Selma Lagerlf

From a Swedish

Homestead

VIII

A Story from HalstanÄs

A Story from HalstanÄs

In olden times there stood by the roadside an old country-house called HalstanÄs. It comprised a long row of red-painted houses, which were of low structure, and right behind them lay the forest. Close to the dwelling-house was a large wild cherry-tree, which showered its black fruit over the red-tiled roof. A bell under a small belfry hung over the gable of the stables.

Just outside the kitchen-door was a dovecote, with a neat little trelliswork outside the holes. From the attic a cage for squirrels was hanging; it consisted of two small green houses and a large wheel, and in front of a big hedge of lilacs stood a long row of beehives covered with bark.

There was a pond belonging to the farm, full of fat carp and slim water-snakes; there was also a kennel at the entrance; there were white gates at the end of the avenue, and at the garden walks, and in every place where they could possibly have a gate. There were big lofts with dark lumber-rooms, where old-fashioned uniforms and ladies' head-gear a hundred years old were stored away; there were large chests full of silk gowns and bridal finery; there were old pianos and violins, guitars and bassoons. In bureaus and cabinets were manuscript songs and old yellow letters; on the walls of the entrance-hall hung guns, pistols and hunting-bags; on the floor were rugs, in which patches of old silken gowns were woven together with pieces of threadbare cotton curtains. There was a large porch, where the deadly nightshade summer after summer grew up a thin trelliswork; there were large, yellow front-doors, which were fastened with bolts and catches; the hall was strewn with sprigs of juniper, and the windows had small panes and heavy wooden shutters.

One summer old Colonel Beerencreutz came on a visit to this house. It is supposed to have been the very year after he left Ekeby. At that time he had taken rooms at a farm at SvartsjÖ, and it was only on rare occasions that he went visiting. He still had his horse and gig, but he scarcely ever used them. He said that he had grown old in earnest now, and that home was the best place for old people.

Beerencreutz was also loath to leave the work he had in hand. He was weaving rugs for his two rooms—large, many-coloured rugs in a rich and strangely-thought-out pattern. It took him an endless time, because he had his own way of weaving, for he used no loom, but stretched his wool from the one wall to the other right across the one room. He did this in order to see the whole rug at one time; but to cross the woof and afterwards bring the threads together to a firm web was no easy matter. And then there was the pattern, which he himself thought out, and the colours which should match. This took the Colonel more time than anyone would have imagined; for whilst Beerencreutz was busy getting the pattern right, and whilst he was working with warp and woof, he often sat and thought of God. Our Lord, he thought, was likewise sitting at a loom, still larger, and with an even more peculiar pattern to weave. And he knew that there must be both light and dark shades in that weaving. But Beerencreutz would at times sit and think so long about this, until he fancied he saw before him his own life and the life of the people whom he had known, and with whom he had lived, forming a small portion of God's great weaving; and he seemed to see that piece so distinctly that he could discern both outlines and colouring. And if one asked Beerencreutz what the pattern in his work really meant, he would be obliged to confess that it was the life of himself and his friends which he wove into the rug as a faint imitation of what he thought he had seen represented on God's loom.

The Colonel, however, was accustomed to pay a little visit to some old friends every year just after midsummer. He had always liked best to travel through the country when the fields were still scented with clover, and blue and yellow flowers grew along the roadside in two long straight rows.

This year the Colonel had hardly got to the great highroad before he met his old friend Ensign von Örneclou. And the Ensign, who was travelling about all the year round, and who knew all the country houses in VÄrmland, gave him some good advice.

'Go to HalstanÄs and call upon Ensign Vestblad,' he said to the Colonel. 'I can only tell you, old man, I don't know a house in the whole country where one fares better.'

'What Vestblad are you speaking about?' asked the Colonel. 'I suppose you don't mean the old Ensign whom the Major's wife showed the door?'

'The very man,' said the Ensign. 'But Vestblad is not the same man he was. He has married a fine lady—a real stunning woman, Colonel—who has made a man of him. It was a wonderful piece of good luck for Vestblad that such a splendid girl should take a fancy to him. She was not exactly young any longer; but no more was he. You should go to HalstanÄs, Colonel, and see what wonders love can work.'

And the Colonel went to HalstanÄs to see if Örneclou spoke the truth. He had, as a matter of fact, now and then wondered what had become of Vestblad; in his young days he had kicked so recklessly over the traces that even the Major's wife at Ekeby could not put up with him. She had not been able to keep him at Ekeby more than a couple of years before she was obliged to turn him out. Vestblad had become such a heavy drinker that a Cavalier could hardly associate with him. And now Örneclou declared that he owned a country house, and had made an excellent match.

The Colonel consequently went to HalstanÄs, and saw at the first glance that it was a real old country-seat. He had only to look at the avenue of birches with all the names cut on the fine old trees. Such birches he had only seen at good old country-houses. The Colonel drove slowly up to the house, and every moment his pleasure increased. He saw lime hedges of the proper kind, so close that one could walk on the top of them, and there were a couple of terraces with stone steps so old that they were half buried in the ground. When the Colonel drove past the pond, he saw indistinctly the dark carp in the yellowish water. The pigeons flew up from the road flapping their wings; the squirrel stopped its wheel; the watch-dog lay with its head on its paws, wagging its tail, and at the same time faintly growling. Close to the porch the Colonel saw an ant-hill, where the ants, unmolested, went to and fro—to and fro. He looked at the flower-beds inside the grass border. There they grew, all the old flowers: narcissus and pyrola, sempervivum and marigold; and on the bank grew small white daisies, which had been there so long that they now sowed themselves like weeds. Beerencreutz again said to himself that this was indeed a real old country-house, where both plants and animals and human beings throve as well as could be.

When at last he drove up to the front-door he had as good a reception as he could wish for, and as soon as he had brushed the dust off him he was taken to the dining-room, and he was offered plenty of good old-fashioned food—the same old cakes for dessert that his mother used to give him when he came home from school; and any so good he had never tasted elsewhere.

Beerencreutz looked with surprise at Ensign Vestblad. He went about quiet and content, with a long pipe in his mouth and a skull-cap on his head. He wore an old morning-coat, which he had difficulty in getting out of when it was time to dress for dinner. That was the only sign of the Bohemian left, as far as Beerencreutz could see. He went about and looked after his men, calculated their wages, saw how things were getting on in the fields and meadows, gathered a rose for his wife when he went through the garden, and he indulged no longer in either swearing or spitting. But what astonished the Colonel most of all was the discovery that old Ensign Vestblad kept his books. He took the Colonel into his office and showed him large books with red backs. And those he kept himself. He had lined them with red ink and black ink, written the headings with large letters, and put down everything, even to a stamp.

But Ensign Vestblad's wife, who was a born lady, called Beerencreutz cousin, and they soon found out the relationship between them; and they talked all their relatives over. At last Beerencreutz became so intimate with Mrs. Vestblad that he consulted her about the rug he was weaving.

It was a matter of course that the Colonel should stay the night. He was taken to the best spare room to the right of the hall and close to his host's bedroom, and his bed was a large four-poster, with heaps of eiderdowns.

The Colonel fell asleep as soon as he got into bed, but awoke later on in the night. He immediately got out of bed and went and opened the window-shutters. He had a view over the garden, and in the light summer night he could see all the gnarled old apple-trees, with their worm-eaten leaves, and with numerous props under the decayed branches. He saw the large wild apple-tree, which in the autumn would give barrels of uneatable fruit; he saw the strawberries, which had just begun to ripen under their profusion of green leaves.

The Colonel stood and looked at it as if he could not afford to waste his time in sleeping. Outside his window at the peasant farm where he lived all he could see was a stony hill and a couple of juniper-bushes; and it was natural that a man like Beerencreutz should feel more at home amongst well-trimmed hedges and roses in bloom.

When in the quiet stillness of the night one looks out upon a garden, one often has a feeling that it is not real and natural. It can be so still that one can almost fancy one's self in the theatre; one imagines that the trees are painted and the roses made of paper. And it was something like this the Colonel felt as he stood there. 'It cannot be possible,' he thought, 'that all this is real. It can only be a dream.' But then a few rose-leaves fell softly to the ground from the big rose-tree just outside his window, and then he realized that everything was genuine. Everything was real and genuine; both day and night the same peace and contentment everywhere.

When he went and laid down again he left the window-shutters open. He lay in the high bed and looked time after time at the rose-tree; it is impossible to describe his pleasure in looking at it. He thought what a strange thing it was that such a man as Vestblad should have this flower of Paradise outside his window.

The more the Colonel thought of Vestblad the more surprised he became that such a foal should end his days in such a stable. He was not good for much at the time he was turned away from Ekeby. Who would have thought he would have become a staid and well-to-do man?

The Colonel lay and laughed to himself, and wondered whether Vestblad still remembered how he used to amuse himself in the olden days when he was living at Ekeby. On dark and stormy nights he used to rub himself over with phosphorus, mount a black horse, and ride over the hills to the ironworks, where the smiths and the workmen lived; and if anyone happened to look out of his window and saw a horseman shining with a bluish-white light tearing past, he hastened to bar and bolt everywhere, saying it was best to say one's prayers twice that night, for the devil was abroad.

Oh yes, to frighten simple folks by such tricks was a favourite amusement in olden days; but Vestblad had carried his jokes further than anyone else the Colonel knew of.

An old woman on the parish had died at Viksta, which belonged to Ekeby. Vestblad happened to hear about this. He also heard that the corpse had been taken from the house and placed in a barn. At night Vestblad put on his fiery array, mounted his black horse, and rode to the farmstead; and people there who were about had seen a fiery horseman ride up to the barn, where the corpse lay, ride three times round it and disappear through the door. They had also seen the horseman come out again, ride three times round the house and then disappear. But in the morning, when they went into the barn to see the corpse, it was gone, and they thought the devil had been there and carried her off. This supposition had been enough for them. But a couple of weeks later they found the body, which had been thrown on to a hay-loft in the barn, and then there was a great outcry. They found out who the fiery horseman was, and the peasants were on the watch to give Vestblad a good hiding. But the Major's wife would not have him at her table or in her house any longer; she packed his knapsack and asked him to betake himself elsewhere. And Vestblad went out into the world and made his fortune.

A strange feeling of uneasiness came over the Colonel as he lay in bed. He felt as if something were going to happen. He had hardly realized before what an ugly story it was. He had no doubt even laughed at it at the time. They had not been in the habit of taking much notice of what happened to a poor old pauper in those days; but, great God! how furious one would have been if anybody had done that to one's own mother!

A suffocating feeling came over the Colonel; he breathed heavily. The thought of what Vestblad had done appeared so vile and hateful to him, it weighed him down like a nightmare. He was half afraid of seeing the dead woman, of seeing her appear from behind the bed. He felt as if she must be quite near. And from the four corners of the room the Colonel heard terrible words: 'God will not forgive it! God has never forgotten it!'

The Colonel closed his eyes, but then he suddenly saw before him God's great loom, where the web was woven with the fates of men; and he thought he saw Ensign Vestblad's square, and it was dark on three sides; and he, who understood something about weaving and patterns, knew that the fourth side would also have to be covered with the dark shade. It could not be done in any other way, otherwise there would be a mistake in the weaving.

A cold sweat broke out on his forehead; it seemed to him that he looked upon what was the hardest and the most immovable in all the world. He saw how the fate which a man has worked out in his past life will pursue him to the end. And to think there were actually people who thought they could escape it!

Escape it! escape! All was noted and written down; the one colour and the one figure necessitated the other, and everything came about as it was bound to come about.

Suddenly Colonel Beerencreutz sat up in bed; he would look at the flowers and the roses, and think that perhaps our Lord could forget after all. But at the moment Beerencreutz sat up in bed the bedroom door opened, and one of the farm-labourers—a stranger to him—put his head in and nodded to the Colonel.

It was now so light that the Colonel saw the man quite distinctly. It was the most hideous face he had ever seen. He had small gray eyes like a pig, a flat nose, and a thin, bristly beard. One could not say that the man looked like an animal, for animals have nearly always good faces, but still, he had something of the animal about him. His lower jaw projected, his neck was thick, and his forehead was quite hidden by his rough, unkempt hair.

He nodded three times to the Colonel, and every time his mouth opened with a broad grin; and he put out his hand, red with blood, and showed it triumphantly. Up to this moment the Colonel had sat up in bed as if paralyzed, but now he jumped up and was at the door in two steps. But when he reached the door, the fellow was gone and the door closed.

The Colonel was just on the point of raising the alarm, when it struck him that the door must be fastened on the inside, on his side, as he had himself locked it the night before; and on examining it, he found that it had not been unlocked.

The Colonel felt almost ashamed to think that in his old age he had begun to see ghosts. He went straight back to bed again.

When the morning came, and he had breakfasted, the Colonel felt still more ashamed. He had excited himself to such an extent that he had trembled all over and perspired from fear. He said not a word about it. But later on in the day he and Vestblad went over the estate. As they passed a labourer who was cutting sods on a bank Beerencreutz recognised him again. It was the man he had seen in the night. He recognised feature for feature.

'I would not keep that man a day longer in my service, my friend,' said Beerencreutz, when they had walked a short distance. And he told Vestblad what he had seen in the night. 'I tell you this simply to warn you, in order that you may dismiss the man.'

But Vestblad would not; he was just the man he would not dismiss. And when Beerencreutz pressed him more and more, he at last confessed that he would not do anything to the man, because he was the son of an old pauper woman who had died at Viksta close to Ekeby.

'You no doubt remember the story?' he added.

'If that's the case, I would rather go to the end of the world than live another day with that man about the place,' said Beerencreutz. An hour after he left, and was almost angry that his warning was not heeded. 'Some misfortune will happen before I come here again,' said the Colonel to Vestblad, as he took leave.

Next year, at the same time, the Colonel was preparing for another visit to HalstanÄs. But before he got so far, he heard some sad news about his friends. As the clock struck one, a year after the very night he had slept there, Ensign Vestblad and his wife had been murdered in their bedroom by one of their labourers—a man with a neck like a bull, a flat nose, and eyes like a pig.