Book II Lotta Hedman
One day toward the end of September 1915 a train came down from Norrland to the south. In a third-class compartment sat a young woman, very simply and decently dressed in black, with a black hat almost devoid of trimmings. She was talking to her fellow travellers. She was not afraid of raising her voice at times, and the voice in itself being somewhat shrill, she could be heard by all those near. It was soon evident that this was the first time she had travelled on the railway. And the strangeness of it all, coming out into the world and meeting strange, kindly people, seemed to have lifted her to a sort of ecstasy. All that she had been unable to find outlet for during years of life in a confined situation broke out now. She talked unceasingly, and always of herself. She was loth to lose an opportunity of letting people know who she was, and what strange message she had to bring.
“And I’m just one that’s never studied at all, beyond the Bible,” said she. “My head’s not heavy with knowledge. Not all confused with doctrines of error. I am as an unwritten page; as the white scroll on which God Himself writes His own thoughts. And I was born far away in Lapland, and live in a little settlement, and every day I go to work at a box factory, and I’m all alone and poor, and neither husband nor child. And nobody asks whether I live or die, and nobody comes to see after me if I’m ill, and there’s no one there at home that I can talk to about what’s most of all to me. And I know well enough that people make fun of me behind my back, and I’m already getting shy of going about among people.”
A kindly old lady sitting opposite, who had entered into conversation with her at first, and got her to speak, now laid a hand on her knee, as if to calm her, but she went on, as if driven by an irresistible inner force.
“And all my days Death has been after me like a ravening wolf. His strivings after me have been manifold. He tried to compass me about while I was yet in my mother’s womb. He sent forth a madman to frighten my mother, and I was born into the world too early, and a weak and wretched thing at birth. And once he tried to drown me when I was bathing, and once, out in the forest, he let a tree fall on me, and once he sent a serpent to bite me in the foot when I was out picking berries, and once he threw me down from a scaffold on a building. And he’s plagued me with sickness beyond counting.”
It was not only her opposite neighbour that listened to her now. A peasant and his wife, sitting next to her, followed her words with the greatest attention. The tone and the choice of words reminded them of mission meetings, and they put on an almost pious expression.
“And in the days of my youth,” went on the girl—she could not have been more than twenty-six or twenty-seven at the most—“I stretched forth my arms to God, and asked Him why He suffered Death to persecute me with sickness and wounds, but now, these last few years, I have ceased to ask. I know now that the Evil One strove to strike me down because it was God’s purpose to speak through me; yes, out of my mouth God should set a barrier against the raging of the Enemy.”
She paused for breath, and looked round, but finding only kindly looks and attention among the rest, she went on again:
“And I have wondered in myself why I should live so far away in the north, and why I should always walk the same little streets and never see anything of the glories of the world. Why have I been granted so little understanding to make my way and manage for myself, and why have I so little pleasure on that which pleases others? Why does the foreman at the factory never say a kindly word to me, however hard I work? Why should it be so hard for me to get milk, and why should I live in a little room where no one else would be?
“But now I have ceased from wondering of these things, for now I know that it is God that has made all waste and miserable about me. And I may be glad that He has not sent me out into the forests, or into the mountains, or sent me to live in a Lapp tent, and wander about with reindeer in the wilderness. I must be thankful that He has suffered me to dwell in a place where others besides myself have their homes.”
It was not only the three sitting nearest who now gave heed to the young woman’s words. One or two of those farthest off stood up to listen. “What was it?” some asked. Or, “Who was it carrying on like that for all the carriage to hear? Some of those Salvation Army people?”
“For it is God’s will that my thoughts should be for Him alone,” went on the woman in black. “It is His will that I should think and consider much; that I should interpret Daniel and make clear Ezekiel, and draw forth wisdom from the Revelations. And in the evenings, when others are dancing and feasting, Lotta Hedman sits with her Bible, sits searching after knowledge of God, and things are clear to her which no other in the world can understand.”
A thrill of wonder went through all those who heard, and the speaker did not fail to notice it. The attention she had awakened egged her on; even if she had wished, she could not stop now till she had finished. Her long-closed lips moved now with or against her will.
“And in the winter nights, when the clock strikes twelve, and one and all Sweden has gone to rest, and the great white land lies stretched in the calm of sleep, I sit in a poor little room, a room so mean that no other would ever live there, and I see God’s finger pointing to words and figures in Holy Writ. And then it is revealed to me how it shall be with all the others, all those who lie sleeping through the winter night. A revelation to me, poor and despised as I am, yet given to no other, to none among the learned and the worldly-wise.”
Her voice rose yet shriller; the woman sitting opposite laid one hand again with a kindly touch on her knee. A conductor, making his round through the train, stopped to listen, wondering if one of the passengers had been suddenly seized with a fit of madness.
“And all that I have seen and learned, I have written down in plain words, and sealed and sent it to the King. To the great palace in Stockholm, a letter from the poor factory girl at Stenbroträsk, from one that the boys run after in the street, hunting and snarling like Lapp dogs after a wild she-wolf.
“And I have waited for many days for an answer from the King, but there has come no answer from the King. And I have written my letter all again, and sent it to the papers, and the papers would have nothing to do with my letter, but sent it back.
“And then I was greatly distressed, for my letter is more important than many things. For I know when the Great War is to end, and I know that after it shall come the great Destruction, when Nature shall lay waste the earth, but that after the Great Destruction shall come the bright Millennium. And I know that a third part of all mankind on earth shall perish in the Great War, and a third shall perish in the Great Destruction, but the last third shall be left alive in the Great Millennium, which is the Kingdom of the Lord on Earth.”
The words, flung out with violent force, pierced many of the listeners like cold steel, and they shivered with dread. A few years earlier, such a speech would have been received with derision, but this was the second year of the World War, when all hearts were filled to the utmost with horror and expectation. Even in Sweden, no one could feel safe from day to day, but wondered what the Russians were about up at Haparanda.
“These things and much more—all are in my letter to the King. And I wrote to him and told him how he should act so that he and all in Sweden should escape the coming time of wrath, and how they might come to share in the Millennium of God.
“But I have prayed to God for help, and asked Him how my letter could be made known to the world, since no one will help me. And God has given me His commands, and told me what remained for me to do. For there is a great sin to be atoned for before my letter can be sent abroad and made known to all men. And it is to atone for my sin that I am going south to-day.”
The excitement in the carriage was at its height. Here was one who claimed to know what all longed to know: when the war was to end. A voice from someone among those farthest off was heard asking her:
“When is the war to end?”
And many others took up the cry: “When is it to end? If you know, tell us, tell us now.”
It seemed as if the end of all those horrors and perils that weighed down mankind were suddenly brought within view. Perhaps before long there might yet come a time when the murdering out in the great world was at an end; when men could think once more of other matters than of war; could live without suffering day and night from the thought of old women mourning, terrified fugitives, prisoners dying slowly in their captivity.
Peasants thought of the days when they would no longer have to send their sons and hired men to guard the still precarious neutrality of their country; small tradesmen, who had done flourishing business at the beginning of the war, but were now threatened with dearth of all commodities; workmen, who saw themselves face to face with increased cost of living and scarcity of the bare necessaries of life—all asked with one voice: “When is it to end? When is all this misery to cease?”
But the prophetess from Stenbroträsk did not seem to have expected such an effect of her words.
“It is all in my letter,” she cried. “It shall be made known when I have atoned for my sin, and God lets my words be published abroad throughout the world.”
There was a perceptible loss of interest among the listeners; evidently this woman knew no more than anyone else. Most of those who had risen sat down again.
And the end of her speech, the few words she uttered afterward were scarcely heard by any save the kindly woman sitting opposite, who had first spoken to her.
“And I have no time to write except at night,” said the girl—“at night, when work is over, and then my fingers are stiff and unwilling, and I am not quick at writing properly. They talk differently in our parts. It makes me very tired, all the writing.
“And I live in poverty and wretchedness,” she went on. “Poor and ill and alone, and living in a place where no one else would ever live, and I tremble to think of all that must come.”
She had marked well enough that no one seemed to care any longer for her words. Her voice grew fainter, and there was a dreamy look in her eyes. At last she spoke only in a whisper, and lowered her glance. None but those nearest could hear what she said.
“But I pray to God to spare me, that I may live to be one among the purified host. I pray that I may be counted among that last third, and that I, who have been chosen to proclaim its coming when all despised me, may share in the Millennium of the Lord, and stand among the elect and see this earth resplendent in the glory of righteousness.”