Preparations
Those who heard, in this way or that, of the regrettable event which took place some weeks later in the vicarage of Algeröd were inclined to throw all the blame on Lotta Hedman.
“If the young mistress there hadn’t had that half-mad creature about the place, turning her head completely with her visions and warnings, it would never have happened,” they said.
But this was not fair to Lotta Hedman. Never in all her life had she been so quiet and sensible as during that time. Her friends in the other world left her in ignorance, and she had not the slightest inkling of what was to happen.
It is easy to understand that she must have been terribly anxious the first night, sitting watching by Sigrun’s bedside. “How is this to end?” she asked herself again and again. “How are these two ever to begin life again together? Sigrun is altogether terrified, and he must have lost his senses altogether, and behaved like a wild beast.
“Anyhow,” she thought, trying to comfort herself, “it can only have been his jealousy. And though Sigrun is just as much afraid of him as ever, it is easy to see she is still fond of him. If only love is there, then, surely, it will bring them together again.”
About one o’clock that night, Sigrun opened her eyes and sat up in bed, looking round her in bewilderment. She seemed a little confused at first, but soon came to herself, and said to Lotta in a perfectly calm voice:
“Go and lie down now, Lotta. But do not put out the lamp, and do not undress. You must be ready to help me.”
Then she sank back on the pillows and went to sleep again. “She is still frightened,” thought Lotta, “but she is in her senses again now. Thank Heaven for that. To-morrow she will be well again.”
She did as Sigrun had said—lay down on a small folding sofa and slept till seven o’clock, when she rose and was going out to look to the fowls. But just as she reached the door, Sigrun called her back.
Sigrun was crying and trembling at the thought of being left alone. She was terribly nervous again now, and when Lotta told her that her husband was hurt and unable to move, she did not seem to understand.
Lotta had to content herself with standing at the window looking out into the grey autumn dark, until the milkmaid came across. She called her in, told her that her mistress was very ill and could not be left alone, and asked her to attend to her work for the morning.
The milkmaid, too, had something to tell. The Bailie had not come back at all. He had taken refuge with the verger, who lived not far from the vicarage. He had stayed the night there, and next morning a boy from the house came over to fetch his belongings.
No one regretted his going; it was a relief to have him out of the way. The Pastor himself was in a bad way. He thought his leg was broken; a doctor had been telephoned for, and had promised to come over during the day.
“That’s what comes of getting mad beyond reason,” said the dairymaid. “We all knew that the Bailie was taken with Mistress, but none but a fool would ever believe she could care for a broken-down old creature like him.”
Lotta Hedman, for her part, was not altogether sorry about the Pastor’s accident. It would force him to keep to his bed, and Sigrun would have time to get over her fright. Lotta was almost inclined to regard it as a special intervention of Providence.
“Thank Heaven,” she sighed. “It will be all right now. And perhaps when it’s all over they may be happier than before.”
A little later in the day, the boy from the verger’s came over stealthily with a letter, but Lotta sent it back unopened.
Otherwise, the day passed quietly. Sigrun did not get up, but slept for hours together. And she was not the only one. The whole of the household seemed to have fallen into the same slumber as its mistress.
“It’s all so quiet about the house to-day, it’s almost uncanny,” said the cook and the housemaid, when they came out to the brewhouse to ask how Mistress was getting on. “Like as if someone was on a death-bed.”
The Pastor sent for Lotta, to ask after his wife. And Lotta went in and told him, with perfect truth, that Sigrun was asleep, had no fever, and that the slight cut on her forehead was nothing to speak of.
But when he suggested that Sigrun should be moved back into the house, Lotta firmly refused. Much better leave her where she was. She was all of a tremble still, and nervous.
“Afraid of me, I suppose,” said her husband.
His face was marked with suffering. It was not only the broken leg that caused him pain.
“She will come back of her own accord, once she is strong again,” said Lotta hastily.
The sick man sighed. “She will never come back to me,” he said. “Never to me. She will never have the courage to come back.”
Lotta Hedman had not thought she could ever feel any pity for the man who had destroyed her beautiful dreams as a girl. But now she tried, at any rate, to comfort him.
“Oh, surely, happiness will come to the house again,” she said.
And she had really no thought of separating man and wife. She did, indeed, all that lay in her power to reconcile and reunite them.
When the doctor came, late in the afternoon, he said much the same about Sigrun as Lotta had done: she was not suffering from any actual disease, but would get well if only she were left in peace. Her nerves had been upset, and a sort of crisis had occurred.
They would have to be careful with her. She must not be contradicted, nor allowed to exert herself. She must not be persuaded to do anything but what she wished.
“I can’t quite make out this case,” said the doctor. “Possibly, it may be something quite different. Fru Rhånge might, for instance, have contracted some sort of infection, and have the germ of some disease in her now, to break out suddenly and seriously later on. But I cannot say for certain just at present.”
These words of the doctor’s were of great service to Lotta afterward; several of those at the vicarage had been present at the time, and heard what he said. And she herself was surprised when she thought of it, and believed he must have been directed from above to speak as he did.
A whole week passed without any change. Every day a messenger came stealing over from the verger’s and was sent back without having gained his end. Each day Lotta was sent for by the vicar to report. And each day Sigrun lay dozing from morning till evening.
Afterward, when Lotta thought of this continuous sleep, she told herself that there must have been something within that knew what was to come. “It was not because she was tired and worn out that Sigrun slept so; no, she was just gathering strength for what she had to do.”
Even when she was awake, Sigrun lay quiet and still.
She would draw her eyebrows together, and nod her head now and again, as if agreeing to something she herself proposed. Lotta was convinced that she lay there making plans for the future, but as yet she had no knowledge of them.
One day Sigrun asked her to go across to the house and fetch some money—six hundred kronor—from a drawer in her bureau. “It is all my own,” she said. “I have saved up all the money father and mother gave me on my birthdays. You can understand I am anxious about it now, with no one about in the house all day.”
Then one day Sigrun wanted something to read, and Lotta brought her a newspaper. She lay for a long time reading the advertisements of steamer routes and railway connections. Then she laid the paper aside. Lotta paid no heed to that at the time, but afterward she remembered.
In the course of that one quiet week, the winter had come in earnest. It was not particularly cold, but a good deal of snow had fallen, and the ground was white all round. The snow was deep enough, indeed, for sledges.
This whiteness outside her window reminded Sigrun of her home and the long winters there—and the thought seemed to cheer her. On the day when the first snow came, she got up and dressed.
“That’s right, my angel,” said Lotta Hedman. “You’ll get strong all the sooner, if you sit up a little. I’m sure now we shall have you well by Christmas.”
Sigrun stopped suddenly in her dressing.
“Will it be Christmas soon?” she asked. “I had forgotten all about Christmas.” She was plainly distressed at being reminded of the coming feast. The impossibility of spending Christmas anywhere but in her home seemed to strike her. “If anything’s to be done, it must be done before then,” she murmured. “I must have it all over before Christmas.”
Lotta Hedman heard what she said, but thought it referred to some ordinary preparations for Christmas which must be completed in time.
One evening, Lotta Hedman told Sigrun about the man she had met in the train. She described his appearance, his gentle, pleasant voice, his humility. “He was so kind to me,” she said. “But just as one of my visions was coming, he ran away.”
“What sort of a vision?” asked Sigrun.
“Something from the far north,” said Lotta. “I saw a field of ice, and a black tent, and a long sledge.”
Sigrun lay without speaking, searching her memory.
“Lotta,” she said, after a while, “this is a strange thing. It must be Sven Elversson, and no other, that you met. He is just as you said to look at, and it would be just like him to run away as soon as you began to see visions that would remind him of ice-fields and the Arctic.”
“Who is Sven Elversson?” asked Lotta.
Sigrun roused herself a little from her dreamy state and told Lotta something of Sven Elversson’s story.
“I wish I knew where he is now,” she said at last. “He was a very good man, and very unhappy. I believe he felt himself so despised, so trodden underfoot, that he looked on it as his business to attend to things which others counted themselves too good for. Once he let himself be shut up in a cell with a murderer, to get him to confess. He married a woman from a children’s school, one of the ugliest creatures I have ever seen. That was out of sheer humility, too, I suppose. When we lived at Applum, everybody spoke of him. But he moved away from there before we did.”
Lotta Hedman remembered her travelling companion’s gentle voice and the feeling of confidence with which he had inspired her.
“Be sure God has some purpose in view with that man,” she said. “If only I had known of this when I met him.”
“I wish I knew where he is to be found,” said Sigrun. “All who are miserable and in trouble turn to him. There has been so little news of him since he left Applum. He must have hidden himself away in some place where no one knows his story.”
That evening, when they spoke of Sven Elversson, Sigrun was up and dressed again. She had even been through into the next room. Lotta had moved out chairs and a table, and the great cauldron was hidden by the pink curtains. The housemaid had laid a tray with tea for Sigrun and Lotta, and they were comfortable as could be.
But when the maid asked if Mistress was not well enough now to move over into the house again, Sigrun answered quickly:
“I don’t know what is the matter with me, Malin. But I think I am going to be really ill. I’ve a pain in my head and throat this evening. And I’m red all over my body. It must be something breaking out.”
“Now, what does she mean by saying that?” thought Lotta. “She’s perfectly well. And not a bit of red all over or breaking out.”
She came to the conclusion that her friend was trying to make it appear impossible that she should spend Christmas in her own home. “What will come of it all?” thought Lotta anxiously. “Will she never get over this fear of her husband? Oh, but it was always like that with her. Once she is frightened of anyone, it is hopeless to try and calm her.
“And to think that she, who always wanted to be a nurse, doesn’t go in now and look after him herself. She doesn’t even ask how he is. It’s a bad sign, that.”
Lotta sat watching her friend. Sigrun looked weak and languid, as sick persons do after some days in bed.
“What unhappy fate is pursuing her?” thought Lotta. “Why should she, pure and innocent as she is, the finest, loveliest creature, sit here in a room little better than an outhouse?”
And indeed the contrast was striking enough—the delicate beauty of the young mistress and the bare wooden walls of the brewhouse, the rough plank floor and smoky ceiling.
“It’s a sad pity about them both,” thought Lotta. “It must be miserable for him, too, lying on a bed of pain and longing for her.”
There was sadness in the air. After a while, Lotta saw how her friend covered her face with her hands and sat rocking to and fro.
“Oh, I wish I were dead!” she moaned. “It would be best. If only I could die.”
“It is too dull and melancholy for you, Sigrun, to go on staying here,” said Lotta. “I think you had better move over to the house to-morrow.”
Sigrun started up; her face turned greyish pale.
“What do you mean?—what’s that you say? Has he been bribing you?”
“Sigrun—you must be mad. How could you think of such a thing?”
“Mad—yes, Lotta. I am mad, maddened with fear. Oh, you don’t know what I have suffered.”
And she began to tell. Not much, but just enough to make Lotta understand. “And how can I go back to it all?” she said.
“But, Sigrun, it only shows how fond of you he is.”
“I do not care for him,” said Sigrun. “I have never, never been unfaithful to him, Lotta, mark my words; never in so much as a single thought. But he has never trusted me, and that hurts me. It hurts me more than anything else.”
Lotta Hedman said something about jealousy being something that belonged to youth. It disappeared naturally as one grew older.
“No,” said Sigrun. “Not with him. It is hereditary; all his family have been the same. He has promised me again and again to give it up. But what difference has it made? We moved up here into this wilderness, that he might be in peace. And you can see what we have gained by that.
“You think, perhaps, I have no pity for him? No one knows better than I do how he suffers. And he is going downhill, Lotta; his sermons are poor, and he is losing all interest. It is dreadful for him.
“But it is dreadful for me, too. I have been terrified. He has frightened me now so many times that I have no courage left. You would have to put me in chains to drag me in there now. But you can’t understand.”
“But—if you can’t go back to him,” said Lotta, “what are you going to do?”
The young mistress rose to her feet.
“Let us go to bed, Lotta,” she said, with a bitter little laugh. “It is past ten o’clock, and you must be up early to-morrow to your work.”