The Long Day
The day that had begun with Sigrun’s flight from her home was, for many, a sad and weary day—a day so long that it seemed as if it would never reach an end.
So it was for Lotta Hedman. Coming back to the outhouse at three in the morning, she found all as she had left it, and began as well as she could to make preparations for what was to come. She gathered the dead woman’s clothes together, thrust them into the stove, with an armful of wood, and burned all to ashes. Then she washed out the stove and drew her curtains across, leaving all looking as it had done the evening before.
Trembling and terrified, she went into the adjoining room where the dead woman lay. She was not afraid of the dead, as a rule, but she felt it here. Sigrun and she had sorely wronged the dead, and she could not approach the bedside without a shudder. Nevertheless, she carried out her plan—took out a sheet and laid it over the body, hiding it completely, and with deep feeling read a prayer or two.
This gave her comfort. She felt now with certainty that the dead woman was no longer an enemy to herself and her mistress, but their faithful helper and ally, of whom she need have no fear.
Lotta endeavoured also to prepare herself for what she must say to those in the house. She called to mind that no one had seen Sigrun all the previous day; she could therefore say that her new illness had begun the night before that. Sigrun had not wished a doctor to be sent for on her account; she thought it was only a little rash breaking out, and nothing dangerous. Then... what was she to say next?
Lotta walked up and down the room, thinking it over. But after a while she felt too weary and discouraged to move about, and sat down in a chair instead. Soon this too seemed uncomfortable; she rose, and stood leaning against a wall. At last she sank to the floor, close by the bed where the dead woman lay, and stayed there so.
“I ought to go in to the Pastor,” she thought. “I ought to wake the servants.” But she did neither, only sat still, repeating her explanations to herself and turning them over every way.
“It will all be found out some way or other,” she told herself. “And we shall be miserable and shamed, both Sigrun and I. It is terrible to sit and wait like this.”
An unexpected comfort relieved her for a little while from her fears and anxiety.
As she sat there on the floor, bowed down by dread of what was to come, her soul took flight from her body, and, rising, hovered away into space between the worlds.
Soon it had risen so far that Lotta Hedman could see earthly things in their proportion; she saw now, not fragments of things, but things themselves in their whole extent. Not merely a stretch of river and stream, but the whole course of the waters from source to mouth. Not a little corner of the forest only, but the mighty expanse of trees in its whole extent. She could follow the line of a mountain chain from end to end. Plains spread out beneath her, and the contours of the land showed clearly marked against the glittering surface of the seas.
It was a beautiful and exalting sight, thought Lotta, but her soul did not stop to watch; it rose still higher.
And soon it had reached a point in space from where it could see the fates of mankind in their relation. Lotta could follow the wanderings of men through the valley of life. And it passed in what seemed to her less than seconds. She saw them enter life, go their brief way, and pass again, out into the unknown. She saw her friend Sigrun on her journey, and the way marked out for her, and the roads that crossed it.
She saw, too, the road which the woman lying dead beside her now had had to traverse. A dark and poor and difficult way, and already it was growing smoother, not smoothed, however, by a covering of darkness, but vanishing in a gleam of light.
At the end of the road stood the dead woman herself, still looking back over her course, that was now transformed into a ribbon of light, and Lotta saw that the woman’s spirit rejoiced.
The dead woman pointed to Sigrun’s road, and to one of those that crossed it.
“Look,” she said, “the thing I longed for most of all in life is now fulfilled by my death!”
And with these words, she vanished in a great splendour, so great that Lotta’s soul could not follow there, but must wait without.
And at once it returned to her body, and Lotta Hedman felt now relieved from all her fear a while, believing that what had happened was something that rightly should and must have happened so.
She retained this calm of mind until the door opened and someone asked her if she knew it was half-past seven already.
At this Lotta tried to rise, but now her confidence was gone. She thought of all the troubles that awaited her, and had not the strength to get on her feet, but remained sitting.
The door closed again, no one entered, and for a few minutes she was left in peace.
“It will all be found out very soon now,” thought Lotta. “It must be.”
And the shame that would come upon Sigrun and herself weighed her down.
A little later, the housemaid entered, with early breakfast for her mistress.
She saw the lamp still alight, the wick smoking and nearly spent, the room full of smoke and almost in darkness. She called out, but no one answered. Then she realized that something must be wrong. She set down the tray, struck a match, and discovered Lotta sitting in a heap beside the bed; she saw, too, that the figure lying on it had a sheet spread over, as over a corpse. She came closer, lifted the sheet a little, and saw a pair of swollen hands.
At this Lotta came to life.
“For Heaven’s sake, be careful. It is smallpox.”
The girl dropped the sheet and started back.
And she it was who spread the news, telling the Pastor and the rest of the household.
Lotta herself, protected as she was by the dread of infection, was scarcely questioned at all.
A messenger was sent to fetch the verger, a man of strength and authority, and he arranged everything as well as could be done.
He gave orders that Lotta Hedman should stay where she was on account of the infection, and no one was to go near her. Even if the Pastor himself were to send for her, she was not to go.
He and Lotta together laid the body in the coffin, which was afterward carried away to a hastily dug grave.
No investigation was made, hardly a question asked. The vicarage was for a time cut off from all the rest of the district. That the vicar’s wife should give out that she was dead while in fact still alive was a thing too unheard of for any to suspect.
“It is that knife-grinder that has been going about the district these last few weeks—he must have brought the infection over from Norway,” was the general view. “His wife was ill, too, and ran away from him in her delirium.”
The doctor’s words were also called to mind; the disease must have been there before any knew of it.
And the longest and most agonizing day Lotta Hedman had ever known came to an end without any discovery of what had been done.
Sigrun glanced now and again at the driver sitting on the edge of the sledge. It was still dark night, and she could only vaguely distinguish the outline of the figure—the broad-brimmed hat, the upraised shoulder, the short nose, and the sullen mouth.
“It is not a man sitting there,” she told herself, “but Death. I did not know him when he came first, but I know him now. And who else could it be? I have given myself up into his power. And he has come to fetch me and carry me away to his own land.”
They drove on over wide and desolate mountain tracts, covered with snow. A few scattered, stunted trees and bushes here and there rendered the barrenness of the country still more marked.
“It is the kingdom of Death,” she said to herself.
And she, who had a while ago been so eager, active, and commanding, felt herself now sinking into a quiet calm. The effort of will was at an end, hopes and desires were gone.
It is dangerous, perhaps, for a mortal to make an ally of Death. For Death may take it in earnest.
And Sigrun seemed really to feel a change taking place in herself. All the links that bound her to her former life were being loosened one by one.
Love of her husband, the sorrow and misery of her married life, had filled all her thoughts before. But now, all this faded and disappeared. A great void was where it had been, but no regrets, no bitterness.
“The dead must feel like this,” she thought. “Thus it must be to be freed from all earthly things. Love and sorrow disappear.”
Little foolish things she had said as a child, and had been ashamed of ever since, little offences that had troubled her long, little humiliations she had never forgotten—all these vanished now in a moment. Hereafter, she would think of these as things that no longer concerned her.
She thought of her parents, and the help they had always given her—now she would never have to trouble them again for aid. All was new about her now; she was in another world. “They cannot reach me here,” she thought. “They have stood by me up to now, as far as they could. Now I am gone from them for ever. I am driving into the kingdom of Death.”
She was like a climbing plant, fastened with many threads to a trellis. Now, one after another was loosed, and soon the whole growth would fall to the ground.
“It must be like this to die,” said Sigrun to herself. “It is not hard or painful at all, only a deep rest.”
Gradually it grew light. The man on the side of the sledge became once more an ordinary vagabond, with a sullen, unkindly face. The landscape was a stony, barren, poor, but altogether earthly tract, and Sigrun herself awoke to life with its insistent demands for courage and strength of mind....
The horse had had no rest all night, and they were going very slowly. They had to halt for some hours at a peasant’s hut to give the animal food and rest. At last, however, they came in sight of a village where there was an inn.
As they were thus approaching the end of their journey, the knife-grinder turned to Sigrun.
“A man like me,” he said, “going about the country all ways, sees many strange things in his time. But I will say, this business to-night’s the strangest I’ve ever had a hand in.”
“You think so?” Sigrun turned to the little dark man with a friendly smile.
“I’ll take my oath I’ve never seen nor heard the like. And I can’t for the life of me see what it was made me soft enough to help with it at all. I can’t make it out.”
“Neither can I,” said Sigrun. “But be sure you will never regret it.”
“Why, as to that, you never know,” said the man. “But, anyhow, I don’t like to let you go on now without knowing how you’re going to manage, and where you’re making for.”
“I am going to America,” said Sigrun.
“It costs a heap of money to get to America,” said the man.
“You surely do not think I should start on such a journey without money,” she returned.
At this the man pulled up, went to the horse, and began lifting and fingering the harness.
“Well,” he said, after a pause, “I’ve nothing much to do this way or that myself. Might be best, perhaps, to drive past the inn here, and I could take you on a few miles farther. There might be someone here that knew you.”
For the last half-hour Sigrun had been troubled by that very thought. And the offer was welcome indeed.
“When I do a thing, I believe in doing it thoroughly,” said the man, taking his place on the sledge once more.
The next few miles, however, were toilsome. Again they had to stop and rest and feed the horse. And soon they found that the snowfall in these parts had been lighter than where they had come from; the going became so bad after a time that they were forced to walk long stretches of the way.
And time went on. It was nearly noon before they came within sight of the second inn.
Just as they were near enough to distinguish the buildings, a man came driving up with a milk-cart.
“You’d better be careful, Gustavsson,” he called to the knife-grinder. “They’ve telephoned up to the inn to be on the look-out for you. Say you’re carrying infection. Vicar’s wife at Algeröd died last night of the smallpox, and they say it’s you and your woman brought it with you from Norway.”
Again they halted, and considered what was best to be done. At last they decided to turn back. Neither cared to drive on to the inn; it was too dangerous.
The knife-grinder suggested making to the eastward, up toward Dalsland. “There’s the railway runs from there to Göteborg, too, and nobody ’ll know you there.”
They turned off accordingly, along a road running east, leading up again through a wild and barren mountain tract.
The going was better here, but the poor beast was nearly spent. And after a third halt for rest and food, it had come to the bottom of its fodder bag.
The knife-grinder brought out some bread and butter and fell to. Sigrun had nothing to eat with her, but she was not hungry.
Afterward, when she looked back on that day, she wondered at herself.
“It was strange. I was altogether calm, and felt nothing at all. No uneasiness, no weariness, not even hunger. I knew all the time all would turn out as it should. I was numbed, as it were, in a way, but I was strong and able to hold out all the time. There must have been something at hand, too, that helped me.”
While on the long road up to the plateau she asked a question.
“Did you not say this morning that the woman who died was not your wife?”
“I said so, yes. And it’s the truth. She has a good husband and a decent home, but she liked better to go off with me.”
And Sigrun questioned him further; not that the matter interested her at all—nothing in the world interested her that day. But talking made the time pass more easily.
“She liked you more than her husband, then?”
“Well, I don’t know rightly about that. She was married to a man named Sven Elversson. Mayhap you’ve heard of him?”
Sigrun nodded.
“I thought at first she’d wearied of him because of—that old business, you know,” the man went on. “But after, I found out it was because she thought he didn’t care about her himself.”
“She wasn’t nice at all,” said Sigrun. “And he only married her out of pity.”
“She was no beauty, that’s true,” said the man, “but she was a good soul for all that. She was that sort that’d do anything for one they cared about.”
Despite her indifference, Sigrun could not help feeling uneasy at these words. She asked no more about the woman.
“Do you know where Sven Elversson is now?”
“He lives at a place in Dalsland, called Hånger. A big place it was once, but there’s so many ugly things happened there that no one would live in it, and it was let go to ruin. Sven Elversson bought it for next to nothing. And he lives there now with only his old folks, now that his wife’s gone, but he’s always taking in someone to help and look after, children and poor folk, as many as he can have there.”
Surely there must have been some strange influence at work to-day—something affecting the vagabond knife-grinder as it had done Sigrun. This man, whose habit it was to roam about the country growling and cursing, a terror to all, was quiet and gentle now, and spoke well of everyone.
They started off again, Sigrun sitting in the sledge, and the man on the side as before, with his legs hanging down. Then suddenly he slipped, and fell down in the road.
The horse stopped at once. The man picked himself up and climbed to his seat once more. But a little after, he slipped off again.
“Queer,” he said. “I don’t know what’s the matter with me. My head seems going round.”
Sigrun suggested he should sit in the sledge beside her. He did so, and they drove on again. A little later, the reins fell from his hands.
“I must be ill,” he said confusedly. “Going the same way as Ruth, by the look of it.”
But Sigrun hastened to reassure him.
“You have not slept all night,” she said. “Sit there in the corner, and let me drive while you sleep a little.”
Again something seemed to give her courage. “He is not ill,” it whispered to her, “only tired out. There, he is asleep already.”
When she had driven a little way, the horse stopped and refused to go farther.
Sigrun shook her companion by the arm.
“Do you know if there is any place near where we can put up? The horse is quite exhausted now, and it is getting dark already.”
The man looked up, dull and heavy with sleep.
“Do you think it’s the smallpox?” he asked.
“No, you are only sleepy,” said Sigrun.
“It’s the smallpox, I doubt, all the same,” said the man.
But a moment after he pulled himself together.
“There’s no help for it,” he said resolutely. “There’s a place a couple of miles farther on—a ‘vagabonds’ hostel,’ as they call it. We must try to get on to there.”
“We must find shelter somewhere,” said Sigrun.
“It’s the only thing we can do,” said the man. “Though I’d rather have kept from showing myself there again. We’re across the boundary now,” he went on. “We’re in Dalsland, and once we’re over the next rise, it’s downhill the rest of the way. Turn off to the left at the cross-roads, and drive on to the first house you see.”
When at last Sigrun had got the horse up over the rise, she saw in the fading daylight a broad landscape spread out before them, gently sloping, and pleasant to see, with many lakes and long wooded ridges, showing up clearly against the heavy, snow-laden air. The beauty of the sight cheered her, and she drove on with renewed vigour, reached the cross-roads, and turned off to the left.
Several times she had a view of the landscape first seen, but the country seemed as uninhabited as before. At last, however, she sighted a farmhouse just below. The house itself was fairly large, as if belonging to a rich estate, but all the outbuildings were small and mean, little better than any peasant’s dwelling might possess.
She roused the sick man anew.
“Are we there now?”
“Yes,” he answered, shaking off his drowsiness. “We’re at Hånger now. I never thought to come seeking shelter here again.”
Sigrun gave a cry. “Hånger!” For a moment she felt like a shipwrecked soul, with the waves already closing over her. “Hånger—that was where you said Sven Elversson...”
“Ay,” said the man. “And I’d never have come here by choice, but there’s no help for it now.”
“But—if he asked about his wife?”
“Why, I’ll have to find something or other to say.”
“That he should live here, of all places in the world,” said Sigrun despairingly.
“He took the place because it’s lonely like, and far away from folk. Ordinary people never come this way, but all sorts of tramps and vagabonds and poor folk, they go to him.”
Sigrun drove down a hill toward the house. And her despair passed from her almost at once. Again the same numbness came over her, and something whispered that there was no need to fear; all would go well.
Just at the entrance to the drive stood a little red-painted hut.
“Here it is. Just go in there,” said the knife-grinder.
He roused himself.
“I’ll drive up to the house and get the horse in,” he said. “You can go in meantime. There’s nobody in the traveller’s hut, it seems. You’ll find a key just down under the step.”
Sigrun did as he said, and found herself in a little cottage divided midway by a passage running through, with a room on either side. Both rooms were arranged and furnished in the same manner. Bare walls, fixed bedsteads with straw mattresses, a stove, a big, heavy table, and a few heavy chairs. A bucket of water and a bundle of firewood were there, but there were no pillows, no sheets, cooking-pots or plates, no towels or washing basins—nothing that could be taken away. A great cupboard stood in one of the rooms, but the key was not in the lock.
It was not altogether cold in the rooms; there had evidently been a fire there during the day. And they were clean and well aired.
“I must try to light; a fire,” thought Sigrun.
While she was busy with this, the knife-grinder entered. He could hardly stand upright. Without a word, he threw himself on a bed, and in a moment was fast asleep.
“I do not think he is ill,” said Sigrun to herself. “He will be all right when he has had a night’s rest. No need to call for help.”
She lit a fire in the other room also, and sat down before it, thinking over her plans. Suddenly she realized that she was tired—she was indeed nearly falling from her seat. Also, she was hungry. “I ought to have brought some food with me,” she murmured. And then, suddenly, she remembered her bag. Where was it? It was not in the room. She must have left it in the sledge.
She hurried out. The sledge was standing outside, and the bag was there. She picked it up, and was just going back into the house when a voice hailed her.
“Is that you, Ruth?”
Darkness had fallen quickly. She could vaguely distinguish the figure of an old, bowed man, slowly approaching.
“Do not come near us,” she cried; “we are infected.”
“I know,” answered the man. “We had a telephone message to-day, but I never thought you would come back here again. Well, well, needs must, they say, when the devil drives.”
“This must be Joel Elversson,” thought Sigrun—“Sven Elversson’s father. He is grown old and weak; he takes me for his son’s wife.”
“Sven is not at home to-day,” said Joel in his solemn way. “But we will receive you, Ruth, I and Thala, as he would have done if he had known you came here in need and in peril of death. Here is the key of the cupboard. You know where to find all you need there. And we will bring down food for you and set it outside the door.”
He handed her a small key, which she took without a word. He did not seem to expect any answer.
“There’s none here bears any grudge against you, Ruth,” he said. “We know what it was that made you go. Make yourself as easy as you can, and sleep in peace.”
He walked away, and Sigrun hurried into the house. In the cupboard she found pillows and sheets—all that was needed for the night. And, shortly afterward, food was brought.
Sigrun took a part of it and set it in the next room for her companion, then, barring her door carefully, she ate something herself, and went to bed.
“I must have a few hours’ sleep now,” she thought. “And then I can go on again. I must get away from here before anyone learns who I am.”
Almost before she had framed the thought she was fast asleep.