The young countess sleeps till ten o’clock in the morning, and wants fresh bread on the breakfast-table every day. The young countess embroiders, and reads poetry. She knows nothing of weaving and cooking. The young countess is spoiled.

But the young countess is gay, and lets her joyousness shine on all and everything. One is so glad to forgive her the long morning sleep and the fresh bread, for she squanders kindness on the poor and is friendly to every one.

The young countess’s father is a Swedish nobleman, who has lived in Italy all his life, retained there by the loveliness of the land and by one of that lovely land’s beautiful daughters. When Count Henrik Dohna travelled in Italy he had been received in this nobleman’s house, made the acquaintance of his daughters, married one of them, and brought her with him to Sweden.

She, who had always spoken Swedish and had been brought up to love everything Swedish, is happy in the land of the bear. She whirls so merrily in the long dance of pleasure, on L?fven’s shores, that one could well believe she had always lived there. Little she understands what it means to be a countess. There is no state, no stiffness, no condescending dignity in that young, joyous creature.

[171]

It was the old men who liked the young countess best. It was wonderful, what a success she had with old men. When they had seen her at a ball, one could be sure that all of them, the judge at Munkerud and the clergyman at Bro and Melchior Sinclair and the captain at Berga, would tell their wives in the greatest confidence that if they had met the young countess thirty or forty years ago—

“Yes, then she was not born,” say the old ladies.

And the next time they meet, they joke with the young countess, because she wins the old men’s hearts from them.

The old ladies look at her with a certain anxiety. They remember so well Countess M?rta. She had been just as joyous and good and beloved when she first came to Borg. And she had become a vain and pleasure-seeking coquette, who never could think of anything but her amusements. “If she only had a husband who could keep her at work!” say the old ladies. “If she only could learn to weave!” For weaving was a consolation for everything; it swallowed up all other interests, and had been the saving of many a woman.

The young countess wants to be a good housekeeper. She knows nothing better than as a happy wife to live in a comfortable home, and she often comes at balls, and sits down beside the old people.

“Henrik wants me to learn to be a capable housekeeper,” she says, “just as his mother is. Teach me how to weave!”

Then the old people heave a sigh: first, over Count Henrik, who can think that his mother was a good housekeeper; and then over the difficulty of initiating[172] this young, ignorant creature in such a complicated thing. It was enough to speak to her of heddles, and harnesses, and warps, and woofs,[2] to make her head spin.

No one who sees the young countess can help wondering why she married stupid Count Henrik. It is a pity for him who is stupid, wherever he may be. And it is the greatest pity for him who is stupid and lives in V?rmland.

There are already many stories of Count Henrik’s stupidity, and he is only a little over twenty years old. They tell how he entertained Anna Stj?rnh?k on a sleighing party a few years ago.

“You are very pretty, Anna,” he said.

“How you talk, Henrik!”

“You are the prettiest girl in the whole of V?rmland.”

“That I certainly am not.”

“The prettiest in this sleighing party at any rate.”

“Alas, Henrik, I am not that either.”

“Well, you are the prettiest in this sledge, that you can’t deny.”

No, that she could not.

For Count Henrik is no beauty. He is as ugly as he is stupid. They say of him that that head on the top of his thin neck has descended in the family for a couple of hundred years. That is why the brain is so worn out in the last heir.

“It is perfectly plain that he has no head of his own,” they say. “He has borrowed his father’s. He does not dare to bend it; he is afraid of losing it,—he is already yellow and wrinkled. The head has[173] been in use with both his father and grandfather. Why should the hair otherwise be so thin and the lips so bloodless and the chin so pointed?”

He always has scoffers about him, who encourage him to say stupid things, which they save up, circulate, and add to.

It is lucky for him that he does not notice it. He is solemn and dignified in everything he does. He moves formally, he holds himself straight, he never turns his head without turning his whole body.

He had been at Munkerud on a visit to the judge a few years ago. He had come riding with high hat, yellow breeches, and polished boots, and had sat stiff and proud in the saddle. When he arrived everything went well, but when he was to ride away again it so happened that one of the low-hanging branches of a birch-tree knocked off his hat. He got off, put on his hat, and rode again under the same branch. His hat was again knocked off; this was repeated four times.

The judge at last went out to him and said: “If you should ride on one side of the branch the next time?”

The fifth time he got safely by.

But still the young countess cared for him in spite of his old-man’s head. She of course did not know that he was crowned with such a halo of stupidity in his own country, when she saw him in Rome. There, there had been something of the glory of youth about him, and they had come together under such romantic circumstances. You ought to hear the countess tell how Count Henrik had to carry her off. The priests and the cardinals had been wild with rage that she wished to give up her mother’s religion and become a[174] Protestant. The whole people had been in uproar. Her father’s palace was besieged. Henrik was pursued by bandits. Her mother and sisters implored her to give up the marriage. But her father was furious that that Italian rabble should prevent him from giving his daughter to whomsoever he might wish. He commanded Count Henrik to carry her off. And so, as it was impossible for them to be married at home without its being discovered, Henrik and she stole out by side streets and all sorts of dark alleys to the Swedish consulate. And when she had abjured the Catholic faith and become a Protestant, they were immediately married and sent north in a swift travelling-carriage. “There was no time for banns, you see. It was quite impossible,” the young countess used to say. “And of course it was gloomy to be married at a consulate, and not in one of the beautiful churches, but if we had not Henrik would have had to do without me. Every one is so impetuous down there, both papa and mamma and the cardinals and the priests, all are so impetuous. That was why everything had to be done so secretly, and if the people had seen us steal out of the house, they would certainly have killed us both—only to save my soul; Henrik was of course already lost.”

The young countess loves her husband, ever since they have come home to Borg and live a quieter life. She loves in him the glory of the old name and the famous ancestors. She likes to see how her presence softens the stiffness of his manner, and to hear how his voice grows tender when he speaks to her. And besides, he cares for her and spoils her, and she is married to him. The young countess cannot imagine that a married woman should not care for her husband.

[175]

In a certain way he corresponds to her ideal of manliness. He is honest and loves the truth. He had never broken his word. She considers him a true nobleman.

On the 18th of March Bailiff Scharling celebrates his birthday, and many then drive up Broby Hill. People from the east and the west, known and unknown, invited and uninvited, come to the bailiff’s on that day. All are welcome, all find plenty of food and drink, and in the ball-room there is room for dancers from seven parishes.

The young countess is coming too, as she always does where there is to be dancing and merry-making.

But she is not happy as she comes. It is as if she has a presentiment that it is now her turn to be dragged-in in adventure’s wild chase.

On the way she sat and watched the sinking sun. It set in a cloudless sky and left no gold edges on the light clouds. A pale, gray, twilight, swept by cold squalls, settled down over the country.

The young countess saw how day and night struggled, and how fear seized all living things at the mighty contest. The horses quickened their pace with the last load to come under shelter. The woodcutters hurried home from the woods, the maids from the farmyard. Wild creatures howled at the edge of the wood. The day, beloved of man, was conquered.

The light grew dim, the colors faded. She only saw chillness and ugliness. What she had hoped, what she had loved, what she had done, seemed to her to be also wrapped in the twilight’s gray light. It was the hour of weariness, of depression, of impotence for her as for all nature.

[176]

She thought that her own heart, which now in its playful gladness clothed existence with purple and gold, she thought that this heart perhaps sometime would lose its power to light up her world.

“Oh, impotence, my own heart’s impotence!” she said to herself. “Goddess of the stifling, gray twilight. You will one day be mistress of my soul. Then I shall see life ugly and gray, as it perhaps is, then my hair will grow white, my back be bent, my brain be paralyzed.”

At the same moment the sledge turned in at the bailiff’s gate, and as the young countess looked up, her eyes fell on a grated window in the wing, and on a fierce, staring face behind.

That face belonged to the major’s wife at Ekeby, and the young woman knew that her pleasure for the evening was now spoiled.

One can be glad when one does not see sorrow, only hears it spoken of. But it is harder to keep a joyous heart when one stands face to face with black, fierce, staring trouble.

The countess knows of course that Bailiff Scharling had put the major’s wife in prison, and that she shall be tried for the assault she made on Ekeby the night of the great ball. But she never thought that she should be kept in custody there at the bailiff’s house, so near the ball-room that one could look into her room, so near that she must hear the dance music and the noise of merry-making. And the thought takes away all her pleasure.

The young countess dances both waltz and quadrille. She takes part in both minuet and contra-dance; but after each dance she steals to the window in the[177] wing. There is a light there and she can see how the major’s wife walks up and down in her room. She never seems to rest, but walks and walks.

The countess takes no pleasure in the dance. She only thinks of the major’s wife going backwards and forwards in her prison like a caged wild beast. She wonders how all the others can dance. She is sure there are many there who are as much moved as she to know that the major’s wife is so near, and still there is no one who shows it.

But every time she has looked out her feet grow heavier in the dance, and the laugh sticks in her throat.

The bailiff’s wife notices her as she wipes the moisture from the window-pane to see out, and comes to her.

“Such misery! Oh, it is such suffering!” she whispers to the countess.

“I think it is almost impossible to dance to-night,” whispers the countess back again.

“It is not with my consent that we dance here, while she is sitting shut up there,” answers Madame Scharling. “She has been in Karlstad since she was arrested. But there is soon to be a trial now, and that is why she was brought here to-day. We could not put her in that miserable cell in the courthouse, so she was allowed to stay in the weaving-room in the wing. She should have had my drawing-room, countess, if all these people had not come to-day. You hardly know her, but she has been like a mother and queen to us all. What will she think of us, who are dancing here, while she is in such great trouble. It is as well that most of them do not know that she is sitting there.”

[178]

“She ought never to have been arrested,” says the young countess, sternly.

“No, that is a true word, countess, but there was nothing else to do, if there should not be a worse misfortune. No one blamed her for setting fire to her own hay-stack and driving out the pensioners, but the major was scouring the country for her. God knows what he would have done if she had not been put in prison. Scharling has given much offence because he arrested the major’s wife, countess. Even in Karlstad they were much displeased with him, because he did not shut his eyes to everything which happened at Ekeby; but he did what he thought was best.”

“But now I suppose she will be sentenced?” says the countess.

“Oh, no, countess, she will not be sentenced. She will be acquitted, but all that she has to bear these days is being too much for her. She is going mad. You can understand, such a proud woman, how can she bear to be treated like a criminal! I think that it would have been best if she had been allowed to go free. She might have been able to escape by herself.”

“Let her go,” says the countess.

“Any one can do that but the bailiff and his wife,” whispers Madame Scharling. “We have to guard her. Especially to-night, when so many of her friends are here, two men sit on guard outside her door, and it is locked and barred so that no one can come in. But if any one got her out, countess, we should be so glad, both Scharling and I.”

“Can I not go to her?” says the young countess. Madame Scharling seizes her eagerly by the wrist[179] and leads her out with her. In the hall they throw a couple of shawls about them, and hurry across the yard.

“It is not certain that she will even speak to us,” says the bailiff’s wife. “But she will see that we have not forgotten her.”

They come into the first room in the wing, where the two men sit and guard the barred door, and go in without being stopped to the major’s wife. She was in a large room crowded with looms and other implements. It was used mostly for a weaving-room, but it had bars in the window and a strong lock on the door, so that it could be used, in case of need, for a cell.

The major’s wife continues to walk without paying any attention to them.

She is on a long wandering these days. She cannot remember anything except that she is going the hundred and twenty miles to her mother, who is up in the ?lfdal woods, and is waiting for her. She never has time to rest She must go. A never-resting haste is on her. Her mother is over ninety years old. She would soon be dead.

She has measured off the floor by yards, and she is now adding up the yards to furlongs and the furlongs to half-miles and miles.

Her way seems heavy and long, but she dares not rest. She wades through deep drifts. She hears the forests murmur over her as she goes. She rests in Finn huts and in the charcoal-burner’s log cabin. Sometimes, when there is nobody for many miles, she has to break branches for a bed and rest under the roots of a fallen pine.

And at last she has reached her journey’s end, the[180] hundred and twenty miles are over, the wood opens out, and the red house stands in a snow-covered yard. The Klar River rushes foaming by in a succession of little waterfalls, and by that well-known sound she hears that she is at home. And her mother, who must have seen her coming begging, just as she had wished, comes to meet her.

When the major’s wife has got so far she always looks up, glances about her, sees the closed door, and knows where she is.

Then she wonders if she is going mad, and sits down to think and to rest. But after a time she sets out again, calculates the yards and the furlongs, the half-miles and the miles, rests for a short time in Finn huts, and sleeps neither night nor day until she has again accomplished the hundred and twenty miles.

During all the time she has been in prison she has almost never slept.

And the two women who had come to see her looked at her with anguish.

The young countess will ever afterwards remember her, as she walked there. She sees her often in her dreams, and wakes with eyes full of tears and a moan on her lips.

The old woman is so pitifully changed, her hair is so thin, and loose ends stick out from the narrow braid. Her face is relaxed and sunken, her dress is disordered and ragged. But with it all she has so much still of her lofty bearing that she inspires not only sympathy, but also respect.

But what the countess remembered most distinctly were her eyes, sunken, turned inward, not yet deprived of all the light of reason, but almost ready to be[181] extinguished, and with a spark of wildness lurking in their depths, so that one had to shudder and fear to have the old woman in the next moment upon one, with teeth ready to bite, fingers to tear.

They have been there quite a while when the major’s wife suddenly stops before the young woman and looks at her with a stern glance. The countess takes a step backwards and seizes Madame Scharling’s arm.

The features of the major’s wife have life and expression, her eyes look out into the world with full intelligence.

“Oh, no; oh, no,” she says and smiles; “as yet it is not so bad, my dear young lady.”

She asks them to sit down, and sits down herself. She has an air of old-time stateliness, known since days of feasting at Ekeby and at the royal balls at the governor’s house at Karlstad. They forget the rags and the prison and only see the proudest and richest woman in V?rmland.

“My dear countess,” she says, “what possessed you to leave the dance to visit a lonely old woman? You must be very good.”

Countess Elizabeth cannot answer. Her voice is choking with emotion. Madame Scharling answers for her, that she had not been able to dance for thinking of the major’s wife.

“Dear Madame Scharling,” answers the major’s wife, “has it gone so far with me that I disturb the young people in their pleasure? You must not weep for me, my dear young countess,” she continued. “I am a wicked old woman, who deserves all I get. You do not think it right to strike one’s mother?”

“No, but—”

[182]

The major’s wife interrupts her and strokes the curly, light hair back from her forehead.

“Child, child,” she says, “how could you marry that stupid Henrik Dohna?”

“But I love him.”

“I see how it is, I see how it is,” says the major’s wife. “A kind child and nothing more; weeps with those in sorrow, and laughs with those who are glad. And obliged to say ‘yes’ to the first man who says, ‘I love you.’ Yes, of course. Go back now and dance, my dear young countess. Dance and be happy! There is nothing bad in you.”

“But I want to do something for you.”

“Child,” says the major’s wife, solemnly, “an old woman lived at Ekeby who held the winds of heaven prisoners. Now she is caught and the winds are free. Is it strange that a storm goes over the land?

“I, who am old, have seen it before, countess. I know it. I know that the storm of the thundering God is coming. Sometimes it rushes over great kingdoms, sometimes over small out-of-the-way communities. God’s storm forgets no one. It comes over the great as well as the small. It is grand to see God’s storm coming.

“Anguish shall spread itself over the land. The small birds’ nests shall fall from the branches. The hawk’s nest in the pine-tree’s top shall be shaken down to the earth with a great noise, and even the eagle’s nest in the mountain cleft shall the wind drag out with its dragon tongue.

“We thought that all was well with us; but it was not so. God’s storm is needed. I understand that, and I do not complain. I only wish that I might go to my mother.”

[183]

She suddenly sinks back.

“Go now, young woman,” she says. “I have no more time. I must go. Go now, and look out for them who ride on the storm-cloud!”

Thereupon she renews her wandering. Her features relax, her glance turns inward. The countess and Madame Scharling have to leave her.

As soon as they are back again among the dancers the young countess goes straight to G?sta Berling.

“I can greet you from the major’s wife,” she says. “She is waiting for you to get her out of prison.”

“Then she must go on waiting, countess.”

“Oh, help her, Herr Berling!”

G?sta stares gloomily before him. “No,” he says, “why should I help her? What thanks do I owe her? Everything she has done for me has been to my ruin.”

“But Herr Berling—”

“If she had not existed,” he says angrily, “I would now be sleeping up there in the forest. Is it my duty to risk my life for her, because she has made me a pensioner at Ekeby? Do you think much credit goes with that profession?”

The young countess turns away from him without answering. She is angry.

She goes back to her place thinking bitter thoughts of the pensioners. They have come to-night with horns and fiddles, and mean to let the bows scrape the strings until the horse-hair is worn through, without thinking that the merry tunes ring in the prisoner’s miserable room. They come here to dance until their shoes fall to pieces, and do not remember that their old benefactress can see their shadows whirling[184] by the misty window-panes. Alas, how gray and ugly the world was! Alas, what a shadow trouble and hardness had cast over the young countess’s soul!

After a while G?sta comes to ask her to dance.

She refuses shortly.

“Will you not dance with me, countess?” he asks, and grows very red.

“Neither with you nor with any other of the Ekeby pensioners,” she says.

“We are not worthy of such an honor.”

“It is no honor, Herr Berling. But it gives me no pleasure to dance with those who forget the precepts of ............