The Story of Gösta Berling. Selma Lagerlöf

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      “Meet me in half an hour in the red drawing-room on the lower floor!”

      His blue eyes flashed on her, and encompassed her with magical waves. She felt that she must obey.

      She met him with proud and angry words.

      “How does it concern you whom I marry?”

      He was not ready to speak gently to her, nor did it seem to him best to speak yet of Ferdinand.

      “I thought it was not too severe a punishment for you to sit out ten dances. But you want to be allowed unpunished to break vows and promises. If a better man than I had taken your sentence in his hand, he could have made it harder.”

      “What have I done to you and all the others, that I may not be in peace? It is for my money’s sake you persecute me. I shall throw it into the Löfven, and any one who wants it can fish it up.”

      She put her hands before her eyes and wept from anger.

      That moved the poet’s heart. He was ashamed of his harshness. He spoke in caressing tones.

      “Ah, child, child, forgive me! Forgive poor Gösta Berling! Nobody cares what such a poor wretch says or does, you know that. Nobody weeps for his anger, one might just as well weep over a mosquito’s bite. It was madness in me to hope that I could prevent our loveliest and richest girl marrying that old man. And now I have only distressed you.”

      He sat down on the sofa beside her. Gently he put his arm about her waist, with caressing tenderness, to support and raise her.

      She did not move away. She pressed closer to him, threw her arms round his neck, and wept with her beautiful head on his shoulder.

      O poet, strongest and weakest of men, it was not about your neck those white arms should rest.

      “If I had known that,” she whispered, “never would I have taken the old man. I have watched you this evening; there is no one like you.”

      From between pale lips Gösta forced out—

      “Ferdinand.”

      She silenced him with a kiss.

      “He is nothing; no one but you is anything. To you will I be faithful.”

      “I am Gösta Berling,” he said gloomily; “you cannot marry me.”

      “You are the man I love, the noblest of men. You need do nothing, be nothing. You are born a king.”

      Then the poet’s blood seethed. She was beautiful and tender in her love. He took her in his arms.

      “If you will be mine, you cannot remain at the vicarage. Let me drive you to Ekeby to-night; there I shall know how to defend you till we can be married.”

      That was a wild drive through the night. Absorbed in their love, they let Don Juan take his own pace. The noise of the runners was like the lamentations of those they had deceived. What did they care for that? She hung on his neck, and he leaned forward and whispered in her ear.

      “Can any happiness be compared in sweetness to stolen pleasures?”

      What did the banns matter? They had love. And the anger of men! Gösta Berling believed in fate; fate had mastered them: no one can resist fate.

      If the stars had been the candles which had been lighted for her wedding, if Don Juan’s bells had been the church chimes, calling the people to witness her marriage to old Dahlberg, still she must have fled with Gösta Berling. So powerful is fate.

      They had passed the vicarage and Munkerud. They had three miles to Berga and three miles more to Ekeby. The road skirted the edge of the wood; on their right lay dark hills, on their left a long, white valley.

      Tancred came rushing. He ran so fast that he seemed to lie along the ground. Howling with fright, he sprang up in the sledge and crept under Anna’s feet.

      Don Juan shied and bolted.

      “Wolves!” said Gösta Berling.

      They saw a long, gray line running by the fence. There were at least a dozen of them.

      Anna was not afraid. The day had been richly blessed with adventure, and the night promised to be equally so. It was life—to speed over the sparkling snow, defying wild beasts and men.

      Gösta uttered an oath, leaned forward, and struck Don Juan a heavy blow with the whip.

      “Are you afraid?” he asked. “They mean to cut us off there, where the road turns.”

      Don Juan ran, racing with the wild beasts of the forest, and Tancred howled in rage and terror. They reached the turn of the road at the same time as the wolves, and Gösta drove back the foremost with the whip.

      “Ah, Don Juan, my boy, how easily you could get away from twelve wolves, if you did not have us to drag.”

      They tied the green plaid behind them. The wolves were afraid of it, and fell back for a while. But when they had overcome their fright, one of them ran, panting, with hanging tongue and open mouth up to the sledge. Then Gösta took Madame de Staël’s “Corinne” and threw it into his mouth.

      Once more they had breathing-space for a time, while the brutes tore their booty to pieces, and then again they felt the dragging as the wolves seized the green plaid, and heard their panting breath. They knew that they should not pass any human dwelling before Berga, but worse than death it seemed to Gösta to see those he had deceived. But he knew that the horse would tire, and what should become of them then?

      They saw the house at Berga at the edge of the forest. Candles burned in the windows. Gösta knew too well for whose sake.

      But now the wolves drew back, fearing the neighborhood of man, and Gösta drove past Berga. He came no further than to the place where the road once again buried itself in the wood; there he saw a dark group before him—the wolves were waiting for him.

      “Let us turn back to the vicarage and say that we took a little pleasure trip in the starlight. We can’t go on.”

      They turned, but in the next moment the sledge was surrounded by wolves. Gray forms brushed by them, their white teeth glittered in gaping mouths, and their glowing eyes shone. They howled with hunger and thirst for blood. The glittering teeth were ready to seize the soft human flesh. The wolves leaped up on Don Juan, and hung on the saddle-cloth. Anna sat and wondered if they would eat them entirely up, or if there would be something left, so that people the next morning would find their mangled limbs on the trampled, bloody snow.

      “It’s a question of our lives,” she said, and leaned down and seized Tancred by the nape of the neck.

      “Don’t—that will not help! It is not for the dog’s sake the wolves are out to-night.”

      Thereupon Gösta drove into the yard at Berga, but the wolves hunted him up to the very steps. He had to beat them off with the whip.

      “Anna,” he said, as they drew up, “God would not have it. СКАЧАТЬ