Short Fiction, Selma Lagerlöf [uplifting novels txt] 📗

Afterwards their father spoiled their pleasure, as he had always done as far back as they could remember. Mother told them she had heard that their father had received a legacy of a few thousand kronor, and that he had resigned from his position as organist and was going to move to Stockholm. Both they and mother were glad that he was leaving town, so they would escape meeting him on the streets. And then a friend of father’s had called on mother to tell her that father wanted to take the boys with him to Stockholm.

Mother had wept and begged that she might keep her boys, but father’s messenger had answered her that her husband was determined to have the boys under his guardianship. If they did not come willingly, he would let the police fetch them. He bade mother read through the divorce papers, and there it said plainly that the boys would belong to their father. This, of course, she already knew. It was not to be gainsaid.

Father’s friend had said many nice things of father and had told her of how much he loved his sons, and for this reason he wanted them to be with him. But the boys knew that father was taking them away solely for the purpose of torturing mother. She would have to live in a state of continual anxiety for them. The whole thing was nothing but malice and revenge!

But father had his own way, and here they were now, on their way to Stockholm. And right opposite them their father sits, rejoicing in the thought that he has made their mother unhappy. With every second that passes, the thought of having to live with father becomes more repellent. Are they then wholly in his power? Will there be no help for this?

Father leans back in his seat, and after a bit he falls asleep. Immediately the boys begin whispering to each other very earnestly. It isn’t difficult for them to come to a decision. The whole day they have been sitting there thinking that they ought to run away. They conclude to steal out on the platform and to jump from the train when it goes through a big forest. Then they will build them a hut in the most secluded spot in the forest, and live all by themselves and never show themselves to a human being.

While the boys are laying their plans, the train stops at a station, and a peasant woman, leading a little boy by the hand, comes into the coupé. She is dressed in black, with a shawl on her head, and has a kind and friendly appearance. She removes the little one’s overcoat, which is wet from the rain, and wraps a shawl around him. Then she takes off his shoes and stockings, dries his little cold feet, takes from a bundle dry shoes and stockings and puts them on him. Then she gives him a stick of candy and lays him down on the seat with his head resting on her lap, that he might sleep.

First one boy, then the other casts a glance over at the peasant woman. These glances become more frequent, and suddenly the eyes of both boys fill with tears. Then they look up no more, but keep their eyes obstinately lowered.

It seems that when the peasant woman entered someone else⁠—someone who was invisible and imperceptible to all save the boys⁠—came into the coupé. The boys fancied that she came and sat down between them and took their hands in hers, as she had done late last night, when it was settled that they must leave her; and she was talking to them now as she did then. “You must promise me that you will not be angry with father for my sake. Father has never been able to forgive me for preventing him from going abroad. He thinks it is my fault that he has never amounted to anything and that he drinks. He can never punish me enough. But you mustn’t be angry at him on that account. Now, when you are to live with father, you must promise me that you will be kind to him. You mustn’t quarrel with him and you are to look after his needs as well as you can. This you must promise me, otherwise I don’t know how I can ever let you go.” And the boys promised. “You mustn’t run away from father, promise me that!” mother had said. That they had also promised.

The boys are as good as their word, and the instant they happen to think that they had given mother these promises, they abandon all thought of flight. Father sleeps all the while and they remain patiently in their places. Then they resume their reading with redoubled zeal, and their friend, the good Jules Verne, soon takes them away from many heavy sorrows to Africa’s happy wonder world.

Far out on the south side of the city, father has rented two rooms and a kitchen on the ground floor, with an entrance from the court and an outlook over a narrow yard. The apartment has long been in use; it has gone from family to family, without ever having been renovated. The wall paper is full of tears and spots; the ceilings are sooty; a couple of windowpanes are cracked, and the kitchen floor is so worn that it is full of ruts. Expressmen have brought the furniture cases from the railway station and have left them there, helter skelter. Father and the boys are now unpacking. Father stands with axe raised to hack open a box. The boys are taking out glass and porcelain ware from another box, and are arranging them in a wall cupboard. They are handy and work eagerly, but the father never stops cautioning them to be careful, and forbids their carrying more than one glass or plate at a time. Meanwhile it goes slowly with father’s own work. His hands