CHAPTER XVI.

THE KING'S RING--THE SWORD AND THE PLOUGH--FIRE AND WATER.

Again we return to Storkyro, to Bertila's farm, and the old peasant king.

It is a March day, in the year 1635. The spring sun is already melting the snow, and the roofs drip on the sunny side; the icy crust bears one's weight on the north side of the hill, but breaks on the south. Aron Bertila has just come home from church with all his folks, his grey head is bent, and he leans on Meri's arm. At his side walk two sturdy, thick-set figures--old Larsson, and his newly arrived son, the brave and learned captain, the faithful image of his father, except in age. On the captain's arm is his young, light-hearted, and pretty little wife, whose features we recognise. It is no other than Ketchen, the courageous and merry girl, whose soft hand once made the gallant captain lose his wits. Since that day he has sworn by all the Greek and Roman authors, whom he formerly read in Abo Cathedral School, that the soft-handed novice among the Würzburg sisters of charity should some day become his. And when the vicissitudes of war again brought them together, when Ketchen was without protection, and besides, had nothing against an honest, jovial soldier, this cheerful pair were formally wedded in the autumn at Stralsund, and then went to visit their kind-hearted father in Storkyro, where they were warmly welcomed, and received like children in the house.

It must be added that Larsson had obtained his discharge from the service after much trouble, and without having a rise in rank. It is to be regretted that he had not gathered a farthing from the booty in Germany, like many of his comrades. All that he had earned--and if we can believe him, it must have amounted to millions--had taken wings; but where? At Nördlingen, he says. By no means. But in revels and sprees with jolly fellows like himself. Now he meant to be as regular and steady as a gate-post; to succeed his father as inspector of Bertila's large farms; to plough, sow, harvest, and _pro modulo virium prolen copiosam in lucem proferre_, as those in olden times so truly said.

Old Bertila treats him with apparent favour. Significant words have escaped the old man, and he has just given his will into the hands of the judge.

As for Meri, she has withered like a flower without roots, and clings to life only by one heart-thread: the banished, rejected Gustaf Bertel, now ennobled to Bertelskold.

This domestic circle, composed of such differing elements, both light and shadows, are now gathered in the large "stuga," surrounded by the numerous field hands, and old Larsson now tries, in secret alliance with Meri, to bring the stern peasant king to a better state of mind towards Bertel. But all their prayers and reasons break against the old man's unyielding firmness ... Larsson turns angrily away, and Meri conceals her tears in the darkest corner of the room.

Then sleigh-bells are again heard outside, as on Twelfth-day evening; a large sleigh stops in the yard, and two persons alight from it, an officer in his ample cloak, and a young and classically beautiful woman in a magnificent mantle of black velvet, lined with precious fur. Meri and old Larsson turn pale at this sight; Larsson tries to hasten out, but it is too late. Bertel and Regina enter the "stuga."

Both the Larssons and Meri surround Bertel with warm and apparently embarrassed greetings. Ketchen flies and throws herself, without thinking of the difference between her burgher dress and the costly velvet cloak, into Regina's arms, who, with emotion, clasps her faithful friend to her heart.

Bertel gently frees himself from Meri's embrace, and goes straight up to old Bertila with a firm step, who, cold and silent in his high chair at the end of the table, does not honour him with a word or glance.

All present await with dismayed looks the result of this decisive meeting. The young officer has taken off his cloak and hat, his long fair hair falls in beautiful waves around his open brow, his cheeks are very pale, but the expressive blue eyes regard the grey-haired man's iron face with a firm and steadfast look.

Bertel now, as before, bends a knee, and says in a voice at once humble and confident:

"My father!"

"Who are you? I know you not; I have no son!" said the old man in chilling tones.

"My father!" continued Bertel, without allowing himself to be checked, "I come here once more, and for the last time, to ask your forgiveness and blessing. Thrust me not from you! I am going to leave my Fatherland, to fight and perhaps die on German soil. It depends upon you whether I ever return. Remember, my father, that your blessing gives you back a son; that your curse drives him into exile for ever."

The features of the old man did not change their expression, but the tones of his voice indicated an internal struggle.

"My answer is short," he said. "I had a son; he became unworthy of me and all the principles which have governed my life. He abandoned the cause of the people to pay homage to the pernicious power which I hate and detest. I have no longer a son. I have to-day disinherited him."

The faces of all the hearers turn pale at these words. But Bertel colours slightly, and says:

"My father, I do not ask for your property. Give it to the one you consider more worthy than I. I only ask your forgiveness ... your blessing, my father."

All around the old man, except Regina, fell on their knees and exclaimed:

"Grace for Bertel! Grace for your son!"

"And if I had a son, do you believe he would for my sake give up his desire for the false distinctions of nobility? Do you think he would become a peasant like me, a man of the people, ready to live and die for their cause? Do you fancy that he would plough the earth with his fine-gloved hands and choose a wife from my station, a simple plain woman, befitting the spouse of a husbandman?"

"My father," replied Bertel, in a voice more tremulous than before, "what you ask is impossible on account of the education you have yourself bestowed on me. I honour and respect your station, but I have grown accustomed to the career of a soldier, which I neither can nor will abandon. To choose a wife to your mind is equally impossible. Here is my wife; she is a prince's daughter, but she has chosen a peasant's son for her husband; this is a proof that she will not blush to call you father."

At these words Regina humbly approached the old man as if to kiss his hand, and all rose except Bertel and his father. But the peasant king's former fiery temper now burst forth.

"Did I not say so!" he shouted. "There stands the renegade who was born a peasant, and became the servant of lords. Ha! by God! I have in my day seen much strife and defiance between the sword and the plough, but a scene like this I have never beheld. The boy who calls himself my son dares to bring before my eyes his high-born harlot and call her his wife."

Bertel sprang up and supported Regina, who nearly sank to the floor at these words.

"Old man," he said in a voice full of anger, "thank your name of father and your grey head that you have been allowed to utter what no one else should have uttered and live an hour afterwards. Here is the ring I placed on the hand of my lawfully wedded wife"--with this he took the king's ring from Regina's finger--"and I swear that her hand is as pure and worthy as that of any other mortal to wear this ring, which has for so many years been worn by the greatest of kings."

Meri's eyes stared at the ring, her pale cheeks coloured with a deep flush, and she had a violent internal struggle. Finally she stepped nearer, took and pressed the ring with ecstasy to her lips, and said in a broken voice and with an emotion so strong that it dried her tears:

"My ring which _he_ has worn ... my ring which has protected _him_ ... you are innocent of his death; he gave you away, and then came the bullets and death. Do you know, Gustaf Bertel, and you, his wife, the power of this ring? In my youth I one day went into the wilderness, and there found a dying man, who was languishing from thirst. I gave him a drink from the spring, and cooled his tongue with the juice of berries. He thanked me and said: 'My friend, I die, and have no other recompense to give you than this ring. I found it in former days on an image of the Holy Virgin, which alone lay uninjured in the midst of the broken fragments of Popery in Storkyro Church; and when I took the ring from its finger the image fell to dust. The ring has both the power of the saints and that of magic, for with me the greatness of the ancient occult knowledge goes into the silence. He who wears this ring is secure against fire, water, steel, and all kinds of dangers, on the sole condition that he never swears a false oath, for that destroys the power of the ring; with this ring goes happiness in peace, and victory in war; love, honour, and wealth; and when it is worn by three successive generations, from father to son, then from that family shall come brilliant statesmen and generals...'"

Here Meri paused; all listened with intense expectation.

"But," she added, "if the ring is worn by six generations one after the other, then a mighty royal house will spring from that family. 'But,' said the old man to me, 'you ought to know that great dangers accompany great gifts. False oaths and family enmity will constantly tempt the owner of the ring, and thus endeavour to neutralise its power; pride and inordinate ambition will constantly work within him to prepare his fall, and a great steadfastness in the right path will be necessary, joined with a meek and humble heart, to vanquish these temptations. He who wears this ring will enjoy all the prosperity of the world, and only have to conquer himself; but he will also be the most formidable enemy of his own happiness. All this is signified: by the letters, R.R.R., which are engraved on the inside of the ring, and interpreted thus: _Rex Regi Rebellis_--the king rebellious against the king; the happiest, the mightiest among men, has to fear the greatest danger within himself.'"

"And this ring, O Regina, is ours!" exclaimed Bertel, with both fear and joy. "What a wealth and what a responsibility goes with this ring."

"Power! Honour! Immortality!" caed Regina with transport.

"Beware, my daughter!" said Meri sadly. "Behind these words lie the greatest dangers."

Old Bertila looked at the ring and the young people with a contemptuous smile.

"False gold!" he said. "Vanity! Useless ornament! False ambition! This is a worthy gift to go in inheritance from generation to generation among the nobility. Come, Larsson the younger, you, who are also of peasant origin, and who wish to return to your station, although you too have been a soldier. I will give you something which is neither gold or a useless ornament, but which will bring you more blessings than all the kings' rings in the world. Take my old axe with the oak handle from the wall there; yes, fear not, there is no magic in that; my father forged it with his own hand, in Gustaf Vasa's time. With it father and I have felled many a heavy tree in the forests, and cleared many a field. May it pass in inheritance within your family, and I promise you that he who possesses my axe shall be blessed with happiness and contentment of mind in his honest labour."

"Thanks, thanks, Father Bertila," answered the captain joyfully, and, with an air of importance, tried the edge of the old man's axe. "If we took a fancy to engrave any inscription on it, I should propose R.R.R., _Ruris Rusticus Robustus_, which is to say briefly: 'The deuce, what a big, bulky chopper! a very beautiful and intellectual saying among those in olden times."

Larsson the elder now considered the opportunity at hand to give the bitter contest a more amicable turn. He stepped up to old Bertila, leading by the hands the two newly married pairs, and said:

"Dear old friend, let us not meddle in the Lord's business. Your boy and mine are a couple of great rascals, that is granted; but are they to blame that our Lord created one of them of fire and the other of water? Bertel is like a flame--burning hot, ambitious, high-reaching, brilliant, ephemeral, and I will bet anything that his little wife is of the same sort. My boy, here, is of the purest water."

"Stop!" cried the captain. "Water has never been my weak side!"

"Hold your tongue! My boy is the clear water ... flowing and unstable, contentedly keeping itself to the ground, and created especially to put out the other youngster's poetical blaze with its prosaic philosophy. As for his wife, she is of the same stuff. Do you not see, Bertila, that our Lord has intended the boys for friends? ... the fire to warm the water, and the water to quench the fire ... and you would make them enemies by taking from one and giving to the other. No, Bertila, do not do it, this is my advice; give your son what belongs to him; my son will not starve for want of it."

Bertila remained silent for a moment. Then he said vehemently:

"Do not teach me the meaning of the Lord. Can you believe that he, the fresh-baked nobleman, whom you compare with the fire, could be induced to give away the ring and take the axe in its place?"

"Never!" excitedly exclaimed Bertel.

Meri seized his hand, and looked beseechingly at him.

"Give away the ring," she said. "You know some of its dangers, but there is still one which I, from anguish, have not mentioned. All who wear this ring will die a violent death."

"What then!" exclaimed Bertel. "The death of the soldier on the battlefield is grand, and full of honour. I do not ask a better one."

"Just listen to him," said Bertila bitterly. "I knew it; he runs after fame even to the grave. A peaceful death or a peaceful life is an abomination to him; but you, Larsson, tell me: have you a desire to give away the axe and take the ring?"

"H'm!" thoughtfully replied the captain; "if the ring were of gold, I might sell it in town and get a good cask of ale for the money. But as it is only of copper ... pshaw! I send it to the deuce, and keep the axe, which is at least useful for cutting wood."

"Well done!" said Bertila; "you are sprinkling water on fire, as your father said. It is not I who have made fire and water eternally hostile to each other. Come, Larsson, you, the sound, common-sense, practical man, be my son, and one day take my farms when I am no longer here. My blessing on you and your descendants. May they multiply, and work like ants on the land, and may there be eternal hostility between them and the nobility, the people with the fiery temperament. May there be war and not peace between them and you until the useless glitter disappears from humanity. May the axe and the ring live in open feud until both are melted in the same heat. When this happens after a century or more, then it will be time to say, class distinctions have seen their last days, and a man's merit is his only coat of arms."

"But, my father," exclaimed Bertel in an entreating voice, "have you then no blessing to give me, and my posterity, at the moment when we separate for ever?"

"You!" repeated the old man, in still angry tones. "Go, you lost, vain, worm-eaten branch of the people's great trunk; go in your pitiful parade to certain ruin. Until the day when, as I said, the axe and the ring, the false gold and the true steel melt together ... until then I give you my curse as an inheritance, even unto the tenth generation, and with it shall follow dissension, hatred, war, and finally a despicable fall."

"Hold there, Father Bertila," cried Larsson the younger. "Grace for Bertel!"

"No grace for nobility," replied the peasant king.

"Beware, unnatural father!" cried Larsson the elder. "The doom may fall on your own head."

"I no longer ask any grace," said Bertel, pale, but apparently calm. "Farewell, my former father! Farewell, my Fatherland! I go never to see you again!"

"One moment," interrupted Meri, who with a violent effort placed herself in his way. "You go! yes, go ... my heart's darling, my hope, my life, my all ... go, I shall no longer stand in your way. But before you leave me, you shall take with you the secret which has been both my life's highest joy and its greatest agony..."

"Hear her not!" cried old Bertila in a changed and alarmed tone. "Listen not to what she says; madness speaks through her! ... Think of your honour and mine," he sternly whispered in his pale daughter's ear.

"What do I care for your or my honour!" burst out Meri with an impetuosity never before witnessed. "Do you not see that he goes ... my life's joy leaves me, to return no more? He goes, and you, hard, in-human parent, wish me to let him depart with a curse to foreign lands. But it shall not be. For every curse you throw upon his head, I will give him a hundred blessings, and we shall see which will avail the most before the throne of the Supreme Being--your hatred or my love--the grandfather's curse or the mother's blessing..."

"My mother!" exclaimed Bertel beside himself with astonishment. Duke Bernhard's obscure hints now suddenly became clear.

"Believe her not; she knows not--she knows not what she says!" cried Bertila, with a vain attempt to appear calm.

Meri had sunk into Bertel's arms.

"It is now said," she whispered in a weak voice. "Gustaf ... my son. Ah! it is so new and so sweet to call you so. Now you know my life's secret ... and I have not long to blush over it. Do you love me? ... Yes, yes! Now I go from life rejoicing ... the veil is lifted ... light comes ... My father, ... I forgive you ... that you have hated and cursed your daughter's son ... Forgive me ... that I ... love ... bless ... my son!..."

"My mother!" exclaimed Bertel, "hear me, my mother! I thank you ... I love you! ... You shall go with me, and I will never desert you. But you do not hear me. You are so pale ... Great God ... she is dead!"

"My daughter! my only child!" exclaimed the old hard-hearted peasant king, completely crushed.

"Judge not, lest ye be judged!" said old Larsson with clasped hands. "And you, our children, go put into life with reconciled hearts. Curse and blessing struggle for your future, and not only for yours, but for that of your posterity, unto the tenth generation. Pray to Heaven that blessing may conquer."

"Amen!" said Larsson the younger and Ketchen.

"So be it!" said Bertel and Regina.

END OF THE FIRST CYCLE.

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