Selma Lagerlf

From a Swedish

Homestead

III

Old Agnete

Old Agnete

An old woman went up the mountain-path with short, tripping steps. She was little and thin. Her face was pale and wizened, but neither hard nor furrowed. She wore a long cloak and a quilled cap. She had a Prayer-Book in her hand and a sprig of lavender in her handkerchief.

She lived in a hut far up the high mountain where no trees could grow. It was lying quite close to the edge of a broad glacier, which sent its river of ice from the snow-clad mountain peak into the depths of the valley. There she lived quite alone. All those who had belonged to her were dead.

It was Sunday, and she had been to church. But whatever might be the cause, her going there had not made her happy, but sorrowful. The clergyman had spoken about death and the doomed, and that had affected her. She had suddenly begun to think of how she had heard in her childhood that many of the doomed were tormented in the region of eternal cold on the mountain right above her dwelling. She could remember many tales about these wanderers of the glaciers—these indefatigable shadows which were hunted from place to place by the icy mountain winds.

All at once she felt a great terror of the mountain, and thought that her hut was dreadfully high up. Supposing those who moved about invisibly there wandered down the glaciers! And she who was quite alone! The word 'alone' gave to her thoughts a still sadder turn. She again felt the full burden of that sorrow which never left her. She thought how hard it was to be so far away from human beings.

'Old Agnete,' she said aloud to herself, as she had got into the habit of doing in the lonely waste, 'you sit in your hut and spin, and spin. You work and toil all the hours of the day so as not to perish from hunger. But is there anyone to whom you give any pleasure by being alive? Is there anyone, old Agnete? If any of your own were living——Yes, then, perhaps, if you lived nearer the village, you might be of some use to somebody. Poor as you are, you could neither take dog nor cat home to you, but you could probably now and then give a beggar shelter. You ought not to live so far away from the highroad, old Agnete. If you could only once in a while give a thirsty wayfarer a drink, then you would know that it was of some use your being alive.'

She sighed, and said to herself that not even the peasant women who gave her flax to spin would mourn her death. She had certainly striven to do her work honestly and well, but no doubt there were many who could have done it better. She began to cry bitterly, when the thought struck her that his reverence, who had seen her sitting in the same place in church for so many, many years, would perhaps think it a matter of perfect indifference whether she was dead or not.

'It is as if I were dead,' she said. 'No one asks after me. I would just as well lie down and die. I am already frozen to death from cold and loneliness. I am frozen to the core of the heart, I am indeed. Ah me! ah me!' she said, now she had been set a-thinking; 'if there were only someone who really needed me, there might still be a little warmth left in old Agnete. But I cannot knit stockings for the mountain goats, or make the beds for the marmots, can I? I tell Thee,' she said, stretching our her hands towards heaven, 'something Thou must give me to do, or I shall lay me down and die.'

At the same moment a tall, stern monk came towards her. He walked by her side because he saw that she was sorrowful, and she told him about her troubles. She said that her heart was nearly frozen to death, and that she would become like one of the wanderers on the glacier if God did not give her something to live for.

'God will assuredly do that,' said the monk.

'Do you not see that God is powerless here?' old Agnete said. 'Here there is nothing but an empty, barren waste.'

They went higher and higher towards the snow mountains. The moss spread itself softly over the stones; the Alpine herbs, with their velvety leaves, grew along the pathway; the mountain, with its rifts and precipices, its glaciers and snow-drifts, towered above them, weighing them down. Then the monk discovered old Agnete's hut, right below the glacier.

'Oh,' he said, 'is it there you live? Then you are not alone there; you have company enough. Only look!'

The monk put his thumb and first finger together, held them before old Agnete's left eye, and bade her look through them towards the mountain. But old Agnete shuddered and closed her eyes.

'If there is anything to see up there, then I will not look on any account,' she said. 'The Lord preserve us! it is bad enough without that.'

'Good-bye, then,' said the monk; 'it is not certain that you will be permitted to see such a thing a second time.'

Old Agnete grew curious; she opened her eyes and looked towards the glacier. At first she saw nothing remarkable, but soon she began to discern things moving about. What she had taken to be mist and vapour, or bluish-white shadows on the ice, were multitudes of doomed souls, tormented in the eternal cold.

Poor old Agnete trembled like an aspen leaf. Everything was just as she had heard it described in days gone by. The dead wandered about there in endless anguish and pain. Most of them were shrouded in something long and white, but all had their faces and their hands bared.

They could not be counted, there was such a multitude. The longer she looked, the more there appeared. Some walked proud and erect, others seemed to dance over the glacier; but she saw that they all cut their feet on the sharp and jagged edges of the ice.

It was just as she had been told. She saw how they constantly huddled close together, as if to warm themselves, but immediately drew back again, terrified by the deathly cold which emanated from their bodies.

It was as if the cold of the mountain came from them, as if it were they who prevented the snow from melting and made the mist so piercingly cold.

They were not all moving; some stood in icy stoniness, and it looked as if they had been standing thus for years, for ice and snow had gathered around them so that only the upper portion of their bodies could be seen.

The longer the little old woman gazed the quieter she grew. Fear left her, and she was only filled with sorrow for all these tormented beings. There was no abatement in their pain, no rest for their torn feet, hurrying over ice sharp as edged steel. And how cold they were! how they shivered! how their teeth chattered from cold! Those who were petrified and those who could move, all suffered alike from the snarling, biting, unbearable cold.

There were many young men and women; but there was no youth in their faces, blue with cold. It looked as if they were playing, but all joy was dead. They shivered, and were huddled up like old people.

But those who made the deepest impression on her were those frozen fast in the hard glacier, and those who were hanging from the mountain-side like great icicles.

Then the monk removed his hand, and old Agnete saw only the barren, empty glaciers. Here and there were ice-mounds, but they did not surround any petrified ghosts. The blue light on the glacier did not proceed from frozen bodies; the wind chased the snowflakes before it, but not any ghosts.

Still old Agnete was certain that she had really seen all this, and she asked the monk:

'Is it permitted to do anything for these poor doomed ones?'

He answered:

'When has God forbidden Love to do good or Mercy to solace?'

Then the monk went his way, and old Agnete went to her hut and thought it all over. The whole evening she pondered how she could help the doomed who were wandering on the glaciers. For the first time in many years she had been too busy to think of her loneliness.

Next morning she again went down to the village. She smiled, and was well content. Old age was no longer so heavy a burden. 'The dead,' she said to herself, 'do not care so much about red cheeks and light steps. They only want one to think of them with a little warmth. But young people do not trouble to do that. Oh no, oh no. How should the dead protect themselves from the terrible coldness of death did not old people open their hearts to them?

When she came to the village shop she bought a large package of candles, and from a peasant she ordered a great load of firewood; but in order to pay for it she had to take in twice as much spinning as usual.

Towards evening, when she got home again, she said many prayers, and tried to keep up her courage by singing hymns. But her courage sank more and more. All the same, she did what she had made up her mind to do.

She moved her bed into the inner room of her hut. In the front room she made a big fire and lighted it. In the window she placed two candles, and left the outer door wide open. Then she went to bed.

She lay in the darkness and listened.

Yes, there certainly was a step. It was as if someone had come gliding down the glacier. It came heavily, moaning. It crept round the hut as if it dared not come in. Close to the wall it stood and shivered.

Old Agnete could not bear it any longer. She sprang out of bed, went into the outer room and closed the door. It was too much; flesh and blood could not stand it.

Outside the hut she heard deep sighs and dragging steps, as of sore, wounded feet. They dragged themselves away further and further up the icy glacier. Now and again she also heard sobs; but soon everything was quiet.

Then old Agnete was beside herself with anxiety. 'You are a coward, you silly old thing,' she said. 'Both the fire and the lights, which cost so much, are burning out. Shall it all have been done in vain because you are such a miserable coward?' And when she had said this she got out of bed again, crying from fear, with chattering teeth, and shivering all over; but into the other room she went, and the door she opened.

Again she lay and waited. Now she was no longer frightened that they should come. She was only afraid lest she had scared them away, and that they dared not come back.

And as she lay there in the darkness she began to call just as she used to do in her young days when she was tending the sheep.

'My little white lambs, my lambs in the mountains, come, come! Come down from rift and precipice, my little white lambs!'

Then it seemed as if a cold wind from the mountain came rushing into the room. She heard neither step nor sob, only gusts of wind that came rushing along the walls of the hut into the room. And it sounded as if someone were continually saying:

'Hush, hush! Don't frighten her! don't frighten her! don't frighten her!'

She had a feeling as if the outside room was so overcrowded that they were being crushed against the walls, and that the walls were giving way. Sometimes it seemed as if they would lift the roof in order to gain more room. But the whole time there were whispers:

'Hush, hush! Don't frighten her! don't frighten her!'

Then old Agnete felt happy and peaceful. She folded her hands and fell asleep. In the morning it seemed as if the whole had been a dream. Everything looked as usual in the outer room; the fire had burnt out, and so had the candles. There was not a vestige of tallow left in the candlesticks.

As long as old Agnete lived she continued to do this. She spun and worked so that she could keep her fire burning every night. And she was happy because someone needed her.

Then one Sunday she was not in her usual seat in the church. Two peasants went up to her hut to see if there was anything the matter. She was already dead, and they carried her body down to the village to bury it.

When, the following Sunday, her funeral took place, just before Mass, there were but few who followed, neither did one see grief on any face. But suddenly, just as the coffin was being lowered into the grave, a tall, stern monk came into the churchyard, and he stood still and pointed to the snow-clad mountains. Then they saw the whole mountain-ridge shining in a red light as if lighted with joy, and round it wound a procession of small yellow flames, looking like burning candles. And these flames numbered as many as the candles which old Agnete had burned for the doomed. Then people said: 'Praise the Lord! She whom no one mourns here below has all the same found friends in the solitude above.'