Part 6

All at once something made her look out. She could hardly believe her eyes! But a little while before it had been fine clear weather, and now there was a blinding snowstorm. The air was so thick with snow she could barely distinguish the firelight from the window of the manservants’ hall directly opposite. The lashing wind swished the snow against the house, and in just the short time she had been sitting there the drifts had piled so high that bushes and fences were buried under them.

Darkness had descended quickly with the coming of the storm, yet she descried several large animals stalking through the drifts toward the farmyard. “I hope the maids will be mindful, and not go out for firewood,” she said to herself, “for the _graylegs_ are out to-night.”

Shortly afterwards she heard a piercing cry and saw a wolf lumber past her window with something in its mouth that struggled and fought. She thought it looked like a child. But whose child could it be? Her own little ones were right beside her, and there were no other children on the farm. Close behind the first wolf came another; it, too, had a child in its gape.

Grandmother couldn’t sit still any longer. She jumped up so suddenly she knocked over the chair, and rushed through the kitchen out into the yard.... Then she stood stock still. Before her was the calm, beautiful spring evening; not a sign of snow--not a wolf in sight.

She must have fallen asleep over her knitting, she thought, and been dreaming. Yet she felt that back of it all lay something serious.

“We’ll have to take precious good care of the little ones,” she said to the maids. “That was no dream, it was a warning.”

However, the children thrived and waxed fat and rosy. The dream, or vision, or whatever it was, soon passed out of mind, like much else of the same sort.

Along in August a company of poor soldiers came to Mårbacka. The men were ragged, famished, and ill. Their bodies were nothing but skin-and-bone and in their eyes was the look of the ravening wolf. The mark of death was on them all.

They were from Fryksände and other parishes in the northern part of Fryksdalen, they said. But now that they were nearing home they feared their own people would not recognize them. Only two years before they had gone forth as well, strong men. What would the folks at home think of getting them back in such a state they were only fit to be put in the ground. They had not been on the battle field, they had only marched to and fro in cold and hunger. Their fight had been with disease and neglect.

They were many thousand strong when they marched away, but one thousand after another had succumbed. Great numbers had been sent out in open barges on the raging sea in midwinter. How it had gone with those voyagers none knew; but when the boats drifted ashore the crews sat at their oars dead and literally encased in ice. These surviving militia-men, now returning on their own, had often been stoned away from farms and villages on their homeward tramp. What seemed to prey upon them most was that they had not been sent into battle and shot to death, but must still drag on in ceaseless misery. They knew the sort they were--covered with vermin, reeking with filth, and horrible to behold. They did not ask for a bed to lie on or the shelter of a roof; they only begged a few armfuls of straw and a dry mound to rest on.

At Mårbacka the poor soldiers were not greeted with stones. The Paymaster of the Regiment was away, but his wife gave them permission to camp in the backyard, just inside the gates. Huge kettles of porridge and gruel were prepared for the men, and all the clothing that could be spared was turned over to them. The servants continually gathered round their camp to listen to their tales of what they had passed through. Not all could talk, however. Some were too listless to answer when spoken to; they seemed hardly to know who they were or where they were going.

There was great consternation and wonder over these men who had become so changed. Reports of them spread far and wide, and people came long distances to see them.

“That one, they tell me, is the son of Göran Persa,” said a stranger who had stood a long while regarding the poor wretches. “But I knew Göran Persa’s son; he was a fine lad; there’s not a feature the same.”

One day a poor widow came wandering to Mårbacka. She was from a little backwoods croft away up north, where, in a perpetual struggle with hunger and want, she managed to sustain life in her body.

“Is there any one among ye by the name of Börje Knutsson?” she inquired, gazing anxiously at the sick yeomen.

No one answered. The men sat on the ground with their legs drawn up, their chins resting on their knees. They would sit like that for hours without moving.

“If there’s any one here named Börje Knutsson he must make himself known,” said the widow, “for he’s my son.”

None moved or said a word, none so much as raised his eyes.

“I have wept for the lad every day since he went away,” continued the poor woman. “If he’s there among ye why doesn’t he stand up and say so, for I shouldn’t know him again.”

Silence.

The woman slowly went her way. To the first person she met afterwards she related her experience.

“I thought until now I’d go out of my mind if my son did not come back,” she said, “but now I thank my God that he’s not among those skeletons!”

The militia-men rested a week at Mårbacka, and then went on, somewhat strengthened.

But they had left the bloody flux in their wake. Everyone on the place became desperately ill. All recovered save Grandmother’s two little children, who were of too tender an age to resist the virulence of the sickness.

When the two children lay in their coffins, Grandmother said to herself: “If I had done like the others, if instead of harbouring those men I had driven them away with stones, my little ones would have been alive now.”

But as that thought crossed her mind, she remembered her vision of that evening in the spring wherein the wolves carried off the children. “Our Lord is not to blame,” she said. “He forewarned me.” The loss of the children was not due to her act of mercy, but rather to her thoughtlessness in not having taken proper precautions to guard them against contagion.

When she realized that after all it was her own fault the children were gone, her grief was overwhelming. “I shall never get over it,” she said. “I can never be the same again.”

Her despair was increased by her fears for the husband--how would he take the loss of their children? He had not been at home in several months. The old despondency had perhaps come over him again, so that he dared not come home. Where he was then she did not know; so could not even send him word of what had happened. Anyway, he would surely regard the death of his children as a visitation from God for his marrying her, and never come back. She was not so certain but he would be right in this. It were best perhaps they never met again.

All on the place were much concerned about her. What to do to help her they did not know. But Long-Bengt, who was the oldest of the servitors, was not afraid to act sometimes on his own responsibility. He set off for Kymsberg one morning in quest of the master. This time he was not two whole days getting back. He actually found the Paymaster of the Regiment and stated his errand. The words were hardly out of his mouth before the master ordered a fresh horse put to the chaise. They drove all night without a stop, and reached Mårbacka in the morning.

Now the husband was not glum and difficult when he came. He took his wife tenderly in his arms, dried her tears, and spoke loving words of comfort to her. It seemed as if then for the first time, when seeing her so crushed and sorrowful, was he able to reveal the full depth of his love.

“And I thought I should lose you, too!” she said.

“I’m not one that grief can drive away,” said he. “Did you think I would desert you because of your great compassion?”

In that moment she understood his heart as never before. She knew that in peaceful and happy days she must rely on herself--which she was well able to do; but in sorrow and suffering and times of stress he would always be by her side--her stay and comfort.

OLD HOUSES AND OLD PEOPLE

I

THE STONE HUTS

WHEN Lieutenant Lagerlöf took over Mårbacka the buildings were mostly very old. Oldest, however, were the manservants’ hall and the sheep-cot, though the storehouse on stilts, which served as larder, the stable with the loft balcony, the bath-house, where they used to smoke bacon, and the kiln, where they malted grain, were no newcomers into the world.

The servants’ hall and sheepfold were built of stones which had been picked up on the ground--large and small, round and flat. The walls were two ells in thickness, as if meant to withstand a siege. That style of building was not of last year or the year before, so that in the matter of age those two structures would certainly take precedence.

The first permanent residents of Mårbacka must have come from some village where there were too many occupants in every cottage and not enough land under cultivation to yield bread-food for all. They were no doubt a young couple who wanted to set up a home, and saw no other way than to fare forth into the wilds as settlers. With an eye to the good pasturage below Åsberget, they took possession of the little huts formerly tenanted by the _säter_ lasses. But after a time they perhaps felt unsafe, for they had no neighbours within miles of them. Sometimes the bear paid a visit to the cattle-shed and they themselves received calls from rough gangs of charcoal-burners.

Under such circumstances, naturally they would have put up a couple of stone huts--one for themselves and one for their animals. The building for the animals was the larger; it had no windows, only narrow openings with home-forged iron gratings, through which neither lynx nor bear could squeeze. The floor was just hard, trampled earth, but a partition of rough-hewn beams divided the hut into two rooms. Thus, the animals which do not thrive together could be kept apart. Horses and sheep, which are always friends, were on one side; cows and goats on the other.

The stone hut they built for themselves had only one room, but it had a floor of hand-split boards, two windows, a fireplace, and a chimney. Along the wall opposite the windows, the settler had put up a large bed-cupboard to hold four wide beds--two lower and two upper--in each of which three persons could easily lie side by side. Under the windows was a bench, and before it a large deal table. At the far end of the room, opposite the entrance, was the fireplace.

In Lieutenant Lagerlöf’s time, this which had once been the main building and was now the manservants’ hall, was but little changed. The cubby-beds, the circular open fireplace, and the low, small-paned windows with the iron gratings, were still there; but the long board-bench and table had been replaced by a planing-bench and a chest of tools. There were two small, round, three-legged stools which might well have come down from the time of the first settler, likewise a worn chopping-block that stood on the hearth.

Here lived the stableman and farmboy; here the farm labourers gathered at rest hours to eat and lounge; hither poor belated wayfarers were shown when they came asking for night harbour. Here Bengt, who had been stableman in the time of the Paymaster of the Regiment, stayed on in his old age. He had worked so long on the place that Lieutenant Lagerlöf had recommended him as one worthy the medal for faithful service.

There was another who was to receive this mark of honour--the old housekeeper. She was not nearly so old as Bengt, and was still in active service. She, who was hale and spry, could drive to church in the family carriage and receive her medal at the chancel; while Bengt was confined to his bed that day with the lumbago and pain in the joints. His medal he would get in any case, but it was a grand celebration he would be missing. It had been reported that the Dean of Sunne would come to Ämtervik that Sunday to address the faithful servants, and would himself place the bright silver medal round their necks.

One can understand it was not very pleasant for Bengt to be lying there in pain and torment while the greatest moment life could have held for him passed him by.

Lieutenant Lagerlöf, on arriving at the church, told the Dean why Bengt had not come. Now there was no one the Dean so loved to honour as a faithful servant, one who had been in the same place all his life, and had shared weal and woe with his master and mistress. So, on hearing that Bengt was ill, he said he would drive down to Mårbacka immediately after the service and personally present the medal to Bengt.

The Lieutenant, though pleased, felt a trifle uneasy. He slipped out of the church as soon as he could do so with propriety, and drove home like lightning, so as to be there a little ahead of the Dean.

Bengt was quickly washed and combed and hustled into his Sunday shirt, his bed was spread with clean sheets, and a fancy quilt was substituted for the old sheepskin rug. The floor was swept, the shavings under the planing-bench were carried out, the sooty cobwebs were torn from the ceiling, fresh juniper twigs were strewn over the floor, chopped spruce-fir spread before the door, and a huge bundle of birch and lilac branches was stuck in the fireplace.

The Dean of Sunne at that time was no less a personage than the venerable Anders Fryxell, the distinguished historian and Member of Parliament. Directly he arrived he went in to see Bengt, accompanied by Lieutenant and Fru Lagerlöf, Mamselle Lovisa, the old housekeeper, and all the servants. They quietly and reverently lined themselves along the walls of the servants’ room, expecting, of course, that the Dean would make a little speech in Bengt’s honour.

At first all went as it should go. The Dean read some passages from the Scriptures, and Bengt listened--very still and solemn. Then the Dean said:

“You, Bengt, have been one of those good and faithful servants of whom our Lord speaks.”

“Ay,” says Bengt from his bed, “that’s what I’ve been.”

“You have never considered your own welfare before that of your employer. You have always been mindful of the duties entrusted to you.”

“Ay, ’tis all so true,” says Bengt. “Many thanks to you, Dean, for those words.”

It looked as if these constant interruptions would prove annoying to the Dean, who was a great man, accustomed to the society of grand folk. His was such an impressive personality that one easily became embarrassed in his presence. He was always supreme and always had the last word.

There had been no time for the Dean to prepare a speech, and the address he delivered at the church was hardly suitable for the servants’ hall. He cleared his throat once or twice, and began again.

“Bengt, you have been a good and faithful servant.”

“Indeed I have,” said Bengt.

The blood mounted to the brow of the great and brilliant Dean Fryxell.

“You must be silent, Bengt, when I am speaking,” he said.

“Ay, ay,” the old man replied. “Sure, I’m not contradicting you, Dean. ’Tis all so true what you’re saying.”

The Dean got redder and redder. Again he cleared his throat and made a fresh attempt.

“You, Bengt, have been a good and faithful servant, but you have also had good masters.”

The old man was so elated at this he simply could not keep still.

“You’re right, dear Dean, you’re right! They’ve been grand men, all o’ them--Wennervik and the Paymaster of the Regiment and this here Eric Gustaf.” He reached over and put his hand on the Lieutenant’s shoulder, then stroked him down the arm, his old face ashine with happiness.

Once more the Dean lifted up his voice.

“You must be silent, Bengt, when I’m speaking!”

“Why, of course,” said the old man. “But ’tis so right and true every blessed word you’ve spoken, Dean.”

Now the Dean had to smile. “You’re irrepressible, Bengt. You will not have to listen to any speech. Here is your medal. May you wear it with health and honour for many years to come.”

So saying, the Dean went up to the bedside and laid the medal on the bosom of the old man’s Sunday shirt.

Later, at dinner, the Dean seemed a bit abstracted. “This is the first time in my life I have ever lost myself,” he confessed, “but in this world one must have all sorts of experiences.”

II

THE MONEY-CHEST

BENGT, for his part, was perfectly satisfied with the Dean’s speech. Those words about his having been a good and faithful servant, the medal, the august presence of His Reverence in the servants’ hall, and the whole demonstration in his honour, had had the salutary effect of dispelling the ache in his joints and the shooting pains in his back. In the afternoon the old man sat up in bed and related, again and again, to all who would listen, how he had once rescued the money-chest for the Paymaster of the Regiment.

It happened one winter when he and the master were out tax-gathering. They had covered all the eastern districts, and before starting on the western, the Paymaster wanted to go home for a while, as he longed for a sight of his wife and little ones. But that of course he did not mention to Bengt. His excuse was that the horse must be rested a couple of days and the food-box, being empty, needed replenishing. Besides, the money-chest was now so full he thought they’d best drive no further until it had been emptied and the money sent on to Karlstad.

The day they turned their noses toward home there was a big blizzard. The roads were so deep with snow they had to drive at a snail’s pace. When they were crossing Klarälven on the ice it was already dusk. Shortly afterward, on coming to Nordsjö Manor, the Paymaster spoke of turning in there to ask for a night’s shelter. However, he was anxious to get home, and as they were then within thirteen miles of Mårbacka, he and Bengt decided to drive on. Even though it meant being out in the sledge until ten or eleven at night, sleeping in one’s own bed was best.

Coming into the dense forest between Nordsjö and Sandviken, they found the road impassable. The sledge went so heavily the horse had to stop at every step, and neither urging nor coaxing could put life into him.

“This is provoking, Bengt,” said the Paymaster. “But isn’t there a little forest croft somewhere hereabout?”

“Ay, a bit further on is a hut,” Bengt replied; “but you can’t take in there, Master!”

“I know what you’re thinking of, Bengt. That tavern is said to be the haunt of ruffians and vagabonds, decent folk usually fight shy of it. But what else can we do? We’ve been three hours getting from Nordsjö here, and the horse is spent. We must get him under cover, where he can rest for the night.”

“Well, Master, you do as you think best,” said Bengt.

When his man spoke in that manner, the Paymaster knew he had his own good reasons for not wishing to put up at that place. So he decided to make another attempt to go on.

The two then got out of the sledge and began to clear a path for the horse, which slowly followed them. It was a heavy task. Bengt worked hard and his master, who had on great boots that went above his knees, a heavy wolfskin coat and thick muffler, was soon all out of breath.

“No, Bengt, my boy, this won’t do,” said he when they were almost at the forest hut. “Now I’m as used up as the horse is. You’d better go in and ask for house-room.”

There was nothing for Bengt to do but obey, though he thought to himself they might better remain out in the sledge all night than betake themselves, with the Crown’s money, into that robbers’ den. It was plain that this would lead to trouble.

In the hut he found a man and wife sitting quietly by the fire. It cannot be said that they were especially pleased to receive the travellers. They made all sorts of excuses: the guest chamber was cold and they had no bed or bedclothes suitable for a gentleman. All the same they were persuaded. The woman brought in wood and made up a fire in the bedroom, the man took a spade and helped Bengt clear away the snow, so that the horse and sledge could be taken to the shed. When Bengt went back to the sledge he found his master sitting there, sound asleep.

“That one doesn’t guard the Crown’s money any too well, eh?” grinned the crofter.

“Well, so far he’s never lost so much as a shilling of what’s the Crown’s,” Bengt snapped.

Always, when they put up anywhere, the Paymaster would carry in the money-chest and Bengt would follow with the food-box. But now, seeing how tired his master was, Bengt said, as the sledge stood before the wretched shed where the horse was to be stabled:

“Go in to bed, Master, and I’ll be along later with the boxes.”

“You need only bring in the one,” the Paymaster told him.

When Bengt had unharnessed the horse and led it into the shed, he found that his master had already gone inside, and the crofter, too, had disappeared. The strong-box was not in the sledge, and he assumed that the master had taken it in as usual.

The Paymaster of the Regiment sat by the fire in a wretched little room when Bengt came in. He heard him put a box down, but was too dead tired even to turn his head.

“Lock the door, Bengt,” he said, “and take out the key.”

“’Twas not much use bringing in the empty food-box,” Bengt observed.

“That’s what I thought,” said his master. “But we’ll be able to sleep to-night without any supper.”

Then he stretched himself out on a bare bench--great boots, fur coat, and all--slipped a couple of sticks of wood under his head, and was asleep in a second. He never slept later than four or five in the morning, but this time he awoke about two o’clock, quite rested and refreshed.

“Up, Bengt!” he called. “For God’s sake let’s be off at once, so that we can breakfast at Mårbacka.”

There was neither lamp nor candle in the room; but the night was not pitch-dark, and they could see well enough to grope their way out.

“You take the box, Bengt, and hitch up,” said the Paymaster, “while I go in and settle for the lodging.”

In a few moments they drove away. The storm had abated, and though the road was still heavy with snow, they made fair progress, now that the horse was rested.

“After all, it wasn’t such a bad idea our stopping there over night,” the Paymaster remarked.

“It turned out better than I expected,” said Bengt. “But I had such bad dreams all night, and thought I heard a lot of noise. It sounded as if they were pounding and hammering in the crofter’s room. I don’t know yet whether they were up working or whether I was just dreaming.”

“No doubt you dreamt they stole my money-chest,” laughed the Paymaster.

“But, Master--where have you put the box?” the servant burst out, beginning to fumble about under the seat.

“The box?... Why, you brought that out.”

“I?--I carried out the food-box.”

“But I told you last evening to bring in only the strong-box, and leave the other.”

It must have been a terrible moment for Paymaster Lagerlöf when he realized that through a misunderstanding on the part of his man the money-chest had been left out in the sledge. That the crofter had stolen it was plain. But what had he done with it? Could he have opened it? The chest was the regulation bailiff’s strong-box, iron bound, with combination lock. But at that, they might perhaps have pried it open.

They left the horse standing in the road, and ran back to the hut. When they burst into the house they found four rough-looking men sitting by the fire with the crofter and his wife, none of whom showed the least surprise. Bengt knew the men at once for the worst desperadoes in the district.

“Now ’tis just as I said,” the woman began, “that ye’d not be able to get home till the snow-plow’d been run afore ye.”