Short Fiction, Selma Lagerlöf [uplifting novels txt] 📗

Then she saw suddenly, just at the outer edge of the fishing-village, one of the most wretched of hovels, and it seemed to her as if she had already seen it with her mind’s eye before she actually had a glimpse of it.

“Is it here?” he said, and stopped just at the foot of the little sand-hill.

He bent his head imperceptibly and went on towards the little cottage.

“Wait,” she called after him, “we must talk this over before I go into your home. You have lied,” she went on, threateningly, when he turned to her. “You have deceived me worse than if you were my worst enemy. Why have you done it?”

“I wanted you for my wife,” he answered, with a low, trembling voice.

“If you had only deceived me within bounds! Why did you make everything so fine and rich? What did you have to do with man-servants and triumphal arches and all the other magnificence? Did you think that I was so devoted to money? Did you not see that I cared enough for you to go anywhere with you? That you could believe you needed to deceive me! That you could have the heart to keep up your lies to the very last!”

“Will you not come in and speak to my mother?” he said, helplessly.

“I do not intend to go in there.”

“Are you going home?”

“How can I go home? How could I cause them there at home such sorrow as to return, when they believe me happy and rich? But with you I will not stay either. For one who is willing to work there is always a livelihood.”

“Stop!” he begged. “I did it only to win you.”

“If you had told me the truth, I would have stayed.”

“If I had been a rich man, who had pretended to be poor, then you would have stayed.”

She shrugged her shoulders and turned to go, when the door of the cottage opened and Börje’s mother came out. She was a little, dried-up old woman with few teeth and many wrinkles, but not so old in years or in feelings as in looks.

She had heard a part and guessed a part, for she knew what they were quarrelling about. “Well,” she said, “that is a fine daughter-in-law you have got me, Börje. And you have been deceiving again, I can hear.” But to Astrid she came and patted her kindly on the cheek. “Come in with me, you poor child! I know that you are tired and worn out. This is my house. He is not allowed to come in here. But you come. Now you are my daughter, and I cannot let you go to strangers, do you understand?”

She caressed her daughter-in-law and chatted to her and drew and pushed her quite imperceptibly forward to the door. Step by step she lured her on, and at last got her inside the house; but Börje she shut out. And there, within, the old woman began to ask who she was and how it had all happened. And she wept over her and made her weep over herself. The old woman was merciless about her son. She, Astrid, did right; she could not stay with such a man. It was true that he was in the habit of lying, it was really true.

She told her how it had been with her son. He had been so fair in face and limbs, even when he was small, that she had always marvelled that he was a poor man’s child. He was like a little prince gone astray. And ever after it had always seemed as if he had not been in his right place. He saw everything on such a large scale. He could not see things as they were, when it concerned himself. His mother had wept many a time on that account. But never before had he done any harm with his lies. Here, where he was known, they only laughed at him.⁠—But now he must have been so terribly tempted. Did she really not think, she, Astrid, that it was wonderful how the fisher boy had been able to deceive them? He had always known so much about wealth, as if he had been born to it. It must be that he had come into the world in the wrong place. See, that was another proof⁠—he had never thought of choosing a wife in his own station.

“Where will he sleep tonight?” asked Astrid, suddenly.

“I imagine he will lie outside on the sand. He will be too anxious to go away from here.”

“I suppose it is best for him to come in,” said Astrid.

“Dearest child, you cannot want to see him. He can get along out there if I give him a blanket.”

She let him actually sleep out on the sand that night, thinking it best for Astrid not to see him. And with her she talked and talked, and kept her, not by force, but by cleverness, not by persuasion, but by real goodness.

But when she had at last succeeded in keeping her daughter-in-law for her son, and had got the young people reconciled, and had taught Astrid that her vocation in life was just to be Börje Nilsson’s wife and to make him as happy as she could⁠—and that had not been the work of one evening, but of many days⁠—then the old woman had laid herself down to die.

And in that life, with its faithful solicitude for her son, there was some meaning, thought Börje Nilsson’s wife.

But in her own life she saw no meaning. Her husband was drowned after a few years of married life, and her one child died young. She had not been able to make any change in her husband. She had not been able to teach him earnestness and truth. It was rather in her the change showed, after she had been more and more with the fishing people. She would never see any of her own family, for she was