasure enough in watching Tönne develop sense and manliness, in adorning and taking care of her house, in the increase of their flocks, and in the crops which they were raising below on the moor.
Jofrid went to the peasant's farm and told him that the child was dead. Then the man said: "I am like the man who puts cushions in his bed so soft that he sinks down to the hard bottom. I wished to care too well for my son, and look, now he is dead!" And he was heart-broken.
At his words Jofrid began to weep bitterly. "Would to God that you had not left your son with us!" she said. "We were too poor. He could not get what he needed with us."
"That is not what I meant," answered the peasant. "I believe that you have over-indulged the child. But I will not accuse any one, for over life and death God alone rules. Now I mean to celebrate the funeral of my only son with the same expense as if he had been full grown, and to the feast I invite both Tönne and you. By that you may know that I bear you no grudge."
So Tönne and Jofrid went to the funeral banquet. They were well treated, and no one said anything unfriendly to them. The women who had dressed the child's body had related that it had been miserably thin and had borne marks of great neglect. But that could easily come from sickness. No one wished to believe anything bad about the foster-parents, for it was known that they were good people.
Jofrid wept a great deal during those days, especially when she heard the women tell how they had to wake and toil for their little children. She noticed, too, that the women at the funeral were continually talking of their children. Some rejoiced so in them that they never could stop telling of their questions and games. Jofrid would have liked to have talked about Tönne, but most of them never spoke of their husbands.
Late one evening Jofrid and Tönne came home from the festivities. They went straight to bed. But hardly had they fallen asleep before they were waked by a feeble crying. "It is the child," they thought, still half asleep, and were angry at being disturbed. But suddenly both of them sat right up in the bed. The child was dead. Where did that crying come from? When they were quite awake, they heard nothing, but as soon as they began to drop off to sleep they heard it. Little, tottering feet sounded on the stone threshold outside the house, a little hand groped for the door, and when it could not open it, the child crept crying and feeling along the wall, until it stopped just outside where they were sleeping. As soon as they spoke or sat up, they perceived nothing; but when they tried to sleep, they distinctly heard the uncertain steps and the suppressed sobbings.
That which they had not wished to believe, but which seemed a possibility during these last days, now became a certainty. They felt that they had killed the child. Why otherwise should it have the power to haunt them?
From that night all happiness left them. They lived in constant fear of the ghost. By day they had some peace, but at night they were so disturbed by the child's weeping and choking sobs, that they did not dare to sleep alone. Jofrid often went long distances to get some one to stop over night in their house. If there was any stranger there, it was quiet, but as soon as they were alone, they heard the child.
One night, when they had found no one to keep them company and could not sleep for the child, Jofrid got up from her bed.
"You sleep, Tönne," she said. "If I keep awake, we will not hear anything."
She went out and sat down on the doorstep, thinking of what they ought to do to get peace, for they could not go on living as things were. She wondered if confession and penance and mortification and repentance could relieve them from this heavy punishment.
Then it happened that she raised her eyes and saw the same vision as once before from this place. The pile of stones had changed to a warrior. The night was quite dark, but still she could plainly see that old King Atle sat there and watched her. She saw him so well that she could distinguish the moss-grown bracelets on his wrists and could see how his legs were bound with crossed bands, between which his calf muscles swelled.
This time she was not afraid of the old man. He seemed to be a friend and consoler in her unhappiness. He looked at her with pity, as if he wished to give her courage. Then she thought that the mighty warrior had once had his day, when he had overthrown hundreds of enemies there on the heath and waded through the streams of blood that had poured between the clumps. What had he thought of one dead man more or less? How much would the sight of children, whose fathers he had killed, have moved his heart of stone? Light as air would the burden of a child's death have rested on his conscience.
And she heard his whisper, the same which the old stone-cold heathenism had whispered through all time. "Why repent? The gods rule us. The fates spin the threads of life. Why shall the children of earth mourn because they have done what the immortal gods have forced them to do?"
Then Jofrid took courage and said to herself: "How am I to blame because the child died? It is God alone who decides. Nothing takes place without his will." And she thought that she could lay the ghost by putting all repentance from her.
But now the door opened and Tönne came out to her. "Jofrid," he said, "it is in the house now. It came up and knocked on the edge of the bed and woke me. What shall we do, Jofrid?"
"The child is dead," said Jofrid. "You know that it is lying deep under ground. All this is only dreams and imagination." She spoke hardly and coldly, for she feared that Tönne would do something reckless, and thereby cause them misfortune.
"We must put an end to it," said Tönne.
Jofrid laughed dismally. "What do you wish to do? God has sent this to us. Could He not have kept the child alive if He had chosen? He did not wish it, and now He persecutes us for its death. Tell me by what right He persecutes us?"
She got her words from the old stone warrior, who sat dark and high on his pile. It seemed as if he suggested to her everything she answered Tönne.
"We must acknowledge that we have neglected the child, and do penance," said Tönne.
"Never will I suffer for what is not my fault," said Jofrid. "Who wanted the child to die? Not I, not I. What kind of a penance will you do? You need all your strength for work."
"I have already tried with scourging," said Tönne. "It is of no avail."
"You see," she said, and laughed again.
"We must try something else," Tönne went on with persistent determination. "We must confess."
"What do you want to tell God, that He does not know?" mocked Jofrid. "Does He not guide your thoughts, Tönne? What will you tell Him?" She thought that Tönne was stupid and obstinate. She had found him so in the beginning of their acquaintance, but since then she had not thought of it, but had loved him for his good heart.
"We will confess to the father, Jofrid, and offer him compensation."
"What will you offer him?" she asked.
"The house and the goats."
"He will certainly demand an enormous compensation for his only son. All that we possess would not be enough."
"We will give ourselves as slaves into his power, if he is not content with less."
At these words Jofrid was seized by cold despair, and she hated Tönne from the depths of her soul. Everything she would lose appeared so plainly to her, – freedom, for which her ancestors had ventured their lives, the house, her comforts, honor and happiness.
"Mark my words, Tönne," she said hoarsely, half choked with pain, "that the day you do that thing will be the day of my death."
After that no more words were exchanged between them, but they remained sitting on the doorstep until the day came. Neither found a word to appease or to conciliate; each felt fear and scorn of the other. The one measured the other by the standard of his own anger, and they found each other narrow-minded and bad-tempered.
After that night Jofrid could not refrain from letting Tönne feel that he was her inferior. She let him understand in the presence of others that he was stupid, and helped him with his work so that he had to think how much stronger she was. She evidently wished to take away from him all rights as master of the house. Sometimes she pretended to be very lively, to distract him and to prevent him from brooding. He had not done anything to carry out his plan, but she did not believe that he had given it up.
During this time Tönne became more and more as he was before his marriage. He grew thin and pale, silent and slow-witted. Jofrid's despair increased each day, for it seemed as if everything was to be taken from her. Her love for Tönne came back, however, when she saw him unhappy. "What is any of it worth to me if Tönne is ruined?" she thought. "It is better to go into slavery with him than to see him die in freedom."
***
Jofrid, however, could not at once decide to obey Tönne. She fought a long and severe fight. But one morning she awoke in an unusually calm and gentle mood. Then she thought that she could now do what he demanded. And she waked him, saying that it should be as he wished. Only that one day he should grant her to say farewell to everything.
The whole forenoon she went about strangely gentle. Tears rose easily to her eyes. The heath was beautiful that day for her sake, she thought. Frost had passed over it, the flowers were gone, and the whole moor had turned brown. But when it was lighted by the slanting rays of the autumn sun, it looked as if the heather glowed red once more. And she remembered the day when she saw Tönne for the first time.
She wished that she might see the old king once more, for he had helped her to find her happiness. She had been seriously afraid of him of late. She felt as if he were lying in wait to seize her. But now she thought he could no longer have any power over her. She would remember to look for him towards night when the moon rose.
It happened that a couple of wandering musicians came by about noon. Jofrid had the idea to ask them to stop at her house the whole afternoon, for she wished to have a dance. Tönne had to hasten to her parents and ask them to come. And her small brothers and sisters ran down to the village for the other guests. Soon many people had collected.
There was great gaiety. Tönne kept apart in a corner of the house, as was his habit when they had guests, but Jofrid was quite wild in her fun. With shrill voice she led the dance and was eager in offering her guests the foaming ale. There was not much room in the cottage, but the fiddlers were untiring, and the dance went on with life and spirit. It grew suffocatingly warm. The door was thrown open, and all at once Jofrid saw that night had come and that the moon had risen. Then she went to the door and looked out into the white world of the moonlight.
A heavy dew had fallen. The whole heath was white, as the moon was reflected in all the little drops, which had collected on every twig. There Tönne and she would go to-morrow hand in hand to meet the most terrible dishonor. For, however the meeting with the peasant should turn out, whatever he might take or whatever he might let them keep, dishonor would certainly be their lot. They, who that evening possessed a good cottage and many friends, to-morrow would be despised and detested by all, perhaps they would also be robbed of everything they had earned, perhaps, too, be dishonored slaves. She said to herself: "It is the way of death." And now she could not understand how she would ever have the strength to walk in it. It seemed to her as if she were of stone, a heavy stone image like old King Atle. Although she was alive, she felt as if she would not be able to lift her heavy stone limbs to walk that way.
She turned her eyes towards the king's grave and distinctly saw the old warrior sitting there. But now he was adorned as for a feast. He no longer wore the gray, moss-grown stone attire, but white, glittering silver. Now again he wore a crown of beams, as when she first saw him, but this one was white. And white shone his breastplate and armlets, shining white were sword, hilt, and shield. He sat and watched her with silent indifference. The unfathomable mystery which great stone faces wear had now sunk down over him. There he sat dark and mighty, and Jofrid had a faint, indistinct idea that he was an image of something which was in herself and in all men, of something which was buried in far-away centuries, covered by many stones, and still not dead. She saw him, the old king, sitting deep in the human heart. Over its barren field he spread his wide king's mantle. There pleasure danced, there love of display flaunted. He was the great stone warrior who saw famine and poverty pass by without his stone heart being moved. "It is the will of the gods," he said. He was the strong man of stone, who could bear unatoned-for sin without yielding. He always said: "Why grieve for what you have done, compelled by the immortal gods?"
Jofrid's breast was shaken by a sigh deep as a sob. She had a feeling which she could not explain, a feeling that she ought to struggle with the man of stone, if she was to be happy. But at the same time she felt helplessly weak.
Her impenitence and the struggle out on the heath seemed to her to be one and the same thing, and if she could not conquer the first by some means or other, the last would gain power over her.
She looked back towards the cottage, where the weavings glowed under the roof timbers, where the musicians spread merriment, and where everything she loved was, then she felt that she could not go into slavery. Not even for Tönne's sake could she do it. She saw his pale face within in the house, and she asked herself with a contraction of the heart if he was worth the sacrifice of everything for his sake.
In the cottage the people had started a new dance. They arranged themselves in a long line, took each other by the hand, and with a wild, strong young man at the head, they rushed forward at dizzy speed. The leader drew them through the open door out cm to the moonlit heath. They stormed by Jofrid, panting and wild, stumbling against stones, falling into the heather, making wide rings round the house, circling about the heaps of stones. The last of the line called to Jofrid and stretched out his hand to her. She seized it and ran too.
It was not a dance, only a mad rush; but there was pleasure in it, audacity and the joy of living. The rings became bolder, the cries sounded louder, the laughter more boisterous. From cairn to cairn, as they lay scattered over the heath, wound the line of dancers. If any one fell in the wild swinging, he was dragged up, the slow ones were driven onward; the musicians stood in the doorway and played the faster. There was no time to rest, to think, nor to look about. The dance went on at always madder speed over the yielding moss and slippery rocks.
During all this Jofrid felt more and more clearly that she wished to keep her freedom, that she would rather die than lose it. She saw that she could not follow Tönne. She thought of running away, of hurrying into the wood and never coming back.
They had circled about all the cairns except that of King Atle. Jofrid saw that they were now turning towards it and she kept her eyes fixed on the stone man. Then she saw how his giant arms were stretched towards the rushing dancers. She screamed aloud, but she was answered by loud laughter. She wished to stop, but a strong grasp drew her on. She saw him snatch at those hurrying by, but they were so quick that the heavy arms could not reach any of them. It was incomprehensible to her that no one saw him. The agony of death came over her. She thought that he would reach her. It was for her that he had lain in wait for many years. With the others it was only play. It was she whom he would seize at last.
Her turn came to rush by King Atle. She saw how he raised himself and bent for a spring to be sure of the matter and catch her. In her extreme need she felt that if she only could decide to give in the next day, he would not have the power to catch her, but she could not. – She came last, and she was swung so violently that she was more dragged and jerked forward than running herself, and it was hard for her to keep from falling. And although she passed at lightning speed, the old warrior was too quick for her. The heavy arms sank down over her, the stone hands seized her, she was drawn into the silvery harness of that breast. The agony of death took more and more hold of her, but she knew to the very last that it was because she had not been able to conquer the stone king in her own heart that Atle had power over her.
It was the end of the dancing and merriment. Jofrid lay dying. In the violence of their mad rout, she had been thrown against the king's cairn and received her death-blow on its stones.
