Stories by Verner von Heidenstam
When the Bells Ring
In southern Småland, just where the stony road to Scania branches into several village paths and a muddy slope leads up to the parish church, there stood a mill, painted red and with the largest wings that anyone had ever seen in all that region. The miller was dead long since. His widow, named Kerstin Bure, a woman who in her childhood had seen happier days and eaten from shining plates of pewter, managed the mill after her own fashion. She never made mention of her birth or of the love-dealings that had enticed her from a well-to-do pastor’s home to the narrow tower-room of a miller, where the axle-beam groaned directly over her sleeping-place; but then she did not speak of other things either. The husband had been too poor to possess a cottage of his own and had instead built a chimney straight through the roof of the mill. There year after year, with her sewing in her hand, the wife had silently continued to watch the work of the men. If at any time she was asked for advice, she answered preferably with a nod or a shake of the head, and she seldom went away further than a stone’s throw from the mill. In figure she was tall and slim with delicate hands, and her face under the starched cap, which was always of the same invariable whiteness, reminded one of Mary Magdalen’s on the picture at the altar, though it was more yellowed and shrunken. She never took women into her service, and so women in particular accustomed themselves to passing her in silence. They did not rightly know whether she was proud or meek, but most of them thought that she might well be both. When the sexton appeared with his beadsmen and in his best Sunday attire to solicit the hand of this woman, who was already old and gray, she became quite confused and abashed. She blushed to the roots of her hair and merely shook her head.
One morning she found an infant boy on a heap of twigs by the spring, and as no one knew anything about the parents, she took the little one to her with great tenderness.
“Nobody can tell whether there lies in that heart good or evil seed,” she said, “but the day may come when I am to try it. You shall be called Johannes, because you are to become devout as an angel of God. I have been sore afflicted, but for you I shall lay by a pretty penny, so that your life-days may sometime counterbalance the heavy ones I have known.”
The boy grew up, and when he prepared for confirmation, he surprised everybody by his pious and godly answers. With his glossy flaxen hair hanging over his shoulders he afterwards sat by his foster-mother on the mill steps in the bright midsummer evenings and read diligently in the books that he had borrowed from the pastor of the congregation. They sat always taciturnly and quietly, but sometimes he pointed out with his finger some line that seemed to him more beautiful than the others and read it softly aloud.
Hay-ricks and meadows were sending out their perfume of harvest and pasture, and so too, though withered, did the clover—or trefoil-blossoms that lay forgotten here and there between the leaves of the book as markers. Even late at night only a single star burned, but that was large and radiant. Everywhere people were awake and talking, and the cottage doors stood open.
Many whispered to one another a dark rumor of how the Swedish army had been beaten at Poltava and that now the Danes were to land and complete the entire overthrow of Sweden.
One Sunday night a rider stopped at the stairs of the mill and asked for lodging.
Johannes looked doubtfully at his foster-mother and asked the stranger whether he would not rather go on up the hill to the provost’s place.
“No,” he answered, “I want first to see tonight how the people are getting on.”
He managed to get his horse into the walled passage under the mill and then settled down quite contentedly among the others to a plate of beer-soup and a loaf of black bread.
He had let his hair and his goat-like beard grow, so that he looked like a common peasant, but sometimes he pulled his mouth toward his ears and talked harshly in the broadest Scanian, and sometimes he squeezed up his eyes and lamented in the most sentimental Smålandish. He kept awake all night continuing his merry discourse. Once he took a piece of charcoal and drew a speaking likeness of Johannes on the wall. A little later he gave Kerstin Bure shrewd advice as to how she should grease the mill-axle. Or he would sing psalms and polka-tunes, to which he himself set the words. In the morning he took from his traveling-sack a suit with bright soldier’s buttons. When Johannes and the old woman peeped wonderingly through the shutters to see whither he went, he was already standing in the church square, and there was such a clatter and hubbub among the populace that it echoed for miles.
“That’s Mons Bock!” clamored the crowd. “That is our valiant General Stenbock. If we have him with us, we’ll go out and fight for our country, every one of us, father and son, so God help us!”
“Johannes,” said Kerstin Bure then to her sixteen-year foster-son, with a hardness in her voice that he had never heard before, “you are meant to keep devoutly to your books and some day wear a pastor’s surplice as my sainted father did, but not to lose your blood in worldly feuds. Stick your tinder-box and clasp-knife in your jacket and tie your leather coat at your belt! Go then out into the woods and keep yourself well hid there until we have peace in the land! Before that I do not wish to see you again. Remember that! You hear now how the men shout on the church square, but mayhap their mouths will soon be stopped with black earth.”
He did as she bade him and wandered off into the woods by unknown paths. The firs became gradually more bristling and dense, so that for a long distance he had to push through backwards with the leather coat over his face. In the evening he came to a wide fen, and far out at the rim of a black lake lay an island overgrown with alders.
“There I’ll build my den,” he thought. But the quagmire of the swampy fen which floated over the twofold bottom, and the dark water where not a glimmer of daylight broke through, sank beneath his feet, until, exhausted and half-asleep, he sat down on a ledge.
A rustling still sounded from the ridges of the wood, but the lake lay quiet, and the little yellow reflections of the fluffy clouds soon stood motionless. In the infinite distance beyond the mist of the fen a goat-bell from time to time struck a few short, unresonant strokes. Two herd-girls blew quaveringly on their cow-horns, and on the forgotten and dilapidated sepulchre-mound in the dip of the valley the glow-worms kindled their lanterns in the grass.
“Are you one of those that have run away from war service?” a voice asked him, and when he looked up, a goat-girl was standing among the juniper bushes, knitting. She appeared to be one or two years older than he, and her leather boots hung on her back.
“That’s right enough; but now the fen bars my way, and berries and ferns get to be scant fare after a while.”
“It must be you don’t know the woods. Nobody suffers want there. Since my ninth year I’ve spent every summer up here in the wilds with my goats. Trim and cut down a couple of fir saplings and tie them to your feet with withes, and you can go on the quagmire wherever you like. Thatch your hut with fir bark and make yourself fishinggear.”
She carefully pulled a long basting-thread from her jacket and tied to it a pewter pin, which she had taken from her head-dress and bent into a hook.
“Here you have a hook and line,” she said and continued on her way, still knitting.
That night he did not much heed her advice, but when the sun again shone into his eyes, he pulled out his knife.
As soon as he had trimmed himself a couple of skis of the sort she had taught him to make, he betook himself out on the fen to the island. When he stamped on the grass there, the whole island swayed like a soft feather-bed, but he opined that this was good, because if there was moisture in the ground, he would not need to go far to find angleworms. Hardly, too, had he dug under the grass-roots with his fingers, before he found abundance. To be sure, the fishing went badly at the start, but after he had mystically laid two blades of sedge crosswise on the water, it became at once a different affair. As he carried a tinder-box in his jacket, it was an easy matter to broil his savory capture.
Afterwards he began to build his hut with such haste that he did not give himself leisure to sleep in the bright summer nights. He understood that it might easily tumble in on the swaying ground if he made it too high. Therefore he built instead a low turf-thatched roof-tree, under which he could not stand upright but had to creep. Every morning he fetched from the shore trimmed saplings, twigs, and pieces of fir bark. Finally he built a hearth of stones, where he let the juniper twigs smoulder and glow all night to drive off the midges. During his work he sometimes talked to himself half aloud, pretending that he was bailiff over a whole gang of workmen, and he called the island Wander Isle.
He met the goat-girl quite often. Her name was Lena. She went about with her knitting, feeding her charges on clearings and meadows. She taught him to set nooses and traps. Eventually they met every morning to see whether the fortune of hunting had been favorable to them, and she made him a good friend to all the wild animals.
“Did you see that gorgeous bird?” she asked, pointing to a blue-black black-cock that roused the whole wood with his thunderous wing-beats. “Him I call the Rich Bachelor of Vaxjö, for he asks neither after his home or his relatives, but just sits at the tavern in his fine dress-coat and smoothes his ruffles.”
“And just hark now!” she said one night when an owl hooted in the ravine. “Him I call the Tax Collector, who, when he turns his head in his white collar and rolls his red eyes or snaps his bill, frightens both man and beast. But if it’s a question of the little white harmless eggs in his own nest, then you’ll see. Then he has a father’s heart in the right place.”
But about nothing did she know so many traditions as about the cranes.
“Never yet,” she said, “have I got to see the long-legged bald-headed cranes when from their mossy retreats they set up their trumpeting and hold their autumn assembly for taking flight. Round their camp they have outposts that sit with a stone in their one uplifted claw, so that it may tumble down and wake them if they fall asleep. But the most wonderful thing is that then if any human being sees the ashen-gray birds go up, he himself begins to flap with his arms and longs to be able to fly with them, so high that the lakes below on the earth are only like little shimmering water-drops.”
“I want to see the cranes,” answered Johannes.
“Perhaps you may get to see them in the autumn, but then you must first teach yourself a great deal. First, you must be able to stand so quiet that you look like a dry juniper bush, and to bend down so that you look like a stone, and to lay yourself flat on the ground so that no one can tell you from a pile of rotten twigs.”
“All that I shall try to teach myself, but you must never go on my island. It isn’t the way you think there. I have a high fireplace and hangings on the walls, and the floor between the rugs is so shining and slippery that you can’t walk on it but have to crawl.”
The pretty stories he had read in the dean’s books ran in his memory, and he wanted to show the girl that he was not inferior to her but could in turn rouse her to wonder and curiosity.
“If you’ll let me get a sight of that house, I’ll go down to the settlement and fetch you a musketoon with bullets and powder-horn.”
“To my island you’ll never come.”
“If you’ll let me get a sight of that house, I’ll teach you in five days to feed yourself on ferns and roots and nothing.”
“That’s why I’ve come hither. Keep that promise, and you shall see my house, if you can really get there.”
With that he fastened the skis on his feet and vanished in the mist on the fen.
“The enemy stands on the shore,” he said to his imaginary soldiers on the island, “but they have neither axe nor knife for making skis. We may feel secure, if only we always remain upright and good.”
But late in the evening when he was about to lay fresh juniper on the hearth, he saw the goat-girl coming on the fen with the help of twigs and dry branches.
“The enemy thinks to take us by storm,” he continued, “but there is a secret which I have long suspected. I shall make the whole Wander Isle sail to sea like a boat.”
He pressed a pole against the outermost tussocks of the fen, and the floating island swam swaying further out on the water.
Then he laid himself calmly to sleep by the crackling embers, but when after a while he suddenly opened his eyes, the goat-girl stood straight before him and peeped in under the low roof on which fox-skins lay spread inside out to dry.
She asked him nothing about the high fireplace or the hangings or the slippery floor, but merely said, “A fresh breeze has blown up, so that the island has driven to land on the other shore. But why do you let the dry fox-skins lie on the roof instead of spreading them in here on the ground? And we ought to stick in juniper around the island so that people can’t see either us or the hut.”
He thought she spoke sensibly and went ashore at once to collect the juniper. When it was already long after midnight, they still worked at the strengthening and beautifying of his island. They even made of birch-bark and pegs a door which they could set before the entrance, and when they finally shoved the island off from the land again, they anchored it out in the water with two piles.
“Now the drawbridge is raised,” said Johannes, “and we must see to providing the new guests with entertainment such as is right.”
“The cook-maids and scullery-maids are always so slow,” she said and turned the two fish upon the hearth.
The heather droned and the lake splashed so that the island and the sedge and all the closed water-lilies swayed. As soon as mealtime had passed, Johannes lay down at full length nearest the hearth, but Lena, who did not yet feel that she possessed the right of ownership to Wander Isle, huddled together outside at the entrance with one hand as a pillow. She still heard the juniper sputter with heart’s delight, and as she fell asleep she counted the small sparks that sailed forth above the chink in the roof like stars through the night air. That was the fifth—that was the sixth—that was the seventh——. So she was put in mind of one of her songs:
It was on the seventh morn of the week,
When the prayer-bells rang, I ween,
That the bitter tears ran a-down her cheek,
Though her bride-wreath still was green.
Next day she no longer thought of leaving the island, and the third day they began without noticing it to say “our island.” Every morning they landed at the rock, and then she went up to the clearing with her goats or followed him to examine nooses and traps. At last she began also to teach him her art of feeding himself for many days on berries and ferns and nothing, and she noticed that he soon won even greater aptitude in this than she had herself. He grew thin and dry as a blown-off branch, and yet his sinews knotted themselves all the harder. But he always remained quiet and taciturn; and when she asked him what weighed on his mind, he went off on his own paths and remained long away.
They no longer knew the names of the days, but on the Sabbath the wind carried the distant sound of the bells far into the wilderness, and then Johannes put on his embroidered leather coat and led her upon the overgrown sepulchre-mound, from which they could see over fen and lake. With her hand in his he spoke then of God’s love, which covered the wretchedest crevices with its fairest bounties, and often they knelt in the grass for long periods and prayed that He would likewise sow a few grains of His seed in their souls.
After much conversation, however, Johannes was always doubly heavy in mind and sought for solitude.
The nights became ever darker, and often when she turned back from her herd she had to light her way with a torch between mountain walls and the roots of overblown trees. The giant firs, heaven high, were like tents, where black hands sprawled out from among the ragged leafage to seize her by the braids; but she felt no fear, she thought only of one thing. Wherever she went and whatever she busied herself with, she only thought that the summer would soon be ended and that no one could know what would then become of Johannes and her.
Then one October morning she was awakened by Johannes.
“Do you remember the cranes you spoke of?” he asked. “Now I can both stand so quiet that I look like a dry juniper bush, and bend down so that I look like a stone, and lie down flat on the ground so that no one can tell me from a pile of rotten twigs. I have taught myself more than that. I can feed myself on berries and roots, and if those are wanting I can starve along on nothing.”
She sat up and listened to a far-off noise.
“That is no cranes.”
“Then I’ll investigate what it is.”
He washed himself in the lake, put on his leather coat as on a Sunday, and pushed her gently aside when she wanted to hold him back.
“Don’t go, Johannes!” she begged. “I won’t let you go from me without following.”
In silence they came ashore with the island at the ledge and went down through the woods toward the settled land to a bare clearing, from which there was a free outlook over the mossy heath and meadows as far as Kerstin Bure’s mill and the church.
“Johannes!” she burst out with almost a scream, and seized him tightly by the coat-tails. “Come back with me to our place!”
He answered her meekly: “My conscience has pained me long enough. Do you see down there on the heath the gray creatures with thin legs? And the outposts that you told about are standing there too. It’s Mons Bock, who is out again on his recruiting. In that crane-dance I’d like to play myself.”
He walked violently away from her, so that the coat-tail was torn off at the cracking seam, and began to run down to the heath between the ferns and charred stumps.
She followed irresolutely after him, but when she saw how he spoke to the outposts and stepped straight into the assembled crowd of armed peasants, she went at a warm pace to get to him.
When she came into the ring, he already stood before Mons Bock and was taking his recruit penny.
“Where have you stuck your knapsack, Smålander?” asked the general.
“I have no knapsack, but I can feed myself for five days on nothing.”
Lena pressed forward between him and the general’s dark-brown horse.
“He, Johannes here, is no serving-boy, but we have a place of our own up in the woods.”
“As to the marriage I should like to see the certificate in black and white,” answered Mons Bock, and the hot color rose and fell on her forehead as he spoke.
Then Lena held out in her two hands the torn-off coat-tail and let him see that it fitted to the leather coat.
“I call that a parson’s certificate on real sheepskin,” he broke out. “The recruit money may therefore be yours, my good young lady, but the boy has clean perjured himself. And now, ye worthy yeomen of Småland, forward in Jesus’ name! Drums we have none, but we can still in our poverty stamp with wooden shoes the old Swedish march that it makes me warm at heart to hear.”
Staves and wooden shoes banged and clattered on rocks and ledges. Even the riders had wooden shoes tied fast to their feet, so that they tried in vain to use their stirrups.
When the last farmers had vanished across the heath, Lena went on to the mill. She dared not relate that Johannes had gone along to the war, but only told of how she had met him in the woods, exhibiting the coat-tail, which was carefully inspected and turned over.
“That’s the right coat-tail, sure enough,” said Kerstin Bure, “and though I don’t like to see women in my service, you may as well stay with me till Johannes comes. I really need a pair of strong arms, for I am well on in years and all my men have been bitten with madness and have run off with Stenbock. There is hardly an able-bodied man left in the parish, except the sexton, the idiot!”
After she had said this she spoke no more to Lena of what had passed in the woods and asked nothing about Johannes, but silently continued her occupations, as was her custom. The mill stood with unmoving wings, because there was no meal to grind, and through the long snowy months of winter there was heard in it neither steps nor voices. Beggars who went past on the road supposed it was unoccupied and deserted.
When the spring began to re-appear and white trailing clouds swept across the heavens, there came one day a boy hot and panting, who ran along the road and to each and all whom he met shouted a single word, until he vanished in the woods on the other side of the heather. Some hours later a rider came at a gallop and shouted in the same manner on all sides until he was gone. The women gathered in crowds on the hill by the church. Sweden, Sweden was saved, and Mons Bock and his goat-boys had beaten the whole enemy’s army at the Straits of Öresund!
Kerstin Bure alone asked nobody what had happened but sat every noon on the mill stairs in the glorious sunshine and carded wool with Lena. All at once as they were sitting silent and busy, while the spring freshet purled in ditches and brooks, they heard that the bells were ringing in the neighboring parishes to the south, although it was Wednesday. Expectantly the people ranged themselves along the road on both sides and from the wide-open door of the church advanced the stumbling pastor of the congregation, followed by his chaplains and in full ceremonials.
Once more the well-known march of the wooden shoes clattered on ledges and stones, but now to bag-pipes and shawms. It was the returning army of farmers. There were deep lines of shaggy beards and slashed sheep-skin coats and noble blue eyes. With staves in hand, muskets in the strap, and wide hats over their flowing hair, the homeward-bound troops marched back from their victory. Far in the van the fiery cross went from church to church as far as the northernmost wooden chapels, where the Lapps tied their reindeer to the steeples, and all the sunny springtime of Sweden was filled with the song of praise that re-echoed from the bells.
Just in front of the hay-wagons with the wounded rode Mons Bock in his gray overcoat with his riding-whip instead of a sword. Calling down blessings upon their saviour, the peasants hailed him with waving aprons and caps, but he turned to his ensigns and shouted that they should sing.
When the voices ceased, Mons Bock went on alone and sang stanza after stanza which he himself had put together.
Kerstin Bure had risen on the mill stairs and looked and looked beneath her lifted hand, but Lena, who had broken her way forward so fearlessly in the thickets of the wilderness, did not dare this time to wait and look about any longer, but stole away and threw herself sobbing among the empty meal-sacks.
Step by step Kerstin Bure withdrew up the stairs until she stood at the very top with her back against the wall of the mill. Then she pressed her hands like opera-glasses to her eyes. In the last wagon Johannes sat on the hay among the wounded, as merry and quiet as always, but paler and with bandages around his arm and shoulder.
She pressed her hands even harder to her eyes.
“So after all he was what I thought him, though to prove his soul thoroughly I commanded him otherwise. Then, though he is Kerstin Bure’s foster-son, he shall still keep for his life long her whom he himself has chosen, even if she is the poorest of goat-girls.”
But at the moment she heard how the sexton and his ringer clattered at the trap-doors of the steeple, and the great bell gave forth its first stroke.
She knitted her brow and went into the mill, saying: “I’ve no meal to grind, but if he lets his bell sound, though he has had no son in the war, my mill shall play, too.”
Creaking, the dust-white axle-beam began to move and purr, and while the peasant army marched singing by, the empty mill kept turning its great wings faster and faster.