Lagerlöf Selma
Jerusalem
On seeing Gertrude so changed, a sense of supreme happiness came to Ingmar. A peaceful stillness pervaded his whole being; it was as though he were in the presence of something great and holy. It was all so beautiful that he wanted to go down on his knees and thank God.
But when Gertrude saw Ingmar she suddenly stiffened, her eyebrows contracted, and between her eyes there appeared the shadow of a wrinkle. He saw at once that she did not like his being there, and it cut him to the quick. "They want to take her from me," he thought; "they have already taken her from me." The feeling of Sabbath peace vanished, and the old fear and anxiety returned. Waving all ceremony, he asked Gertrude if it was true that she intended to join Hellgum and his followers. She answered that it was. Then Ingmar asked her if she had considered that the Hellgumists would not allow her to associate with persons who did not think as they did. Gertrude quietly answered that she had carefully considered this matter.
"Have you the consent of your father and mother?" asked Ingmar.
"No," she replied; "they know nothing as yet."
"But, Gertrude – "
"Hush, Ingmar! I must do this to find peace. God compels me."
"No," he cried, "not God, but – "
Gertrude suddenly turned toward him.
Then Ingmar told her that he would never join the Hellgumists. "If you go over to them, that will part us for ever."
Gertrude looked at him as much as to say that she did not see how this could affect her.
"Don't do it, Gertrude!" he implored.
"You mustn't think that I'm acting heedlessly, for I have given this matter very serious thought."
"Then think it over once more before you act."
Gertrude turned from him impatiently.
"You should also think it over for Hellgum's sake," said Ingmar with rising anger, seizing her by the arm.
She shook off his hand. "Are you out of your senses, Ingmar?" she gasped.
"Yes," he answered; "these doings of Hellgum are driving me mad.
They must be stopped!"
"What must be stopped?"
"You'll find out before long."
Gertrude shrugged her shoulders.
"Good-bye, Gertrude!" he said in a choking voice. "And remember what I tell you. You will never join the Hellgumists!"
"What do you intend to do, Ingmar?" asked the girl, for she was beginning to feel uneasy.
"Good-bye, Gertrude, and think of what I have said!" Ingmar shouted back, for by that time he was halfway down the gravel walk.
Then he went on his way. "If I were only as wise as my father!" he mused. "But what can I do? I'm about to lose all that is dearest to me, and I see no way of preventing it." There was one thing, however, of which Ingmar was certain: if all this misery was to be forced upon him, Hellgum should not escape with his skin.
He went down to Strong Ingmar's but in the hope of meeting the preacher. When he got to the door, he caught the sound of loud and angry voices. There seemed to be a number of visitors inside, so he turned back at once. As he walked away he heard a man say in angry tones: "We are three brothers who have come a long way to call you to account, John Hellgum, for what has befallen our younger brother. Two years ago he went over to America, where he joined your community. The other day we received a letter telling us that he had gone out of his mind, brooding over your teaching."
Then Ingmar hurried away. Apparently there were others besides himself who had cause for complaint against Hellgum, and they were all of them equally helpless.
He went down to the sawmill, which had already been set going by
Strong Ingmar. Above the buzzing noise of the saws and the roar of the rapids he heard a shriek; but he paid no special heed to it.
He had no thought for anything save his strong hatred of Hellgum.
He was going over in his mind all that this man had robbed him of:
Gertrude and Karin, his home and his business.
Again he seemed to hear a cry. It occurred to him that possibly a quarrel had arisen between Hellgum and the strangers. "There would be no harm done if they were to beat the life out of him," he thought.
Then he heard a loud shout for help. Ingmar dropped his work and went rushing up the hill. The nearer he approached the hut the plainer he heard Hellgum's cries of distress, and when he finally reached the cabin it seemed as if the very earth around it shook from the scuffling and struggling inside.
He cautiously opened the door and tiptoed in. Over against the wall stood Hellgum defending himself with an axe. The three strangers – all of them big, powerful men – were attacking him with clubs. They carried no guns, so it was evident that they had come simply to give Hellgum a sound thrashing. But because he had put up a good fight, they were so enraged that they went at him with intent to kill. They hardly noticed Ingmar; they regarded him as nothing but a lank gawk of a boy who had just happened in.
For a moment Ingmar stood quietly looking on. To him it was like a dream, wherein the thing one desires most suddenly appears without one's knowing whence or how it came about. Now and again Hellgum cried for help.
"Surely you can't think I'm such a fool as to help you!" Ingmar said in his mind.
Suddenly one of the men dealt Hellgum a terrific blow on the head that made him let go his hold on the axe and fall to the floor. Then the others threw down their clubs, drew their knives, and cast themselves upon him. Instantly a thought flashed across Ingmar's mind. There was an old saying about the folk of his family, to the effect that every one of them was destined at some time or other during his lifetime to commit a dastardly and wrong deed. Was it his turn now, he wondered?
All at once one of the assailants felt himself in the grip of a pair of strong arms that lifted him off his feet and threw him bodily out of the house; the second one had hardly time to think of rising before the same thing happened to him; and the third, who had managed to scramble to his feet, got a blow that sent him headlong after the others.
After Ingmar had thrown them all out, he went and stood in the doorway. "Don't you want to come back?" he challenged laughingly. He would not have minded their attacking him; testing his strength was good sport.
The three brothers seemed quite ready to renew the fight, when one of them shouted that they had better take to their heels he had seen a figure coming along the path behind the elms. They were furiously disappointed at not having finished Hellgum, and, as they turned to go, one of them ran back, pounced upon Ingmar, and stabbed him in the neck.
"That's for meddling with our affair!" he shouted.
Ingmar sank down, and the man ran off, with a taunting laugh.
A few minutes later Karin came along and found Ingmar sitting on the doorstep with a wound in his neck, and inside she discovered Hellgum, who by that time had got to his feet again and was now leaning against the wall, axe in hand and his face covered with blood. Karin had not seen the fleeing men; she supposed that Ingmar was the one who had attacked Hellgum and wounded him. She was so horrified that her knees shook. "No, no!" she thought, "it can't be possible that any one in our family is a murderer." Then she recalled the story of her mother. "That accounts for it," she muttered, and hurried past Ingmar over to Hellgum.
"Ingmar first!" cried Hellgum.
"The murderer should not be helped before his victim," said Karin.
"Ingmar first! Ingmar first!" Hellgum kept shouting. He was so excited that he raised his axe against her. "He has fought the would-be murderers and saved my life!" he said.
When Karin finally understood, and turned to help Ingmar, he was gone. She saw him stagger across the yard, and ran after him, calling, "Ingmar! Ingmar!"
Ingmar went on without even turning his head. But she soon caught up with him. Placing her hand on his arm, she said:
"Stop, Ingmar, and let me bind up your wound!"
He shook off her hand and went ahead like a blind man, following neither road nor bypath. The blood from his open wound trickled down underneath his clothes into one of his shoes. With every step that he made, blood was pressed out of the shoe, leaving a red track on the ground.
Karin followed him, wringing her hands. "Stop, Ingmar, stop!" she implored. "Where are you going? Stop, I say!"
Ingmar wandered on, straight into the wood, where there was no one to succor him. Karin kept her eyes fixed on his shoe, which was oozing blood. Every second the footprints were becoming redder and redder.
"He's going into the forest to lie down and bleed to death!" thought Karin. "God bless you, Ingmar, for helping Hellgum!" she said gently. "It took a man's courage to do that, and a man's strength, too!"
Ingmar tramped straight ahead, paying no heed whatever to his sister. Then Karin ran past him and planted herself in his way. He stepped aside without so much as glancing at her. "Go and help Hellgum!" he muttered.
"Let me explain, Ingmar! Halvor and I were very sorry for what we said to you this morning, and I was just on' my way to Hellgum to let him know that, whichever way it turned out, you were to keep the sawmill."
"Now you can give it to Hellgum," was Ingmar's answer. He walked on, stumbling over stones and tree stumps.
Karin kept close behind, trying her best to conciliate him. "Can't you forgive me for my mistake of a moment in thinking you had fought with Hellgum? I could hardly have thought differently."
"You were very ready to believe your own brother a murderer," Ingmar retorted, without giving her a look. He still walked on. When the grass blades he had trampled down came up again, blood dripped from them. It was only after Karin had noticed the peculiar way in which Ingmar had spoken Hellgum's name, that she began to realize how he hated the preacher. At the same time she saw what a big thing he had done.
"Every one will be singing your praises for what you did to-day, Ingmar; it will be known far and wide," she said. "You don't want to die and miss all the honours, do you?"
Ingmar laughed scornfully. Then he turned toward her a face that was pale and haggard. "Why don't you go home, Karin?" he said. "I know well enough whom you would prefer to help." His steps became more and more uncertain, and now, where he had walked, there was a continuous streak of blood on the ground.
Karin was about beside herself at the sight of all this blood. The great love which she had always felt or Ingmar kindled with new ardour. Now she was proud of her brother, and thought him a stout branch of the good old family tree.
"Oh, Ingmar!" she cried, "you'll have to answer before God and your fellowmen if you go on spilling your life's blood in this way. You know, if there is anything I can do to make you want to live, you have only to speak."
Ingmar halted, and put his arm around the stem of a tree to hold himself up. Then, with a cynical laugh, he said: "Perhaps you'll send Hellgum back to America?"
Karin stood looking down at the pool of blood that was forming around Ingmar's left foot, pondering over the thing her brother wanted her to do. Could it be that he expected her to leave the beautiful Garden of Paradise where she had lived all winter, and go back to the wretched world of sin she had come out of?
Ingmar turned round squarely; his face was waxen, the skin across his temples was tightly drawn, and his nose was like that of a dead person; but his under lip protruded with a determination that he had never before shown, and the set look about the mouth was sharply defined. It was not likely that he would modify his demand.
"I don't think that Hellgum and I can live in the same parish," he said, "but it's plain enough that I must make way for him."
"No," cried Karin quickly, "if you will only let me care for you, so that your life may be spared to us, I promise you that I will see that Hellgum goes away. God will surely find us another shepherd," thought Karin, "but for the time being it seems best to let Ingmar have his way."
After she had staunched the wound, she helped Ingmar home and put him to bed. He was not badly wounded. All he needed was to rest quietly for a few days. He lay abed in a room upstairs, and Karin tended him and watched over him like a baby.
The first day Ingmar was delirious, and lived over all that had happened to him in the morning. Karin soon discovered that Hellgum and the sawmill were not the only things that had caused him anxiety. By evening his mind was clear and tranquil; then Karin said to him: "There is some one who wishes to speak to you."
Ingmar replied that he felt too tired to talk to any one.
"But I think this will do you good."
Directly afterward Gertrude came into the room. She looked quite solemn and troubled. Ingmar had been fond of Gertrude even in the old days, when she was full of fun, and provoking. But at that time something within him had always fought against his love. But now Gertrude had passed through a trying year of longing and unrest, which had wrought such a wonderful change in her that Ingmar felt an uncontrollable longing to win her. When Gertrude came over to the bed, Ingmar put his hand up to his eyes.
"Don't you want to see me?" she asked.
Ingmar shook his head. He was like a wilful child.
"I only want to say a few words to you," said Gertrude.
"I suppose you've come to tell me that you have joined the
Hellgumists?"
Then Gertrude knelt down beside the bed and lifted his hand from his eyes. "There is something which you don't know, Ingmar," she whispered.
He looked inquiringly at her, but did not speak. Gertrude blushed and hesitated. Finally she said:
"Last year, just as you were leaving us, I had begun to care for you in the right way."
Ingmar coloured to the roots of his hair, and a look of joy came into his eyes; but immediately he became grave and distrustful again.
"I have missed you so, Ingmar!" she murmured.
He smiled doubtingly, but patted her hand a little as thanks for her wanting to be kind to him.
"And you never once came back to see me," she said reproachfully.
"It was as if I no longer existed for you."
"I didn't want to see you again until I was a well-to-do man and could propose to you," said Ingmar, as if this were a self-evident matter.
"But I thought you had forgotten me!" Gertrude's eyes filled up. "You don't know what a terrible year it has been. Hellgum has been very kind, and has tried to comfort me. He said my heart would be at rest if I would give it wholly to God."
Ingmar now looked at her with a newborn hope in his gaze.
"I was so frightened when you came this morning," she confessed, "I felt that I couldn't resist you, and that the old struggle would begin anew."
Ingmar's face was beaming.
"But this evening, when I heard about your having helped the one man whom you hated, I couldn't hold out any longer." Gertrude grew scarlet. "I felt somehow that I had not the strength to do a thing that would part me from you." Then she bowed her head over Ingmar's hand, and kissed it.
And it seemed to Ingmar as if great bells were ringing in a holy day. Within reigned Sabbath peace and stillness, while love, honey sweet, rested upon his lips, filling his whole being with a blissful solace.
BOOK THREE
LOSS OF "L'UNIVERS"
One misty night in the summer of 1880 – about two years before the schoolmaster's mission house was built and Hellgum's return from America – the great French liner L'Univers was steaming across the Atlantic, from New York and bound for Havre.
It was about four o'clock in the morning and all the passengers, as well as most of the crew, were asleep in their berths. The big decks were entirely empty of people.
Just then, at the break of day, an old French sailor lay twisting and turning in his hammock, unable to rest. There was quite a sea on, and the ship's timbers creaked incessantly; but it was certainly not this that kept him from falling asleep. He and his mates occupied a large but exceedingly low compartment between decks. It was lighted by a couple of lanterns, so that he could see the gray hammocks, which hung in close rows, slowly swinging to and fro with their slumbering occupants. Now and again a strong gust of wind swept in through one of the hatches, which was so searchingly cold and damp that it brought to his mind's eye a vivid picture of the vast sea around him, rolling its grayish green waves beneath its veil of mists.
"There's nothing like the sea!" thought the old sailor.
As he lay there musing, all at once everything became strangely still around him, he heard neither the churning of the propeller, nor the rattling of the rudder chains, nor the lapping of the waves, nor the whistling of the wind, nor any other sound. It seemed to him that the ship had suddenly gone to the bottom, and that he and his mates would never be shrouded or laid in their coffins, but must remain hanging in their gray hammocks in the depths of the sea till the Day of Judgment.
Before, he had always dreaded the thought that his end might be a watery grave, but now the idea of it was pleasing to him. He was glad it was the moving and transparent water that covered him, and not the heavy, black, suffocating mould of the churchyard. "There's nothing like the sea," he thought again.
Then he fell to thinking of something that made him uneasy. He wondered whether his lying at the bottom of the ocean without having received Extreme Unction would not be bad for his soul; he began to fear that now his soul would never be able to find its way up to Heaven.
At that moment his eye caught a faint glimmer of light coming from the forecastle. He raised himself, and leaned over the side of the hammock to see what it was. Presently he saw two persons coming, each of whom was carrying a lighted candle. He bent still farther forward so as to see who they were. The hammocks were hung so close together and so near to the floor that any one wanting to pass through the room, without pushing or knocking against those who were sleeping there, would have to crawl on hands and knees. The old seaman wondered who the persons could be that were able to pass in this crowded place. He soon discovered that they were two diminutive acolytes, in surplice and cassock, each bearing a lighted candle.
The sailor was not at all surprised. It seemed only natural that such little folk should be able to walk with burning candles under hammocks. "I wonder if there is a priest with them?" he said. Immediately he heard the tinkling sound of a little bell, and saw some one following them. However, it was no priest, but an old woman who was not much bigger than the boys.
The old woman looked familiar to him. "It must be mother," he thought. "I've never seen any one as tiny as mother, and surely no one but mother could be coming along so softly and quietly without waking people."
He noticed that his mother wore over her black dress a long white linen surplice, edged with a wide border of lace, such as is worn by priests. In her hand she held the large missal with the gold cross which he had seen hundreds of times lying on the altar in the church at home.
The little acolytes now placed their candles at the side of his hammock and knelt down, each swinging a censer. The old sailor caught the sweet odour of burning incense, saw blue clouds ascend, and heard the rhythmical click, click of the censer chains. In the meantime, his mother had opened the big book and was reading the prayers for the dead. Now it seemed good to him to be lying at the bottom of the sea – much better than being in the churchyard. He stretched himself in the hammock, and for a long time he could hear his mother's voice mumbling Latin words. The smoke of the incense curled round him as he listened to the even click, click of the moving censers.
Then it all ceased. The acolytes took up their candles and walked away, followed by his mother, who suddenly closed the book with a bang. He saw all three disappear beneath the gray hammocks.
The instant they had gone the silence was at an end. He heard the breathing of his comrades, the timbers creaked, the wind whistled, and the waves swish-swashed against the ship. Then he knew that he was still among the living, and on top of the sea.
"Jesu Maria! What can be the meaning of the things I have seen this night?" he asked himself.
Ten minutes later L'Univers was struck amidships. It was as if the steamer had been cut in two.
"This was what I expected," thought the old seaman.
During the terrible confusion that ensued while the other sailors, only half awake, rolled out of their hammocks, he carefully dressed himself in his best clothes. He had had a foretaste of death which was sweet and mild, and it seemed to him that the sea had already claimed him as its own.
***
A little cabin boy lay sleeping in the deckhouse near the dining salon when the collision occurred. Startled by the shock, he sat up in his bunk, half dazed, and wondering what had happened. Just over his head there was a small porthole, through which he peered. All he could see was fog and some shadowy gray object which had, as it were, sprung from the fog. He seemed to see monstrous gray wings. A mammoth bird must have swooped down on the ship, he thought. The steamer rolled and heeled as the huge monster went at it with claws and beak and flapping wings.
The little cabin boy thought he would die from fright. In a second he was wide awake. Then he discovered that a large sailing vessel had collided with the steamer. He saw great sails and a strange deck, where men in oilskin coats were rushing about in mad terror. The wind freshened, and the sails became as taut as drums. The masts bulged, while the yards snapped with a succession of reports that sounded like pistol shots. A great three-master, which in the dense fog had sailed straight into L'Univers, had somehow got her bowsprit wedged into the side of the liner, and could not free herself. The passenger steamer listed considerably, but its propellers went right on working, so that now both ships moved along together.
"Lord God!" exclaimed the cabin boy as he rushed out on deck, "that poor boat has run into us, and now it will surely sink!"
It never occurred to him that the steamer could be imperilled, big and fine as she was. The officers came hurrying up; but when they saw it was only a sailing vessel that had collided with their ship, they felt quite safe, and with the utmost confidence took the necessary steps for getting the boats clear of each other.
The little cabin boy stood on the deck barelegged, his shirt fluttering in the wind, and beckoned to the unhappy men on the sailing vessel to come over to the steamer and save themselves. At first no one seemed to take any notice of him, but presently a big man with a red beard began motioning to him.
"Come over here, boy!" the man shouted, running to the side of the vessel. "The steamer is sinking!"
The little boy had not the faintest notion of going over to the sailing vessel. He shouted as loud as he could that the people on the doomed boat should come over to L'Univers, and save their lives.
While the other men on the three-master were working with poles and boat hooks to free their vessel from the steamer, the man with the red beard could think of nothing but the little cabin boy, for whom he had evidently conceived an extraordinary pity. He put his hands to his mouth, trumpet-like, and called: "Come over here, come over here!"
The little lad looked forlorn and cold, standing on the deck in his thin shirt. He stamped his foot and shook his fist at the men on the other boat, because they would not mind him and board the steamer. A huge greyhound like L'Univers, with six hundred passengers and a crew of two hundred men, couldn't possibly go down, he reasoned. And, of course, he could see that both the captain and the sailors were just as calm as he was.
Of a sudden the man with the red beard seized a boat hook, thrust it out toward the boy, got him by the shirt, and tried to pull him on to the other ship. The boy was dragged as far as the ship's railing, but there he managed to free himself of the hook. He was not going to let himself be dragged over to a strange vessel that was doomed.
Immediately afterward another crash was heard. The bowsprit of the three-master had snapped, and the two ships were now clear of each other. As the liner steamed ahead, the boy saw the big broken bowsprit dangling in the bow of the other vessel, and he also saw great clouds of sails drop down upon the crew.
The liner proceeded on her course at full speed, and the sailing vessel was soon lost to sight in the fog. The last thing the boy saw was the men trying to get out from under the mass of sails. Thereupon the vessel disappeared as completely as if it had slipped in behind a great wall. "It has already gone down," thought the lad. And now he stood listening for distress calls.
Then a rough and powerful voice was heard to shout across to the steamer: "Save your passengers! Put out your boats!"
Again there was silence, and again the boy listened for distress calls. Then the voice was heard as if from far away: "Pray to God, for you are lost!"
At that moment an old sailor stepped up to the captain. "We have a big hole amidships; we are going down," he said, quietly and impressively.
***
Soon after the nature of the accident had become known on the steamer, a little lady appeared on deck. She had come from one of the first-class cabins with certain and determined step. She was dressed from top to toe, and her bonnet strings were tied in a natty bowknot. She was a little old lady, with crimped hair, round, owlish-looking eyes, and a florid complexion.
During the short time the voyage had lasted she had managed to become acquainted with every one on board. Everybody knew that her name was Miss Hoggs, and she had told them all – the crew as well as passengers – time and again, that she was never afraid. She didn't see why she need have any fear, she would have to die at one time or another, she had said, and whether it happened soon or late was immaterial to her. Nor was she afraid now; she had gone up on deck simply to see if anything interesting or exciting was going on there.
The first thing she saw was two sailors darting past with wild, terrified faces. Stewards, half dressed, came running out from their quarters to go down and waken the passengers and get them on deck. An old sailor came up with an armful of life belts, which he tossed on the deck. A little cabin boy in his shirt was crouching in a corner, sobbing and shrieking that he was going to die. The captain was on his bridge, and Miss Hoggs heard him give orders to stop the engines and to man the lifeboats.
Engineers and stokers came rushing up the grimy ladder leading from the engine room, shouting that the water had already reached the fires. Miss Hoggs had hardly been on deck a moment before it was thronged with steerage passengers, who had come up in a body, shrieking that they would have to hurry and make for the boats, otherwise none but the first and second class passengers would be saved.
As the excitement and confusion increased, Miss Hoggs began to realize that they were in actual danger; so she quietly slipped away to the upper deck, where several life-boats hung in their davits, just outside the railing. Up here there was not a soul, and Miss Hoggs, without being seen, climbed over the railing and scrambled into one of the boats suspended above the watery abyss. As soon as she was well inside, she congratulated herself upon her wisdom and foresight. That was the advantage of having a clear and cool head, she thought. She knew that when once the boat was lowered there would be a wild scramble for it; the crush in the gangway and on the companion ladder would be something awful. Again and again she congratulated herself on having thought of getting into the boat beforehand.
Miss Hoggs's boat was hung far aft, but by leaning over the edge of it she could see the companion ladder. Then she saw that a boat had been manned, and that people were getting into it. Suddenly a terrible cry went up. Some one in the excitement had fallen overboard. This must have frightened the others, for cries arose from all sides of the ship, and the passengers heedlessly crowded the gangway, pushing and fighting their way toward the ladder. In the struggle many of them went overboard. A few persons, who saw that it would be impossible to get to the ladder, jumped into the sea, thinking they would swim to the boat. Just then the lifeboat, already loaded to its full capacity, rowed away. The people that were in it drew their knives and threatened to cut of the fingers of any one who attempted to get inside.
Miss Hoggs saw one boat after another launched. She also saw one boat after another capsize under the weight of those who hurled themselves down into them.
The lifeboats near to hers were .lowered, but for some unaccountable reason no one had touched the one in which she was seated. "Thank God they are leaving my boat alone till the worst is over," she thought.
And Miss Hoggs heard and saw dreadful things. It seemed to her that she was suspended over a hell. She could not see the deck itself, but from the sounds that reached her, she gathered that a frightful struggle was taking place there. She heard pistol shots and saw blue smoke clouds rise in the air.
At last there came a moment when everything was hushed. "This would be the right time to lower my boat," thought Miss Hoggs. She was not at all afraid, but sat back with perfect composure until the steamer began to settle. Then, for the first time, it dawned on Miss Hoggs that L'Univers was sinking, and that her boat had been forgotten.
***
On board the steamer was a young American matron, a Mrs. Gordon, who was on her way to Europe to visit her parents, who for some years had been living in Paris. She had her two little boys with her, and all three were asleep in their cabin when the accident occurred. The mother was immediately awakened, and soon managed to get the children partly dressed; then throwing a cloak over her night robe, she went out into the narrow passageway between the cabins.
