Short Fiction, Selma Lagerlöf [uplifting novels txt] 📗

ashamed that she now resembled in everything a fisherman’s wife. If it had only been of any use! If she, who lived by mending the fishermen’s nets, knew why she clung so to life! If she had made anyone happy or had improved anybody!

It never occurred to her to think that she who considers her life a failure because she has done no good to others, perhaps by that thought of humility has saved her own soul.

His Mother’s Portrait

In one of the hundred houses of the fishing-village, where each is exactly like the other in size and shape, where all have just as many windows and as high chimneys, lived old Mattsson, the pilot.

In all the rooms of the fishing-village there is the same sort of furniture, on all the windowsills stand the same kinds of flowers, in all the corner-cupboards are the same collections of seashells and coral, on all the walls hang the same pictures. And it is a fixed old custom that all the inhabitants of the fishing-village live the same life. Since Mattsson, the pilot, had grown old, he had conformed carefully to the conditions and customs; his house, his rooms and his mode of living were like everybody else’s.

On the wall over the bed old Mattsson had a picture of his mother. One night he dreamed that the portrait stepped down from its frame, placed itself in front of him and said with a loud voice: “You must marry, Mattson.”

Old Mattsson then began to make clear to his mother that it was impossible. He was seventy years old.⁠—But his mother’s portrait merely repeated with even greater emphasis: “You must marry, Mattsson.”

Old Mattsson had great respect for his mother’s portrait. It had been his adviser on many debatable occasions, and he had always done well by obeying it. But this time he did not quite understand its behavior. It seemed to him as if the picture was acting in opposition to its already acknowledged opinions. Although he was lying there and dreaming, he remembered distinctly and clearly what had happened the first time he wished to be married. Just as he was dressing as a bridegroom, the nail gave way on which the picture hung and it fell to the floor. He understood then that the portrait wished to warn him against the marriage, but he did not obey it. He soon found that the portrait had been right. His short married life was very unhappy.

The second time he dressed as a bridegroom the same thing happened. The portrait fell to the ground as before, and he did not dare again to disobey it. He ran away from bride and wedding and travelled round the world several times before he dared come home again.⁠—And now the picture stepped down from the wall and commanded him to marry! However good and obedient he was, he allowed himself to think that it was making a fool of him.

But his mother’s portrait, which looked out with the grimmest face that sharp winds and salt sea-foam could carve, stood solemnly as before. And with a voice which had been exercised and strengthened for many years by offering fish in the town marketplace, it repeated: “You must marry, Mattsson.”

Old Mattsson then asked his mother’s portrait to consider what kind of a community it was they lived in.

All the hundred houses of the fishing-village had pointed roofs and whitewashed walls; all the boats of the fishing-village were of the same build and rig. No one there ever did anything unusual. His mother would have been the first to oppose such a marriage if she had been alive. His mother had held by habits and customs. And it was not the habit and custom of the fishing-village for old men of seventy years to marry.

His mother’s picture stretched out her beringed hand and positively commanded him to obey. There had always been something excessively awe-inspiring in his mother when she came in her black silk dress with many flounces. The big, shining gold brooch, the heavy, rattling gold chain had always frightened him. If she had worn her market-clothes, in a striped head-cloth and with an oilcloth apron, covered with fish-scales and fish eyes, he would not have been quite so overawed by her. The end of it was that he promised to get married. And then his mother’s portrait crept up into the frame again.

The next morning old Mattsson woke in great trouble. It never occurred to him to disobey his mother’s portrait; it knew of course what was best for him. But he shuddered nevertheless at the time that was now coming.

The same day he made an offer of marriage to the plainest daughter of the poorest fisherman, a little creature, whose head was drawn down between her shoulders and who had a projecting under-jaw. The parents said yes, and the day when he was to go to the town and publish the bans was appointed.

The road from the fishing-village to the town passes over windy marshes and swampy cow-pastures. It is two miles long, and there is a tradition that the inhabitants of the fishing-village are so rich that they could pave it with shining silver coins. It would give the road a strange attraction. Glimmering like a fish’s belly, it would wind with its white scales through clumps of sedge and pools filled with water-bugs and melancholy bullfrogs. The daisies and almond-blossoms which adorn that forsaken ground would be mirrored in the shining silver coins; thistles would stretch out protecting thorns over them, and the wind would find a ringing sounding-board when it played on the thatched roof of the cow-barns and on telephone-wires.

Perhaps old Mattsson would have found some comfort if he could have set his heavy sea boots on ringing silver, for it is certain that he for a time had to go that way oftener than he liked.

He had not had “clean papers.” The bans could not be published. It came