“How are you all at Ekeby; how is it in that promised land?”
“Milk and honey flow there,” he answered. “We empty the mountains of iron and fill our cellar with wine. The fields bear gold, with which we gild life’s misery, and we cut down our woods to build bowling-alleys and summer houses.”
The captain’s wife sighed and smiled at his answer, and her lips murmured the word—
“Poet!”
“Many sins have I on my conscience,” answered Gösta, “but I have never written a line of poetry.”
“You are nevertheless a poet, Gösta; that name you must put up with. You have lived through more poems than all our poets have written.”
Then she spoke, tenderly as a mother, of his wasted life. “I shall live to see you become a man,” she said. And he felt it sweet to be urged on by this gentle woman, who was such a faithful friend, and whose romantic heart burned with the love of great deeds.
But just as they had finished the gay meal and had enjoyed the corned beef and horseradish and cabbage and apple fritters and Christmas ale, and Gösta had made them laugh and cry by telling them of the major and his wife and the Broby clergyman, they heard sleigh-bells outside, and immediately afterward the wicked Sintram walked in.
He beamed with satisfaction, from the top of his bald head down to his long, flat feet. He swung his long arms, and his face was twisted. It was easy to see that he brought bad news.
“Have you heard,” he asked—“have you heard that the banns have been called today for Anna Stjärnhök and the rich Dahlberg in the Svartsjö church? She must have forgotten that she was engaged to Ferdinand.”
They had not heard a word of it. They were amazed and grieved.
Already they fancied the home pillaged to pay the debt to this wicked man; the beloved horses sold, as well as the worn furniture which had come from the home of the captain’s wife. They saw an end to the gay life with feasts and journeyings from ball to ball. Bear-hams would again adorn the board, and the young people must go out into the world and work for strangers.
The captain’s wife caressed her son, and let him feel the comfort of a never-failing love.
But—there sat Gösta Berling in the midst of them, and, unconquerable, turned over a thousand plans in his head.
“Listen,” he cried, “it is not yet time to think of grieving. It is the minister’s wife at Svartsjö who has arranged all this. She has got a hold on Anna, since she has been living with her at the vicarage. It is she who has persuaded her to forsake Ferdinand and take old Dahlberg; but they’re not married yet, and will never be either. I am on my way to Borg, and shall meet Anna there. I shall talk to her; I shall get her away from the clergyman’s, from her fiancé—I shall bring her with me here tonight. And afterwards old Dahlberg shall never get any good of her.”
And so it was arranged. Gösta started for Borg alone, without taking any of the gay young ladies, but with warm good wishes for his return. And Sintram, who rejoiced that old Dahlberg should be cheated, decided to stop at Berga to see Gösta come back with the faithless girl. In a burst of goodwill he even wrapt round him his green plaid, a present from Mamselle Ulrika.
The captain’s wife came out on the steps with three little books, bound in red leather, in her hand.
“Take them,” she said to Gösta, who already sat in the sledge; “take them, if you fail! It is Corinne, Madame de Staël’s Corinne. I do not want them to go by auction.”
“I shall not fail.”
“Ah, Gösta, Gösta,” she said, and passed her hand over his bared head, “strongest and weakest of men! How long will you remember that a few poor people’s happiness lies in your hand?”
Once more Gösta flew along the road, drawn by the black Don Juan, followed by the white Tancred, and the joy of adventure filled his soul. He felt like a young conqueror, the spirit was in him.
His way took him past the vicarage at Svartsjö. He turned in there and asked if he might drive Anna Stjärnhök to the ball. And that he was permitted.
A beautiful, self-willed girl it was who sat in his sledge. Who would not want to drive behind the black Don Juan?
The young people were silent at first, but then she began the conversation, audaciousness itself.
“Have you heard what the minister read out in church today?”
“Did he say that you were the prettiest girl between the Löfven and the Klar River?”
“How stupid you are! but everyone knows that. He called the banns for me and old Dahlberg.”
“Never would I have let you sit in my sledge nor sat here myself, if I had known that. Never would I have wished to drive you at all.”
And the proud heiress answered:—
“I could have got there well enough without you, Gösta Berling.”
“It is a pity for you, Anna,” said Gösta, thoughtfully, “that your father and mother are not alive. You are your own mistress, and no one can hold you to account.”
“It is a much greater pity that you had not said that before, so that I might have driven with someone else.”
“The minister’s wife thinks as I do, that you need someone to take your father’s place; else she had never put you to pull in harness with such an old nag.”
“It is not she who has decided it.”
“Ah, Heaven preserve us!—have you yourself chosen such a fine man?”
“He does not take me for my money.”
“No, the old ones, they only run after blue eyes and red cheeks; and awfully nice they are, when they do that.”
“Oh, Gösta, are you not ashamed?”
“But remember that you are not to play with young men any longer. No
