Book: Invisible Links

S >> Selma Lagerlof >> Invisible Links




When the swinging skirts grazed the heather, clouds of small grey
butterflies fluttered up from it. The under side of their wings was
white and silvery and they whirled like dry leaves in a squall.
They then seemed quite white, and it was as if a red sea threw up
white foam. The butterflies remained for a short time in the air.
Their fragile wings fluttered so violently that the down loosened
and fell like thin silver white feathers. The air seemed to be
filled with a glorified mist.

On the heath grasshoppers sat and scraped their back legs against
their wings, so that they sounded like harp strings. They kept good
time and played so well together, that to any one passing over the
moor it sounded like the same grasshopper during the whole walk,
although it seemed to be first on the right, then on the left; now
in front, now behind. But the dancer was not content with their
playing and began after a little while to hum the measure of a
dance tune. Her voice was shrill and harsh. The hunter was waked by
the song. He turned on his side, raised himself to his elbow, and
looked over the pile of stones at the dancing girl.

He had dreamt that the hare which he had just killed had leaped out
of the bag and had taken his own arrows to shoot at him. He now
stared at the girl half awake, dizzy with his dream, his head
burning from sleeping in the sun.

She was tall and coarsely built, not fair of face, nor light in the
dance, nor tuneful in her song. She had broad cheeks, thick lips
and a flat nose. She had very red cheeks, very dark hair. She was
exuberant in figure, moving with vigor and life. Her clothes were
shabby but bright in color. Red bands edged the striped skirt and
bright colored worsted fringes outlined the seams of her bodice.
Other young maidens resemble roses and lilies, but she was like the
heather, strong, gay and glowing.

The hunter watched with pleasure as the big, splendid woman danced
on the red heath among the playing grasshoppers and the fluttering
butterflies. While he looked at her he laughed so that his mouth
was drawn up towards his ears. But then she suddenly caught sight
of him and stood motionless.

"I suppose you think I am mad," was the first thing that occurred
to her to say. At the same time she wondered how she would get him
to hold his tongue about what he had seen. She did not care to hear
it told down in the village that she had danced with a fir root.

He was a man poor in words. Not a syllable could he utter. He was
so shy that he could think of nothing better than to run away,
although he longed to stay. Hastily he got his hat on his head and
his leather bag on his back. Then he ran away through the clumps of
heather.

She snatched up her bundle and ran after him. He was small, stiff
in his movements and evidently had very little strength. She soon
caught up with him and knocked his hat off to induce him to stop.
He really wished to do so, but he was confused with shyness and
fled with still greater speed. She ran after him and began to pull
at his game-bag. Then he had to stop to defend it. She fell upon
him with all her strength. They fought, and she threw him to the
ground. "Now he will not speak of it to any one," she thought, and
rejoiced.

At the same moment, however, she grew sick with fright, for the man
who lay on the ground turned livid and his eyes rolled inwards in
his head. He was not hurt in any way, however. He could not bear
emotion. Never before had so strong and conflicting feelings
stirred within that lonely forest dweller. He rejoiced over the
girl and was angry and ashamed and yet proud that she was so
strong. He was quite out of his head with it all.

The big, strong girl put her arm under his back and lifted him up.
She broke the heather and whipped his face with the stiff twigs
until the blood came back to it. When his little eyes again turned
towards the light of day, they shone with pleasure at the sight of
her. He was still silent; but he drew forward the hand which she
had placed about his waist and caressed it gently.

He was a child of starvation and early toil. He was dry and pallid,
thin and anaemic. She was touched by his faintheartedness; he who
nevertheless seemed to be about thirty years old. She thought that
he must live quite alone in the forest since he was so pitiful and
so meanly dressed. He could have no one to look after him, neither
mother nor sister nor sweetheart.

***

The great compassionate forest spread over the wilderness.
Concealing and protecting, it took to its heart everything which
sought its help. With its lofty trunks it kept watch by the lair of
the fox and the bear, and in the twilight of the thick bushes it
hid the egg-filled nests of little birds.

At the time when people still had slaves, many of them escaped to
the woods and found shelter behind its green walls. It became a
great prison for them which they did not dare to leave. The forest
held its prisoners in strict discipline. It forced the dull ones to
use their wits and educated those ruined by slavery to order and
honor. Only to the industrious did it give the right to live.

The two who met on the heath were descendants of such prisoners of
the forest. They sometimes went down to the inhabited, cultivated
valleys, for they no longer feared to be reduced to the slavery
from which their forefathers had fled, but they were happiest in
the dimness of the forest. The hunter's name was Toenne. His real
work was to cultivate the earth, but he also could do other things.
He collected herbs, boiled tar, dried punk, and often went hunting.
The dancer was called Jofrid. Her father was a charcoal burner. She
tied brooms, picked juniper berries and brewed ale of the
white-flowering myrtle. They were both very poor.

They had never met before in the big wood, but now they thought
that all its paths wound into a net, in which they ran forward and
back and could not possibly escape one another. They never knew how
to choose a way where they did not meet.

Toenne had once had a great sorrow. He had lived with his mother for
a long while in a miserable, wattled but, but as soon as he was
grown up he was seized with the idea to build her a warm cabin.
During all his leisure moments he went into the clearing, cut down
trees and hewed them into squared pieces. Then he hid the timber in
dark crannies under moss and branches. It was his intention that
his mother should not know anything of all this work before he was
ready to build the house. But his mother died before he could show
her what he had collected; before he had time to tell her what he
had wished to do. He, who had worked with the same zeal as David,
King of Israel, when he gathered treasures for the temple of God,
grieved most bitterly over it. He lost all interest in the
building. For him the brushwood shelter was good enough. Yet he was
hardly better off in his home than an animal in its hole.

When he, who had always heretofore crept about alone, was now
seized with the desire to seek Jofrid's company, it certainly meant
that he would like to have her for his sweetheart and his bride.
Jofrid also waited daily for him to speak to her father or to
herself about the matter. But Toenne could not. This showed that he
was of a race of slaves. The thoughts that came into his head moved
as slowly as the sun when he travels across the sky. And it was
more difficult for him to shape those thoughts to connected speech
than for a smith to forge a bracelet out of rolling grains of sand.

One day Toenne took Jofrid to one of the clefts, where he had hidden
his timber. He pulled aside the branches and moss and showed her
the squared beams. "That was to have been mother's house," he said.
The young girl was strangely slow in understanding a young man's
thoughts. When he showed her his mother's logs she ought to have
understood, but she did not understand.

Then he decided to make his meaning even plainer. A few days later
he began to drag the logs up to the place between the cairns, where
he had seen Jofrid for the first time. She came as usual along the
path and saw him at work. Nevertheless she went on without saying
anything. Since they had become friends she had often given him a
good handshake, but she did not seem to want to help him with the
heavy work. Toenne still thought that she ought to have understood
that it was now her house which he meant to build.

She understood it very well, but she had no desire to give herself
to such a man as Toenne. She wished to have a strong and healthy
husband. She thought it would be a poor livelihood to marry any one
who was weak and dull. Still, there was much which drew her to that
silent, shy man. She thought how hard he had worked to gladden his
mother and had not enjoyed the happiness of being ready in time.
She could weep for his sake. And now he was building the house just
where he had seen her dance. He had a good heart. And that
interested her and fixed her thoughts on him, but she did not at
all wish to marry him.

Every day she went over the heather field and saw the log cabin
grow, miserable and without windows, with the sunlight filtering in
through the leaky walls.

Toenne's work progressed very quickly, but not with care. His
timbers were not bent square, the lark was scarcely taken off. He
laid the floor with split young trees. It was uneven and shaky. The
heather, which grew and blossomed under it,--for at year had passed
since the day when Toenne had lain aleep behind King Atle's pile,--
pushed up bold red clusters through the cracks, and ants without
number wandered out and in, inspecting the fragile work of man.

Wherever Jofrid went during those days, the thought never left her
that a house was being built for her there. A home was being
prepared for her upon the heath. And she knew that if she did not
enter there as mistress, the bear and the fox would make it their
home. For she knew Toenne well enough to understand that if he found
he had worked in vain, he would never move into the new house. He
would weep, poor man, when he heard that she would not live there.
It would be a new sorrow for him, as deep as when his mother died.
But he had himself to blame, because he had not asked her in time.

She thought that she gave him a sufficient hint in not helping him
with the house. She often felt impelled to do so. Every time she
saw any soft, white moss, she wanted to pick it to fill in the
leaky walls. She longed, too, to help Toenne to build the chimney.
As he was making it, all the smoke would gather in the house. But
it did not matter how it was. No food would ever be cooked there,
no ale brewed. Still it was odious that the house would never leave
her thoughts.

Toenne worked, glowing with eagerness, certain that Jofrid would
understand his meaning, if only the house were ready. He did not
wonder much about her; he had enough to do to hew and shape. The
days went quickly for him.

One afternoon, when Jofrid came over the moor, she saw that there
was a door in the cottage and a slab of stone for a threshold. Then
she understood that everything must now be ready, and she was much
agitated. Toenne had covered the roof with tufts of flowering
heather, and she was seized by an intense longing to enter under
that red roof. He was not at the new house and she decided to go
in. The house was built for her. It was her home. It was not
possible to resist the desire to see it.

Within it was more attractive than she had expected. Rushes were
strewed over the floor. It was full of the fresh fragrance of pine
and resin. The sunshine that played through the windows and cracks
made bands of light through the air. It looked as if she had been
expected; in the crannies of the wall green branches were stuck,
and in the fireplace stood a newly cut fir-tree. Toenne had not
moved in his old furniture. There was nothing but a new table and a
bench, over which an elk skin was thrown.

As soon as Jofrid had crossed the threshold, she felt the pleasant
cosiness of home surrounding her. She was happy and content while
she stood there, but to leave it seemed to her as hard as to go
away and serve strangers. It happened that Jofrid had expended much
hard work in procuring a kind of dower for herself. With skilful
hands she had woven bright colored fabrics, such as are used to
adorn a room, and she wanted to put them up in her own home, when
she got one. Now she wondered how those cloths would look here. She
wished she could try them in the new house.

She hurried quickly home, fetched her roll of weavings and began to
fasten the bright-colored pieces of cloth up under the roof. She
threw open the door to let the big setting sun shine on her and her
work. She moved eagerly about the cottage, brisk, gay, bumming a
merry tune. She was perfectly happy. It looked so fine. The woven
roses and stars shone as never before.

While she worked she kept a good look-out over the moor and the
graves, for it seemed to her as if Toenne might now too be lying
hidden behind one of the cairns and laughing at her. The king's
grave lay opposite the door and behind it she saw the sun setting.
Time after time she looked out. She felt as if some one was sitting
there and watching her.

Just as the sun was so low that only a few blood-red beams filtered
over the old stone heap, she saw who it was who was watching her.
The whole pile of stones was no longer stones, but a mighty, old
warrior, who was sitting there, scarred and gray, and staring at
her. Round about his head the rays of the sun made a crown, and his
red mantle was so wide that it spread over the whole moor. His head
was big and heavy, his face gray as stone. His clothes and weapons
were also stone-colored, and repeated so exactly the shadings and
mossiness of the rock, that one had to look closely to see that it
was a warrior and not a pile of stones. It was like those insects
which resemble tree-twigs. One can go by them twenty times before
one sees that it is a soft animal body one has taken for hard wood.

But Jofrid could no longer be mistaken. It was the old King Atle
himself sitting there. She stood in the doorway, shaded her eyes
with her hand, and looked right into his stony face. He had very
small, oblique eyes under a dome-like brow, a broad nose and a long
beard. And he was alive, that man of stone. He smiled and winked at
her. She was afraid, and what terrified her most of all were his
thick, muscular arms and hairy hands. The longer she looked at him
the broader grew his smile, and at last he lifted one of his mighty
arms to beckon her to him. Then Jofrid took flight towards home.

But when Toenne came home and saw the housc adorned with starry
weavings, he found courage to send a friend to Jofrid's father. The
latter asked Jofrid what she thought about it and she gave her
consent. She was well pleased with the way it had turned out, even
if she had been half forced to give her hand. She could not say no
to the man, to whose house she had already carried her dower. Still
she looked first to see that old King Atle had again become a pile
of stones.

***

Toenne and Jofrid lived happily for many years. They earned a good
reputation. "They are good," people said. "See how they stand by
one another, see how they work together, see how one cannot live
apart from the other!"

Toenne grew stronger, more enduring and less heavy-witted every day.
Jofrid seemed to have made a whole man of him. Almost always he let
her rule, but he also understood how to carry out his own will with
tenacious obstinacy.

Jests and merriment followed Jofrid wherever she went. Her clothes
became more vivid the older she grew. Her whole face was bright
red. But in Toenne's eyes she was beautiful.

They were not so poor as many others of their class. They ate
butter with their porridge and mixed neither bran nor bark in their
bread. Myrtle ale foamed in their tankards. Their flocks of sheep
and goats increased so quickly that they could allow themselves
meat.

Toenne once worked for a peasant in the valley. The latter, who saw
how he and his wife worked together with great gaiety, thought like
many another: "See, these are good people."

The peasant had lately lost his wife, and she had left behind her a
child six months old. He asked Toenne and Jofrid to take his son as
a foster-child.

"The child is very dear to me," he said, "therefore I give it to
you, for you are good people."

They had no children of their own, so that it seemed very fitting
for them to take it. They accepted it too without hesitation. They
thought it would be to their advantage to bring up a peasant's
child, besides which they expected to be cheered in their old age
by their foster-son.

But the child did not live to grow up with them. Before the year
was out it was dead. It was said by many that it was the fault of
the foster-parents, for the child had been unusually strong before
it came to them. By that no one meant, however, that they had
killed it intentionally, but rather that they had undertaken
something beyond their powers. They had not had sense or love
enough to give it the care it needed. They were accustomed only to
think of themselves and to look out for themselves. They had no
time to care for a child. They wished to go together to their work
every day and to sleep a quiet sleep at night. They thought that
the child drank too much of their good milk and did not allow him
as much as themselves. They had no idea that they were treating the
boy badly. They thought that they were just as tender to him as
parents generally are. It seemed more to them as if their
foster-son had been a punishment and a torment. They did not mourn
him when he died.

Women usually enjoy nothing better than to take care of a child;
but Jofrid had a husband, whom she often had to care for like a
mother, so that she desired no one else. They also love to see
their children's quick growth; but Jofrid had pleasure enough in
watching Toenne develop sense and manliness, in adorning and taking
care of her house, in the increase of their flocks, and in the
crops which they were raising below on the moor.

Jofrid went to the peasant's farm and told him that the child was
dead. Then the man said: "I am like the man who puts cushions in
his bed so soft that he sinks down to the hard bottom. I wished to
care too well for my son, and look, now he is dead!" And he was
heart-broken.

At his words Jofrid began to weep bitterly. "Would to God that you
had not left your son with us!" she said. "We were too poor. He
could not get what he needed with us."

"That is not what I meant," answered the peasant. "I believe that
you have over-indulged the child. But I will not accuse any one,
for over life and death God alone rules. Now I mean to celebrate
the funeral of my only son with the same expense as if he had been
full grown, and to the feast I invite both Toenne and you. By that
you may know that I bear you no grudge."

So Toenne and Jofrid went to the funeral banquet. They were well
treated, and no one said anything unfriendly to them. The women who
had dressed the child's body had related that it had been miserably
thin and had borne marks of great neglect. But that could easily
come from sickness. No one wished to believe anything bad about the
foster-parents, for it was known that they were good people.

Jofrid wept a great deal during those days, especially when she
heard the women tell how they had to wake and toil for their little
children. She noticed, too, that the women at the funeral were
continually talking of their children. Some rejoiced so in them
that they never could stop telling of their questions and games.
Jofrid would have liked to have talked about Toenne, but most of
them never spoke of their husbands.

Late one evening Jofrid and Toenne came home from the festivities.
They went straight to bed. But hardly had they fallen asleep before
they were waked by a feeble crying. "It is the child," they
thought, still half asleep, and were angry at being disturbed. But
suddenly both of them sat right up in the bed. The child was dead.
Where did that crying come from? When they were quite awake, they
heard nothing, but as soon as they began to drop off to sleep they
heard it. Little, tottering feet sounded on the stone threshold
outside the house, a little hand groped for the door, and when it
could not open it, the child crept crying and feeling along the
wall, until it stopped just outside where they were sleeping. As
soon as they spoke or sat up, they perceived nothing; but when they
tried to sleep, they distinctly heard the uncertain steps and the
suppressed sobbings.

That which they had not wished to believe, but which seemed a
possibility during these last days, now became a certainty. They
felt that they had killed the child. Why otherwise should it have
the power to haunt them?

From that night all happiness left them. They lived in constant
fear of the ghost. By day they had some peace, but at night they
were so disturbed by the child's weeping and choking sobs, that
they did not dare to sleep alone. Jofrid often went long distances
to get some one to stop over night in their house. If there was any
stranger there, it was quiet, but as soon as they were alone, they
heard the child.

One night, when they had found no one to keep them company and
could not sleep for the child, Jofrid got up from her bed.

"You sleep, Toenne," she said. "If I keep awake, we will not hear
anything."

She went out and sat down on the doorstep, thinking of what they
ought to do to get peace, for they could not go on living as things
were. She wondered if confession and penance and mortification and
repentance could relieve them from this heavy punishment.

Then it happened that she raised her eyes and saw the same vision
as once before from this place. The pile of stones had changed to a
warrior. The night was quite dark, but still she could plainly see
that old King Atle sat there and watched her. She saw him so well
that she could distinguish the moss-grown bracelets on his wrists
and could see how his legs were bound with crossed bands, between
which his calf muscles swelled.

This time she was not afraid of the old man. He seemed to be a
friend and consoler in her unhappiness. He looked at her with pity,
as if he wished to give her courage. Then she thought that the
mighty warrior had once had his day, when he had overthrown
hundreds of enemies there on the heath and waded through the
streams of blood that had poured between the clumps. What had he
thought of one dead man more or less? How much would the sight of
children, whose fathers he had killed, have moved his heart of
stone? Light as air would the burden of a child's death have rested
on his conscience.

And she heard his whisper, the same which the old stone-cold
heathenism had whispered through all time. "Why repent? The gods
rule us. The fates spin the threads of life. Why shall the children
of earth mourn because they have done what the immortal gods have
forced them to do?"

Then Jofrid took courage and said to herself: "How am I to blame
because the child died? It is God alone who decides. Nothing takes
place without his will." And she thought that she could lay the
ghost by putting all repentance from her.

But now the door opened and Toenne came out to her. "Jofrid," he
said, "it is in the house now. It came up and knocked on the edge
of the bed and woke me. What shall we do, Jofrid?"

"The child is dead," said Jofrid. "You know that it is lying deep
under ground. All this is only dreams and imagination." She spoke
hardly and coldly, for she feared that Toenne would do something
reckless, and thereby cause them misfortune.

"We must put an end to it," said Toenne.

Jofrid laughed dismally. "What do you wish to do? God has sent this
to us. Could He not have kept the child alive if He had chosen? He
did not wish it, and now He persecutes us for its death. Tell me by
what right He persecutes us?"

She got her words from the old stone warrior, who sat dark and high
on his pile. It seemed as if he suggested to her everything she
answered Toenne.

"We must acknowledge that we have neglected the child, and do
penance," said Toenne.

"Never will I suffer for what is not my fault," said Jofrid. "Who
wanted the child to die? Not I, not I. What kind of a penance will
you do? You need all your strength for work."

"I have already tried with scourging," said Toenne. "It is of no avail."

"You see," she said, and laughed again.

"We must try something else," Toenne went on with persistent
determination. "We must confess."

"What do you want to tell God, that He does not know?" mocked
Jofrid. "Does He not guide your thoughts, Toenne? What will you tell
Him?" She thought that Toenne was stupid and obstinate. She had
found him so in the beginning of their acquaintance, but since then
she had not thought of it, but had loved him for his good heart.

"We will confess to the father, Jofrid, and offer him compensation."

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