Jerusalem

"Let me congratulate you, Ingmar," she said, her voice shaking with joy. "You and I have been strongly opposed to each other of late in matters of religion; but since God does not grant me the solace of having you with us, I thank Him for allowing you to become master of the old farm."

Ingmar did not speak. His hand lay limp in Karin's, and when she let it drop, he stood there looking just as unhappy as he had looked all day.

The men who had been inside at the final settlement came out now, and shook hands with Ingmar, offering their congratulations. "Good luck to you, Ingmar Ingmarsson of the Ingmar Farm!" they said.

At that a glimmer of happiness crossed Ingmar's face, and he murmured softly to himself: "Ingmar Ingmarsson of the Ingmar Farm." He was like a child that has just received a gift it has long been wishing for. But the next moment his expression changed to one of intense revolt and repugnance, as if he would have thrust the coveted prize from him.

In a flash the news had spread .all over the farm. People talked loudly and questioned eagerly; some were so pleased they wept for joy. No one listened now to the cries of the auctioneer, but everybody crowded around Ingmar to wish him happiness – peasants and gentlefolk, friends and strangers, alike.

Ingmar, standing there, surrounded by all these happy people, suddenly looked up. He then saw Mother Stina, standing a little apart from the others, her eyes fixed on him. She was very pale, and looked old and poor. As he met her gaze, she turned and walked away.

Ingmar hastily left the others and hurried after her. Then bending down to her, every muscle of his face aquiver with grief, he said in a husky voice:

"Go home to Gertrude, Mother Stina, and tell her that I have betrayed her, that I've sold myself for the farm. Tell her never to think more of such a miserable wretch as I."

GERTRUDE

Something strange had come over Gertrude that she could neither stay nor control – something that grew and grew until it finally threatened to take complete possession of her.

It began at the moment when she learned that Ingmar had failed her. It was really a boundless fear of seeing Ingmar again – of suddenly meeting him on the road, or at church, or elsewhere. Why that would be such a terrible thing she hardly knew, but she felt that she could never endure it.

Gertrude would have preferred shutting herself in, day and night, so as to be sure of not meeting Ingmar; but that was not possible for a poor girl like her. She had to go out and work in the garden, and every morning and evening she was obliged to tramp the long distance from the house to the pasture to milk the cows, and she was often sent to the village store to buy sugar and meal and whatever else was needed in the house.

When Gertrude went out on the road she would always draw her kerchief far down over her face, keep her eyes lowered, and rush on as if fiends were pursuing her. As soon as she could, she would turn from the highroad, and take the narrow bypaths alongside the ditches and drains, where she felt there was less likelihood of her meeting Ingmar.

Never for a moment did she feel free from fear; for there was not a single place in all the parish where she could feel certain of not running across him. If she went rowing on the river, he might be there floating his timber, or if she ventured into the depths of the forest, he might cross her path on his way to work.

When weeding in the garden, she would often glance down the road, so that she might see if he were approaching, and make her escape. Ingmar was so well known about the place that her dog would not have barked at sight of him, and her pigeons, that strutted about the gravel walk, would not have flown up and warned her of his approach with the rustle of their flapping wings.

Gertrude's haunting dread did not diminish, but rather increased from day to day. All her grief had turned to fear, and her strength to combat it grew less and less. "Soon I shall not dare venture outside the door," she thought. "I may get to be a bit queer and morose, even if I don't become quite insane. God, God, take this awful fear away from me!" she prayed. "I can see that my mother and father think I'm not right in my head; and every one else must think the same. Oh, dear Lord God, help me!" she cried.

When this fear condition was at its worst, it happened one night that Gertrude had an extraordinary dream. She dreamed that she had gone out, with her milk pail on her arm, to do the milking. The cows were grazing in an enclosed meadow near the skirt of the forest, a long way from home. She went by the narrow paths, alongside the ditches and field drains. She had great difficulty in walking, for she felt so weak and weary that she could hardly lift her feet. "What can be the matter with me?" she asked herself, in the dream. "Why is it so hard for me to walk?" And she also answered herself. "You are tired because you carry about with you this heavy burden of sorrow."

When she finally got to the pasturage, there were no cows in sight. She became uneasy, and began to look for them in their usual haunts – behind the brushwood, over by the brook, and under the birches – but there was not a sign of them. While searching for the cows she discovered a gap in the hedge, on the side fronting the forest. She grew terribly alarmed, and stood wringing her hands. It suddenly occurred to her that the cows must have cleared this opening. "Tired as I am, must I now tramp the whole forest to find them!" she whimpered, in her dream.

But she went straight on into the woods, slowly pushing her way through fir brush and prickly juniper bushes. Presently she found herself walking on a smooth and even road without knowing how she had got there. The road was soft and rather slippery from the brown fir needles that covered it. On either side stood great towering pines, and on the yellow moss under the trees sunbeams were playing. Here it was so lovely and so peaceful that she almost forgot her fears.

Of a sudden, she caught sight of an old woman moving about in among the trees. It was Finne-Marit, she who was famed as a witch. "How dreadful that that wicked old woman is still alive," thought Gertrude, "and that I should come upon her here in the forest!" She tried to slip along very cautiously, so as not to be seen by the witch. But before Gertrude could get past, the old woman looked up.

"Hi, there!" the old woman shouted. "Wait a bit, and you'll see something!" In a twinkling, Finne-Marit was in the road and on her knees almost in front of Gertrude. Then, with her forefinger, she drew a circle in the carpet of fir needles, at the centre of which she placed a shallow brass bowl.

"Now she's going to do some conjuring," thought Gertrude. "Why, then it must be true that she is a witch!"

"Look down into the bowl!" said Finne-Marit, "and maybe you'll see something." When Gertrude glanced down, she gave a start. Mirrored in the bowl, she saw plainly the face of Ingmar. Immediately the old woman handed her a long needle. "See here," she said; "take this and pierce his eyes. Do this to him because he has played you false." Gertrude hesitated a little, but felt strongly tempted. "Why should he fare well, and be rich and happy, while you suffer?" said the old dame. With that Gertrude was seized by an uncontrollable desire to do the ogre's bidding, and lowered the needle. "Mind you stick him right in the eye!" said the witch. Whereupon Gertrude quickly drove the needle, first into one and then into the other of Ingmar's eyes. In so doing, she noticed that the needle went far down-not as though it had come into contact with metal, but rather as if it had penetrated some soft substance. When she drew it out, there was blood on it.

Gertrude, seeing blood on the needle, thought she had really put out Ingmar's eyes. Then she was so overcome by remorse for what she had done, and so frightened, that she woke up.

She lay for a long while, trembling and weeping, before she was able to convince herself that it was only a dream. "May God preserve me from any thought of vengeance!" she moaned.

She had barely quieted down and dropped off to sleep again, when the dream recurred.

Once more she wandered along the narrow paths toward the grazing ground. This time, too, the cows had strayed, and she went into the forest to look for them. Again she came to the beautiful road, and saw the sunbeams playing on the moss. Then she suddenly recalled all that had just happened to her in a dream, and grew terribly frightened lest she should meet the old witch again. Seeing nothing of her, she felt greatly relieved.

All at once she seemed to see the earth between a couple of moss tufts open. Suddenly a head appeared. Then she saw the body of a tiny little man work its way up out of the earth, and all the while the little man was making a buzzing and humming noise. By that she knew whom she had encountered. It was Humming Pete, of course, who was said to be a bit queer in his head. Sometimes he used to stay down in the village, but during the summer he always lived in a mud cave in the forest.

Then Gertrude recalled to memory what she had heard folks say of Pete: "Any one wanting to injure an enemy without risking discovery could avail himself of his services." He was suspected of having started a number of incendiary fires at the instigation of others.

Gertrude then went up to the man and asked him, half in fun, if he wouldn't like to set fire to the Ingmar Farm. She wished it done, she said, because Ingmar Ingmarsson thought more of the farm than of her.

To her horror, the half-witted dwarf was ready to act on her suggestion. Nodding gleefully, he started on a run toward the settlement. She hurried after, but could not seem to overtake him. Her dress caught in the brushwood, her feet sank in the marsh, and she stumbled over stony ground. When she was almost out of the forest, what should she see through the trees but the glow from a fire. "He has done it, he has set fire to the farm!" she shrieked, again awakening from the horror of the dream.

Now Gertrude sat up in bed; tears ran down her cheeks. She dared not sink back on her pillow again for fear of dreaming further. "Oh, Lord help me, Lord help me!" she cried. "I don't know how much evil there may be hidden in my heart, but God knows that never once during all this time have I thought of revenging myself on Ingmar. O God, let me not fall into this sin!" she prayed. Wringing her hands in an agony of despair, she cried out:

"Grief is a menace, grief is a menace, grief is a menace!"

It was not very clear to her just what she meant by that; but she felt somehow that her poor heart was like a ravaged garden, in which all the flowers had been uprooted, and now Grief, as a gardener, moved about in there, planting thistles and poisonous herbs.

The whole forenoon of the following day, Gertrude thought that she was still dreaming. Her dream had seemed so real that she could not get it out of her mind. Remembering with what satisfaction she had plunged the needle into Ingmar's eyes, she shuddered. "How dreadful that I should have become so cruel and resentful! What shall I do to rid myself of this? I'm really getting to be a very wicked person!"

After dinner Gertrude went out to milk the cows. She drew her kerchief down over her face, as usual, and kept her eyes on the ground. Walking along the narrow paths where she had wandered in the dream, even the flowers by the wayside looked the same as in the dream. In her strange state of semi-wakefulness, she could hardly distinguish between what she actually saw and what she only seemed to see in fancy.

When she reached the pasturage, there were no cows to be seen. And she began to search for them, as she had done in the dream – looking down by the brook, under the birches, and behind the brushwood. She could not find them, yet she felt quite certain that they must be thereabout, and that she would probably see them were she only wide awake. Presently she came upon an opening in the hedge, and knew at once that the cows had made their escape through this.

Gertrude straightway started in search of the strayed cattle, following the track which their hoofs had made in the soft earth of the forest. It was plain that they had turned in on a road leading to a remote Säter. "Ah!" she said, "now I know where they are. I remember that the folks down at Luck Farm were going to drive their cattle to the Säter this morning. Our cows, on hearing the tinkle of their cowbells, must have broken loose and followed the others."

Gertrude's anxiety had for the moment made her wide awake. So she determined to go up to the Säter, and fetch the cows herself; otherwise there was no telling when they would come back. Now she walked briskly along the steep and rocky road.

After going uphill for a time there was an abrupt turn in the road, and she suddenly came upon smooth and even ground that was thick with pine needles. She recognized it as the road of her dream. There stood the selfsame towering pines, and on the moss were the selfsame yellow sun spots.

At sight of the road Gertrude lapsed into the dreamy state in which she had been most of the day. She moved along, half expecting that something wonderful would happen to her. She looked under the fir trees to see if any of the mysterious beings who wander about in the depths of the forest would suddenly appear to her. However, none appeared. But in her mind new thoughts were awakened. "What if I should really take revenge on Ingmar, would that still my fears? Would I then escape the horrors of insanity? If he were to suffer what I am suffering, would that be any relief to me?"

The beautiful road seemed interminably long. She walked there a whole hour, astonished that nothing unusual had happened. The road finally ended in a forest meadow. It was a lovely spot, covered with fresh green grass and many wild flowers. On one side rose a steep mountain; the other sides were covered with high trees – mostly mountain ash, with thick clusters of white blossoms, and here and there was a group of birches and alders. A rather broad stream gushed down the mountainside and wound its way through the meadow, then went hurling down into a gap that was covered with dwarfed trees and bushes.

Gertrude stood stock still; she knew the place at once. That stream was Blackwater Brook, and strange tales were told of it. Sometimes, when crossing this stream, people had clear visions of events that were taking place elsewhere. A little lad, in crossing, once saw a bridal procession which happened just then to be moving toward the church far down in the village, and a charcoal burner once saw a king, with crown and sceptre, ride to his coronation.

Gertrude's heart was in her mouth "God have mercy on me for what I may see here!" she gasped, half tempted to turn back. "Poor little me!" she wailed, feeling sorry for herself. "But I must – I must cross here to fetch my cows."

"Dear Lord, don't let me see anything dreadful or bad!" she prayed, her hands tightly clasped, and shaking from fright. "And don't let me fall into temptation."

There was no doubt in her mind that she would see something; she was so sure of it, in fact, that she hardly dared venture out upon the stones that led across the brook. Yet something made her do it. When halfway over, all at once she saw something moving in among the trees on the other side of the brook. It was no bridal procession, however, but a solitary man, who was slowly coming toward the meadow.

The man was tall and young, and was dressed in a long black garment that came to his feet. His head was uncovered, and his hair hung in long black locks over his shoulders. He had a slender and very beautiful face. He was coming straight toward Gertrude. In his eyes, which were clear and radiant, there was a wonderful light; and when his gaze fell upon Gertrude, she felt that he could read all her sorrowful thoughts, and she saw that he pitied her whose mind was haunted by fears of the paltry things of earth, whose soul had become darkened by thoughts of revenge, and whose heart had been sown with the thistles and poison flowers of Grief.

As he drew nigh, there came over Gertrude such a blissful sense of ever growing peace and serenity! And when he had passed by, there was no longer any fear or resentment in her thought. All that was not good had vanished like a sickness of which one has been healed.

Gertrude stood rapt for a long while. The vision faded away, but she was still held by the beauty of it, and the impression of what she had seen stayed with her. Clasping her hands she raised them in ecstasy.

"I have seen the Christ!" she cried out with joy. "I have seen the Christ! He has freed me from my sorrow, and I love Him. Now I can never again love anyone else in the world."

The trials of life had suddenly dwindled into mere nothings, and life's long years appeared as but a moment in the Glass of Time, while earthly joys seemed trivial and shallow and meaningless. All at once it became clear to Gertrude how she was to order her life; so that she might never again sink down into the darkness of fear, nor be tempted into doing anything mean or hateful, she would go with the Hellgumists to Jerusalem. This thought had come to her when the Christ passed by. She felt that it had come from Him; she had read it in His eyes.

***

On the beautiful June day when the daughter of Berger Sven Persson was given in marriage to Ingmar Ingmarsson, a tall, slender young woman stopped at the Ingmar Farm early in the morning, and asked if she might speak to the bridegroom. She wore her kerchief so far down over her face that nothing could be seen of it save a creamy cheek and a pair of rosy lips. On her arm was a basket that held little bundles of handmade trimmings, a few hair chains, and hair bracelets.

She gave her message to an old maidservant, whom she met in the yard, and who went in and told the housewife. The housewife answered sharply:

"Go straight back and tell her that Ingmar Ingmarsson is just going to drive to church; he has no time to talk with her."

As soon as the young woman received this curt dismissal, she went her way. When the bridal party had returned from the church, she came back, and again asked if she might speak to Ingmar Ingmarsson. This time she approached one of the menservants who was hanging round the stable door; he went in and told the master.

"Tell her that Ingmar Ingmarsson is about to sit down to the wedding feast," said the master. "He has no time to talk to her."

On receiving this answer, she sighed and went her way. When she came again it was late in the evening, as the sun was setting. This time she gave her message to a child that was swinging on the gate. The child ran straight to the house and told the bride.

"Tell her that Ingmar Ingmarsson is dancing with his wife," said the bride. "He has no time to talk to anyone else."

When the child came back and repeated what had been told her, the young woman smiled indulgently, and said: "Now you are telling something that isn't true. Ingmar Ingmarsson is not dancing with his bride."

This time she did not go away, but remained standing at the gate.

The bride, meanwhile, thought to herself: "I have told a lie on my wedding day!" Sorry for what she had done, she went up to Ingmar, and told him that there was a stranger outside who wished to speak with him. Ingmar went out, and found Gertrude standing at the gate, waiting.

When Gertrude saw him coming, she started down the road, Ingmar following. They walked along in silence till they were some distance away from the house.

As to Ingmar, it could be truthfully said of him that he had aged in the short time of a few weeks. At any rate, there was something about his face that showed added shrewdness and caution. He also stooped more, and looked more subdued, now that he had acquired riches, than was the case when he had nothing.

Indeed, he was anything but glad to see Gertrude! Every day since the auction he had been trying to persuade himself into the belief that he was satisfied with his bargain. "In fact, we Ingmarssons care for little else than to plow and to sow the fields on the Ingmar Farm," was what he had said to himself.

But there was something that troubled him even more than the loss of Gertrude – the thought that now there was one human being who could say of him that he had not lived up to his word. Keeping a little behind Gertrude all the while, he went over in his mind all the scornful things which she had a right to say to him.

Presently Gertrude sat down on a stone at the roadside, and put her basket on the ground; then she drew her kerchief still farther over her face.

"Sit down," she said to Ingmar, pointing to another stone. "I have many things to talk over with you."

Ingmar sat down, and was glad that he felt quite calm. "This will be easier than I had expected," he said to himself. "I thought it was going to be much harder on me to see Gertrude again, and to hear her speak. I was afraid that my love for her would get the better of me."

"I should never have come like this, and disturbed you on your wedding day, had I not been compelled to do so," said Gertrude. "I shall soon be leaving this part of the world, never to return. I was ready to start a week ago, when something came up that made it necessary for me to put off going, that I might speak with you to-day."

Ingmar sat all huddled up, with his shoulders hunched and his head drawn in, as if he were expecting a tempest, saying to himself, meanwhile: "Whatever Gertrude may think about it, I'm sure I did the right thing in choosing the farm. I should have been lost without it."

"Ingmar," said Gertrude, blushing so that the little corner of her cheek that could be seen behind the kerchief showed crimson. "You remember, of course, that five years ago I was ready to join the Hellgumists. At that time I had given my heart to Christ. But I took it back, to give it to you. In so doing, I acted wrongly, and that's why I've had to suffer all this. As I once forsook Christ, even so have I been forsaken by the one I loved."

When Ingmar perceived that Gertrude was about to tell him that she was going with the Hellgumists, he at once showed signs of disapproval. "I can't bear to have her join these Jerusalem people, and go away to a strange land," he thought. And he opposed her plan as vehemently as he would have done had he still been engaged to her. "You mustn't think like that, Gertrude," he protested. "God never meant this as a punishment to you."

"No, no, Ingmar, not as a punishment, indeed not! but only to show me how badly I had chosen the second time. Ah, this is no punishment! I feel so happy, and lack for nothing. All my sorrow has been turned into joy. You will understand this, Ingmar, when I tell you that the Lord Himself has chosen me, and called me."

Ingmar was silent; a look of weariness came into his eyes. "Don't be a fool!" he said to himself. "Let Gertrude go. To put sea and land between you and her would be the best thing that could happen – sea and land, yes, sea and land!"

And yet that something within him which did not want to let

Gertrude go was, nevertheless, stronger than himself. So he said:

"I can't conceive of your parents allowing you to leave them."

"That they'll never do!" Gertrude replied. "And I know it so well that I wouldn't even dare ask them. Father would never give his consent. He would use force, if necessary, to prevent my going. The hard part of it is that I shall have to sneak away. They think now that I'm going about the country selling my handiwork; so they won't know about it until I have joined the Jerusalem pilgrims at Gothenburg and am well out of Sweden."

Ingmar was very much distressed to think that Gertrude would be willing to cause her parents such heavy sorrow. "Can it be that she realizes how badly she is behaving?" he wondered. He was about to remonstrate with her, then checked himself. "You're hardly the proper person to reproach Gertrude for anything that she may do," he remarked to himself.

"Indeed, I know it will be hard on father and mother," said Gertrude, "but I must follow Jesus." And she smiled as she named the name of the Saviour. "He has saved me from destruction. He has healed my sick soul!" she said feelingly.

And as if she had only now found courage to do so, she pushed back her kerchief, and looked Ingmar straight in the eyes. It struck Ingmar that she was drawing comparisons between him and some one whose image she carried in her heart, and he felt that she found him small and insignificant.