The child was born in a peasant’s house east of the Klar river. The child’s mother had come seeking employment one day in early June.

She had been unfortunate, she had said to the master and mistress, and her mother had been so hard to her that she had had to run away from home. She called herself Elizabeth Karlsdotter; but she would not say from whence she came, for then perhaps they would tell her parents that she was there, and if they should find her, she would be tortured to death, she knew it. She asked for no pay, only food and a roof over her head. She could work, weave or spin, and take care of the cows,—whatever they wanted. If they wished, she could also pay for herself.

She had been clever enough to come to the farm-house bare-foot, with her shoes under her arm; she had coarse hands; she spoke the country dialect; and she wore a peasant woman’s clothes. She was believed.

The master thought she looked sickly, and did not count much on her fitness for work. But somewhere the poor thing must be. And so she was allowed to stop.

There was something about her which made every one on the farm kind to her. She had come to[387] a good place. The people were serious and reticent. Her mistress liked her; when she discovered that she could weave, they borrowed a loom from the vicarage, and the child’s mother worked at it the whole summer.

It never occurred to any one that she needed to be spared; she had to work like a peasant girl the whole time. She liked too to have much work. She was not unhappy. Life among the peasants pleased her, although she lacked all her accustomed conveniences. But everything was taken so simply and quietly there. Every one’s thoughts were on his or her work; the days passed so uniform and monotonous that one mistook the day and thought it was the middle of the week when Sunday came.

One day at the end of August there had been haste with the oat crop, and the child’s mother had gone out with the others to bind the sheaves. She had strained herself, and the child had been born, but too soon. She had expected it in October.

Now the farmer’s wife stood with the child in the living room to warm it by the fire, for the poor little thing was shivering in the August heat. The child’s mother lay in a room beyond and listened to what they said of the little one. She could imagine how the men and maids came up and looked at him.

“Such a poor little thing,” they all said, and then followed always, without fail:—

“Poor little thing, with no father!”

They did not complain of the child’s crying: they thought a child needed to cry; and, when everything was considered, the child was strong for its age; had it but a father, all would have been well.

[388]

The mother lay and listened and wondered. The matter suddenly seemed to her incredibly important. How would he get through life, the poor little thing?

She had made her plans before. She would remain at the farm-house the first year. Then she would hire a room and earn her bread at the loom. She meant to earn enough to feed and clothe the child. Her husband could continue to believe that she was unworthy. She had thought that the child perhaps would be a better man if she alone brought it up, than if a stupid and conceited father should guide it.

But now, since the child was born, she could not see the matter in the same way. Now she thought that she had been selfish. “The child must have a father,” she said to herself.

If he had not been such a pitiful little thing, if he had been able to eat and sleep like other children, if his head had not always sunk down on one shoulder, and if he had not so nearly died when the attack of cramp came, it would not have been so important.

It was not so easy to decide, but decide she must immediately. The child was three days old, and the peasants in V?rmland seldom wait longer to have the child baptized. Under what name should the baby be entered in the church-register, and what would the clergyman want to know about the child’s mother?

It was an injustice to the child to let him be entered as fatherless. If he should be a weak and sickly man, how could she take the responsibility of depriving him of the advantages of birth and riches?

The child’s mother had noticed that there is generally great joy and excitement when a child comes into the world. Now it seemed to her that it must[389] be hard for this baby to live, whom every one pitied. She wanted to see him sleeping on silk and lace, as it behoves a count’s son. She wanted to see him encompassed with joy and pride.

The child’s mother began to think that she had done its father too great an injustice. Had she the right to keep him for herself? That she could not have. Such a precious little thing, whose worth it is not in the power of man to calculate, should she take that for her own? That would not be honest.

But she did not wish to go back to her husband. She feared that it would be her death. But the child was in greater danger than she. He might die any minute, and he was not baptized.

That which had driven her from her home, the grievous sin which had dwelt in her heart, was gone. She had now no love for any other than the child.

It was not too heavy a duty to try to get him his right place in life.

The child’s mother had the farmer and his wife called and told them everything. The husband journeyed to Borg to tell Count Dohna that his countess was alive, and that there was a child.

The peasant came home late in the evening; he had not met the count, for he had gone away, but he had been to the minister at Svartsj?, and talked with him of the matter.

Then the countess heard that her marriage had been declared invalid, and that she no longer had a husband.

The minister wrote a friendly letter to her, and offered her a home in his house.

A letter from her own father to Count Henrik, which must have reached Borg a few days after her[390] flight, was also sent to her. It was just that letter in which the old man had begged the count to hasten to make his marriage legal, which had indicated to the count the easiest way to be rid of his wife.

It is easy to imagine that the child’s mother was seized with anger more than sorrow, when she heard the peasant’s story.

She lay awake the whole night. The child must have a father, she thought over and over again.

The next morning the peasant had to drive to Ekeby for her, and go for G?sta Berling.

G?sta asked the silent man many questions, but could find out nothing. Yes, the countess had been in his house the whole summer. She had been well and had worked. Now a child was born. The child was weak; but the mother would soon be strong again.

G?sta asked if the countess knew that the marriage had been annulled.

Yes, she knew it now. She had heard it yesterday.

And as long as the drive lasted G?sta had alternately fever and chills.

What did she want of him? Why did she send for him?

He thought of the life that summer on L?fven’s shores. They had let the days go by with jests and laughter and pleasure parties, while she had worked and suffered.

He had never thought of the possibility of ever seeing her again. Ah, if he had dared to hope! He would have then come into her presence a better man. What had he now to look back on but the............