Book: Invisible Links

S >> Selma Lagerlof >> Invisible Links




"What will you offer him?" she asked.

"The house and the goats."

"He will certainly demand an enormous compensation for his only
son. All that we possess would not be enough."

"We will give ourselves as slaves into his power, if he is not
content with less."

At these words Jofrid was seized by cold despair, and she hated
Toenne from the depths of her soul. Everything she would lose
appeared so plainly to her,--freedom, for which her ancestors had
ventured their lives, the house, her comforts, honor and happiness.

"Mark my words, Toenne," she said hoarsely, half choked with pain,
"that the day you do that thing will be the day of my death."

After that no more words were exchanged between them, but they
remained sitting on the doorstep until the day came. Neither found
a word to appease or to conciliate; each felt fear and scorn of the
other. The one measured the other by the standard of his own anger,
and they found each other narrow-minded and bad-tempered.

After that night Jofrid could not refrain from letting Toenne feel
that he was her inferior. She let him understand in the presence of
others that he was stupid, and helped him with his work so that he
had to think how much stronger she was. She evidently wished to
take away from him all rights as master of the house. Sometimes she
pretended to be very lively, to distract him and to prevent him
from brooding. He had not done anything to carry out his plan, but
she did not believe that he had given it up.

During this time Toenne became more and more as he was before his
marriage. He grew thin and pale, silent and slow-witted. Jofrid's
despair increased each day, for it seemed as if everything was to
be taken from her. Her love for Toenne came back, however, when she
saw him unhappy. "What is any of it worth to me if Toenne is
ruined?" she thought. "It is better to go into slavery with him
than to see him die in freedom."

***

Jofrid, however, could not at once decide to obey Toenne. She fought
a long and severe fight. But one morning she awoke in an unusually
calm and gentle mood. Then she thought that she could now do what
he demanded. And she waked him, saying that it should be as he
wished. Only that one day he should grant her to say farewell to
everything.

The whole forenoon she went about strangely gentle. Tears rose
easily to her eyes. The heath was beautiful that day for her sake,
she thought. Frost had passed over it, the flowers were gone, and
the whole moor had turned brown. But when it was lighted by the
slanting rays of the autumn sun, it looked as if the heather glowed
red once more. And she remembered the day when she saw Toenne for
the first time.

She wished that she might see the old king once more, for he had
helped her to find her happiness. She had been seriously afraid of
him of late. She felt as if he were lying in wait to seize her. But
now she thought he could no longer have any power over her. She
would remember to look for him towards night when the moon rose.

It happened that a couple of wandering musicians came by about
noon. Jofrid had the idea to ask them to stop at her house the
whole afternoon, for she wished to have a dance. Toenne had to
hasten to her parents and ask them to come. And her small brothers
and sisters ran down to the village for the other guests. Soon many
people had collected.

There was great gaiety. Toenne kept apart in a corner of the house,
as was his habit when they had guests, but Jofrid was quite wild in
her fun. With shrill voice she led the dance and was eager in
offering her guests the foaming ale. There was not much room in the
cottage, but the fiddlers were untiring, and the dance went on with
life and spirit. It grew suffocatingly warm. The door was thrown
open, and all at once Jofrid saw that night had come and that the
moon had risen. Then she went to the door and looked out into the
white world of the moonlight.

A heavy dew had fallen. The whole heath was white, as the moon was
reflected in all the little drops, which had collected on every
twig. There Toenne and she would go to-morrow hand in hand to meet
the most terrible dishonor. For, however the meeting with the
peasant should turn out, whatever he might take or whatever he
might let them keep, dishonor would certainly be their lot. They,
who that evening possessed a good cottage and many friends,
to-morrow would be despised and detested by all, perhaps they would
also be robbed of everything they had earned, perhaps, too, be
dishonored slaves. She said to herself: "It is the way of death."
And now she could not understand how she would ever have the
strength to walk in it. It seemed to her as if she were of stone, a
heavy stone image like old King Atle. Although she was alive, she
felt as if she would not be able to lift her heavy stone limbs to
walk that way.

She turned her eyes towards the king's grave and distinctly saw the
old warrior sitting there. But now he was adorned as for a feast.
He no longer wore the gray, moss-grown stone attire, but white,
glittering silver. Now again he wore a crown of beams, as when she
first saw him, but this one was white. And white shone his
breastplate and armlets, shining white were sword, hilt, and
shield. He sat and watched her with silent indifference. The
unfathomable mystery which great stone faces wear had now sunk down
over him. There he sat dark and mighty, and Jofrid had a faint,
indistinct idea that he was an image of something which was in
herself and in all men, of something which was buried in far-away
centuries, covered by many stones, and still not dead. She saw him,
the old king, sitting deep in the human heart. Over its barren
field he spread his wide king's mantle. There pleasure danced,
there love of display flaunted. He was the great stone warrior who
saw famine and poverty pass by without his stone heart being moved.
"It is the will of the gods," he said. He was the strong man of
stone, who could bear unatoned-for sin without yielding. He always
said: "Why grieve for what you have done, compelled by the immortal
gods?"

Jofrid's breast was shaken by a sigh deep as a sob. She had a
feeling which she could not explain, a feeling that she ought to
struggle with the man of stone, if she was to be happy. But at the
same time she felt helplessly weak.

Her impenitence and the struggle out on the heath seemed to her to
be one and the same thing, and if she could not conquer the first
by some means or other, the last would gain power over her.

She looked back towards the cottage, where the weavings glowed
under the roof timbers, where the musicians spread merriment, and
where everything she loved was, then she felt that she could not go
into slavery. Not even for Toenne's sake could she do it. She saw
his pale face within in the house, and she asked herself with a
contraction of the heart if he was worth the sacrifice of
everything for his sake.

In the cottage the people had started a new dance. They arranged
themselves in a long line, took each other by the hand, and with a
wild, strong young man at the head, they rushed forward at dizzy
speed. The leader drew them through the open door out cm to the
moonlit heath. They stormed by Jofrid, panting and wild, stumbling
against stones, falling into the heather, making wide rings round
the house, circling about the heaps of stones. The last of the line
called to Jofrid and stretched out his hand to her. She seized it
and ran too.

It was not a dance, only a mad rush; but there was pleasure in it,
audacity and the joy of living. The rings became bolder, the cries
sounded louder, the laughter more boisterous. From cairn to cairn,
as they lay scattered over the heath, wound the line of dancers. If
any one fell in the wild swinging, he was dragged up, the slow ones
were driven onward; the musicians stood in the doorway and played
the faster. There was no time to rest, to think, nor to look about.
The dance went on at always madder speed over the yielding moss and
slippery rocks.

During all this Jofrid felt more and more clearly that she wished
to keep her freedom, that she would rather die than lose it. She
saw that she could not follow Toenne. She thought of running away,
of hurrying into the wood and never coming back.

They had circled about all the cairns except that of King Atle.
Jofrid saw that they were now turning towards it and she kept her
eyes fixed on the stone man. Then she saw how his giant arms were
stretched towards the rushing dancers. She screamed aloud, but she
was answered by loud laughter. She wished to stop, but a strong
grasp drew her on. She saw him snatch at those hurrying by, but
they were so quick that the heavy arms could not reach any of them.
It was incomprehensible to her that no one saw him. The agony of
death came over her. She thought that he would reach her. It was
for her that he had lain in wait for many years. With the others it
was only play. It was she whom he would seize at last.

Her turn came to rush by King Atle. She saw how he raised himself
and bent for a spring to be sure of the matter and catch her. In
her extreme need she felt that if she only could decide to give in
the next day, he would not have the power to catch her, but she
could not.--She came last, and she was swung so violently that she
was more dragged and jerked forward than running herself, and it
was hard for her to keep from falling. And although she passed at
lightning speed, the old warrior was too quick for her. The heavy
arms sank down over her, the stone hands seized her, she was drawn
into the silvery harness of that breast. The agony of death took
more and more hold of her, but she knew to the very last that it
was because she had not been able to conquer the stone king in her
own heart that Atle had power over her.

It was the end of the dancing and merriment. Jofrid lay dying. In
the violence of their mad rout, she had been thrown against the
king's cairn and received her death-blow on its stones.



THE OUTLAWS

A peasant who had murdered a monk took to the woods and was made an
outlaw. He found there before him in the wilderness another outlaw,
a fisherman from the outermost islands, who had been accused of
stealing a herring net. They joined together, lived in a cave, set
snares, sharpened darts, baked bread on a granite rock and guarded
one another's lives. The peasant never left the woods, but the
fisherman, who had not committed such an abominable crime,
sometimes loaded game on his shoulders and stole down among men.
There he got in exchange for black-cocks, for long-eared hares and
fine-limbed red deer, milk and butter, arrow-heads and clothes.
These helped the outlaws to sustain life.


The cave where they lived was dug in the side of a hill. Broad
stones and thorny sloe-bushes hid the entrance. Above it stood a
thick growing pine-tree. At its roots was the vent-hole of the
cave. The rising smoke filtered through the tree's thick branches
and vanished into space. The men used to go to and from their
dwelling-place, wading in the mountain stream, which ran down the
hill. No-one looked for their tracks under the merry, bubbling
water.


At first they were hunted like wild beasts. The peasants gathered
as if for a chase of bear or wolf. The wood was surrounded by men
with bows and arrows. Men with spears went through it and left no
dark crevice, no bushy thicket unexplored. While the noisy battue
hunted through the wood, the outlaws lay in their dark hole,
listening breathlessly, panting with terror. The fisherman held out
a whole day, but he who had murdered was driven by unbearable fear
out into the open, where he could see his enemy. He was seen and
hunted, but it seemed to him seven times better than to lie still
in helpless inactivity. He fled from his pursuers, slid down
precipices, sprang over streams, climbed up perpendicular mountain
walls. All latent strength and dexterity in him was called forth by
the excitement of danger. His body became elastic like a steel
spring, his foot made no false step, his hand never lost its hold,
eye and ear were twice as sharp as usual. He understood what the
leaves whispered and the rocks warned. When he had climbed up a
precipice, he turned towards his pursuers, sending them gibes in
biting rhyme. When the whistling darts whizzed by him, he caught
them, swift as lightning, and hurled them down on his enemies. As
he forced his way through whipping branches, something within him
sang a song of triumph.

The bald mountain ridge ran through the wood and alone on its
summit stood a lofty fir. The red-brown trunk was bare, but in the
branching top rocked an eagle's nest. The fugitive was now so
audaciously bold that he climbed up there, while his pursuers
looked for him on the wooded slopes. There he sat twisting the
young eaglets' necks, while the hunt passed by far below him. The
male and female eagle, longing for revenge, swooped down on the
ravisher. They fluttered before his face, they struck with their
beaks at his eyes, they beat him with their wings and tore with
their claws bleeding weals in his weather beaten skin. Laughing, he
fought with them. Standing upright in the shaking nest, he cut at
them with his sharp knife and forgot in the pleasure of the play
his danger and his pursuers. When he found time to look for them,
they had gone by to some other part of the forest. No one had
thought to look for their prey on the bald mountain-ridge. No one
had raised his eyes to the clouds to see him practising boyish
tricks and sleep-walking feats while his life was in the greatest
danger.

The man trembled when he found that he was paved. With shaking
hands he caught at a support, giddy he measured the height to which
he had climbed. And moaning with the fear of falling, afraid of the
birds, afraid of being seen, afraid of everything, he slid down the
trunk. He laid himself down on the ground, so as not to be seen,
and dragged himself forward over the rocks until the underbrush
covered him. There he hid himself under the young pine-tree's
tangled branches. Weak and powerless, he sank down on the moss. A
single man could have captured him.

***

Tord was the fisherman's name. He was not more than sixteen years
old, but strong and bold. He had already lived a year in the woods.

The peasant's name was Berg, with the surname Rese. He was the
tallest and the strongest man in the whole district, and moreover
handsome and well-built. He was broad in the shoulders and slender
in the waist. His hands were as well shaped as if he had never done
any hard work. His hair was brown and his skin fair. After he had
been some time in the woods he acquired in all ways a more
formidable appearance. His eyes became piercing, his eyebrows grew
bushy, and the muscles which knitted them lay finger thick above
his nose. It showed now more plainly than before how the upper part
of his athlete's brow projected over the lower. His lips closed
more firmly than of old, his whole face was thinner, the hollows at
the temples grew very deep, and his powerful jaw was much more
prominent. His body was less well filled out but his muscles were
as hard as steel. His hair grew suddenly gray.

Young Tord could never weary of looking at this man. He had never
before seen anything so beautiful and powerful. In his imagination
he stood high as the forest, strong as the sea. He served him as a
master and worshipped him as a god. It was a matter of course that
Tord should carry the hunting spears, drag home the game, fetch the
water and build the fire. Berg Rese accepted all his services, but
almost never gave him a friendly word. He despised him because he
was a thief.

The outlaws did not lead a robber's or brigand's life; they supported
themselves by hunting and fishing. If Berg Rese had not murdered a
holy man, the peasants would soon have ceased to pursue him and
have left him in peace in the mountains. But they feared great
disaster to the district, because he who had raised his hand
against the servant of God was still unpunished. When Tord came
down to the valley with game, they offered him riches and pardon
for his own crime if he would show them the way to Berg Rese's
hole, so that they might take him while he slept. But the boy
always refused; and if any one tried to sneak after him up to the
wood, he led him so cleverly astray that he gave up the pursuit.

Once Berg asked him if the peasants had not tried to tempt him
to betray him, and when he heard what they had offered him as a
reward, he said scornfully that Tord had been foolish not to accept
such a proposal.

Then Tord looked at him with a glance, the like of which Berg Rese
had never before seen. Never had any beautiful woman in his youth,
never had his wife or child looked so at him. "You are my lord, my
elected master," said the glance. "Know that you may strike me and
abuse me as you will, I am faithful notwithstanding."

After that Berg Rese paid more attention to the boy and noticed
that he was bold to act but timid to speak. He had no fear of
death. When the ponds were first frozen, or when the bogs were most
dangerous in the spring, when the quagmires were hidden under
richly flowering grasses and cloudberry, he took his way over them
by choice. He seemed to feel the need of exposing himself to
danger as a compensation for the storms and terrors of the ocean,
which he had no longer to meet. At night he was afraid in the
woods, and even in the middle of the day the darkest thickets or
the wide-stretching roots of a fallen pine could frighten him. But
when Berg Rese asked him about it, he was too shy to even answer.

Tord did not sleep near the fire, far in in the cave, on the bed
which was made soft with moss and warm with skins, but every night,
when Berg had fallen asleep, he crept out to the entrance and lay
there on a rock. Berg discovered this, and although he well
understood the reason, he asked what it meant. Tord would not
explain. To escape any more questions, he did not lie at the door
for two nights, but then he returned to his post.

One night, when the drifting snow whirled about the forest tops and
drove into the thickest underbrush, the driving snowflakes found
their way into the outlaws' cave. Tord, who lay just inside the
entrance, was, when he waked in the morning, covered by a melting
snowdrift. A few days later he fell ill. His lungs wheezed, and
when they were expanded to take in air, he felt excruciating pain.
He kept up as long as his strength held out, but when one evening
he leaned down to blow the fire, he fell over and remained lying.

Berg Rese came to him and told him to go to his bed. Tord moaned
with pain and could not raise himself. Berg then thrust his arms
under him and carried him there. But he felt as if he had got hold
of a slimy snake; he had a taste in the mouth as if he had eaten
the unholy horseflesh, it was so odious to him to touch the
miserable thief.

He laid his own big bearskin over him and gave him water, more he
could not do. Nor was it anything dangerous. Tord was soon well
again. But through Berg's being obliged to do his tasks and to be
his servant, they had come nearer to one another. Tord dared to
talk to him when he sat in the cave in the evening and cut arrow
shafts.

"You are of a good race, Berg," said Tord. "Your kinsmen are the
richest in the valley. Your ancestors have served with kings and
fought in their castles."

"They have oftener fought with bands of rebels and done the kings
great injury," replied Berg Rese.

"Your ancestors gave great feasts at Christmas, and so did you,
when you were at home. Hundreds of men and women could find a place
to sit in your big house, which was already built before Saint Olof
first gave the baptism here in Viken. You owned old silver vessels
and great drinking-horns, which passed from man to man, filled with
mead."

Again Berg Rese had to look at the boy. He sat up with his legs
hanging out of the bed and his head resting on his hands, with
which he at the same time held back the wild masses of hair which
would fall over his eyes. His face had become pale and delicate
from the ravages of sickness. In his eyes fever still burned. He
smiled at the pictures he conjured up: at the adorned house, at the
silver vessels, at the guests in gala array and at Berg Rese,
sitting in the seat of honor in the hall of his ancestors. The
peasant thought that no one had ever looked at him with such
shining, admiring eyes, or thought him so magnificent, arrayed in
his festival clothes, as that boy thought him in the torn skin
dress.

He was both touched and provoked. That miserable thief had no right
to admire him.

"Were there no feasts in your house?" he asked.

Tord laughed. "Out there on the rocks with father and mother!
Father is a wrecker and mother is a witch. No one will come to us."

"Is your mother a witch?"

"She is," answered Tord, quite untroubled. "In stormy weather she
rides out on a seal to meet the ships over which the waves are
washing, and those who are carried overboard are hers."

"What does she do with them?" asked Berg.

"Oh, a witch always needs corpses. She makes ointments out of them,
or perhaps she eats them. On moonlight nights she sits in the surf,
where it is whitest, and the spray dashes over her. They say that
she sits and searches for shipwrecked children's fingers and eyes."

"That is awful," said Berg.

The boy answered with infinite assurance: "That would be awful in
others, but not in witches. They have to do so."

Berg Rese found that he had here come upon a new way of regarding
the world and things.

"Do thieves have to steal, as witches have to use witchcraft?" he
asked sharply.

"Yes, of course," answered the boy; "every one has to do what he is
destined to do." But then he added, with a cautious smile: "There
are thieves also who have never stolen."

"Say out what you mean," said Berg.

The boy continued with his mysterious smile, proud at being an
unsolvable riddle: "It is like speaking of birds who do not fly, to
talk of thieves who do not steal."

Berg Rese pretended to be stupid in order to find out what he
wanted. "No one can be called a thief without having stolen," he
said.

"No; but," said the boy, and pressed his lips together as if to
keep in the words, "but if some one had a father who stole," he
hinted after a while.

"One inherits money and lands," replied Berg Rese, "but no one
bears the name of thief if he has not himself earned it."

Tord laughed quietly. "But if somebody has a mother who begs and
prays him to take his father's crime on him. But if such a one
cheats the hangman and escapes to the woods. But if some one is
made an outlaw for a fish-net which he has never seen."

Berg Rese struck the stone table with his clenched fist. He was
angry. This fair young man had thrown away his whole life. He could
never win love, nor riches, nor esteem after that. The wretched
striving for food and clothes was all which was left him. And the
fool had let him, Berg Rese, go on despising one who was innocent.
He rebuked him with stern words, but Tord was not even as afraid as
a sick child is of its mother, when she chides it because it has
caught cold by wading in the spring brooks.

***


On one of the broad, wooded mountains lay a dark tarn. It was
square, with as straight shores and as sharp corners as if it had
been cut by the hand of man. On three sides it was surrounded by
steep cliffs, on which pines clung with roots as thick as a man's
arm. Down by the pool, where the earth had been gradually washed
away, their roots stood up out of the water, bare and crooked and
wonderfully twisted about one another. It was like an infinite
number of serpents which had wanted all at the same time to crawl
up out of the pool but had got entangled in one another and been
held fast. Or it was like a mass of blackened skeletons of drowned
giants which the pool wanted to throw up on the land. Arms and legs
writhed about one another, the long fingers dug deep into the very
cliff to get a hold, the mighty ribs formed arches, which held up
primeval trees. It had happened, however, that the iron arms, the
steel-like fingers with which the pines held themselves fast, had
given way, and a pine had been borne by a mighty north wind from
the top of the cliff down into the pool. It had burrowed deep down
into the muddy bottom with its top and now stood there. The smaller
fish had a good place of refuge among its branches, but the roots
stuck up above the water like a many-armed monster and contributed
to make the pool awful and terrifying.


On the tarn's fourth side the cliff sank down. There a little
foaming stream carried away its waters. Before this stream could
find the only possible way, it had tried to get out between stones
and tufts, and had by so doing made a little world of islands, some
no bigger than a little hillock, others covered with trees.


Here where the encircling cliffs did not shut out all the sun,
leafy trees flourished. Here stood thirsty, gray-green alders and
smooth-leaved willows. The birch-tree grew there as it does
everywhere where it is trying to crowd out the pine woods, and the
wild cherry and the mountain ash, those two which edge the forest
pastures, filling them with fragrance and adorning them with
beauty. Here at the outlet there was a forest of reeds as high as a
man, which made the sunlight fall green on the water just as it
falls on the moss in the real forest. Among the reeds there were
open places; small, round pools, and water-lilies were floating
there. The tall stalks looked down with mild seriousness on those
sensitive beauties, who discontentedly shut their white petals and
yellow stamens in a hard, leather-like sheath as soon as the sun
ceased to show itself.

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