Jerusalem

Lay preachers generally passed by this parish. "What's the good of going there?" they used to say. "Those people don't want to be awakened." Not only the lay preachers, but even all the "awakened souls" in the neighbouring parishes looked upon the Ingmarssons and their fellow-parishioners as great sinners, and whenever they caught the sound of the bells from their church they would say the bells were tolling, "Sleep in your sins! Sleep in your sins!"

The whole congregation, old and young alike, were furious when they learned that people spoke in that way of their bells. They knew that their folks never forgot to repeat the Lord's Prayer whenever the church bells rang, and that every evening, at the time of the Angelus, the menfolk uncovered their heads, the women courtesied, and everybody stood still about as long as it takes to say an Our Father. All who have lived in that parish must acknowledge that God never seemed so mighty and so honoured as on summer evenings, when scythes were rested, and plows were stopped in the middle of a furrow, and the seed wagon was halted in the midst of the loading, simply at the stroke of a bell. It was as if they knew that our Lord at that moment was hovering over the parish on an evening cloud – great and powerful and good – breathing His blessing upon the whole community.

None of your college-bred men had ever taught in that parish. The schoolmaster was just a plain, old-fashioned farmer, who was self-taught. He was a capable man who could manage a hundred children single-handed. For thirty years and more he had been the only teacher there, and was looked up to by everybody. The schoolmaster seemed to feel that the spiritual welfare of the entire congregation rested with him, and was therefore quite concerned at their having called a parson who was no kind of a preacher. However, he held his peace as long as it was only a question of introducing a new form of baptism, and elsewhere at that; but on learning that there had also been some changes in the administration of the Holy Communion and that people were beginning to gather in private homes to partake of the Sacrament, he could no longer remain passive. Although a poor man himself, he managed to persuade some of the leading citizens to raise the money to build a mission house. "You know me," he said to them. "I only want to preach in order to strengthen people in the old faith. What would be the natural result if the lay preachers were to come upon us, with their new baptism and their new Sacrament, if there were no one to tell the people what was the true doctrine and what the false?"

The schoolmaster was as well liked by the clergyman as by every one else. He and the parson were frequently seen strolling together along the road between the schoolhouse and the parsonage, back and forth, back and forth, as if they had no end of things to say to each other. The parson would often drop in at the schoolmaster's of an evening to sit in the cozy kitchen by an open fire and chat with the schoolmaster's wife, Mother Stina. At times he came night after night. He had a dreary time of it at home; his wife was always ailing, and there was neither order nor comfort in his house.

One winter's evening the schoolmaster and his wife were sitting by the kitchen fire, talking in earnest whispers, while a little girl of twelve played by herself in a corner of the room. The little girl was their daughter, and her name was Gertrude. She was a fair little lass, with flaxen hair and plump, rosy cheeks, but she did not have that wise and prematurely old look which one so often sees in the children of schoolmasters.

The corner in which she sat was her playground. There she had gathered together a variety of things: bits of coloured glass, broken teacups and saucers, pebbles from the banks of the river, little square blocks of wood, and more rubbish of the same sort.

She had been let play in peace all the evening; neither her father nor her mother had disturbed her. Busy as she was she did not want to be reminded of lessons and chores. It didn't look as if there were going to be any extra sums to do for father that night, she thought.

She had a big work in hand, the little girl back there in her corner. Nothing less than making a whole parish! She was going to build up the entire district with both church and schoolhouse; the river and the bridge were also to be included. Everything had to be quite complete, of course.

She had already got a good part of it done. The whole wreath of hills that went round the parish was made up of smaller and larger stones. In all the crevices she had planted forests of little spruce twigs, and with two jagged stones she had erected Klack Mountain and Olaf's Peak on either side of the Dal River. The long valley in between the mountains had been covered with mould taken from one of her mother's flowerpots. So far everything was all right, only she had not been able to make the galley blossom. But she comforted herself by pretending it was early springtime, before grass and grain had sprouted.

The broad, beautiful Dal River that flows through the valley she had managed to lay out effectively with a long and narrow piece of glass, and the floating bridge connecting both sides of the parish, had been making on the water this long while. The more distant farms and settlements were marked off by pieces of red brick. Farthest north, amid fields and meadows, lay the Ingmar Farm. To the east was the village of Kolasen, at the foot of the mountain. At the extreme south, where the river, with rapids and falls, leaves the valley and rushes under the mountain, was Bergsana Foundry.

The entire landscape was now ready, with country roads laid out along the river, sanded and gravelled. Groves had also been set out, here and there, on the plains and near the cottages. The little girl had only to cast a glance at her structure of glass and stone and earth and twigs to see before her the whole parish. And she thought it all very beautiful.

Time after time she raised her head to call her mother and show her what she had done, then changed her mind. She had always found it wiser not to call attention to herself. But the most difficult work of all was yet to come: the building up of the town on both sides of the river. It meant much shifting about of stones and bits of glass. The sheriff's house wanted to crowd out the merchant's shop; there was no room for the judge's house next door to the doctor's. There were the church and the parsonage, the drug-store and post-office, the peasant homesteads, with their barns and outhouses, the inn, the hunter's lodge, the telegraph station. To remember everything was no small task!

Finally, the whole town of white and red houses stood embedded in green. Now there was only one thing left: she had worked hard to get everything else done so as to begin on the schoolhouse. She wanted plenty of space for the school, which was to be built on the riverside, and must have a big yard, with a flagpole right in the middle of the lawn.

She had saved all her best blocks for the schoolhouse. Now she wondered how she had best go about it. She wanted it to be just like their school, with a big classroom on the ground floor and another upstairs; then there was the kitchen and also the big room where she and her parents lived. But all that would take a good while. "They won't leave me in peace long enough," she said to herself.

Just then footsteps were heard in the entry; some one was stamping off snow. In a twinkling she went ahead with her building. "Here comes the parson to chat with father and mother," she thought. Now she would have the whole evening to herself. And with renewed courage she began to lay the foundation of a schoolhouse as big as half the parish.

Her mother, who had also heard the steps in the hall, got up quickly and drew an old armchair up to the fireplace. Then turning to her husband, she said: "Shall you tell him about it to-night?"

"Yes," answered the schoolmaster, "as soon as I can get round to it."

Presently the pastor came in, half frozen and glad to be in a warm room where he could sit by an open fire. He was very talkative, as usual. It would be hard to find a more likable man than the parson when he came in of an evening to chat about all sorts of things, big and little. He spoke with such ease and assurance of everything pertaining to this world, that one could scarcely believe that he and the dull preacher were one and the same person. But if you happened to speak to him about spiritual things he grew red in the face, began fishing for words, and never said anything that was convincing, unless he chanced to mention that "God governs wisely."

When the parson had settled himself comfortably, the schoolmaster suddenly turned to him and said in a cheery tone:

"Now I must tell you the news: I'm going to build a mission house."

The clergyman became as white as a sheet and sank back in his chair.

"What are you saying, Storm?" he gasped. "Are they really thinking of building a mission house here? Then what's to become of me and the church? Are we to be dispensed with?"

"The church and the pastor will be needed just the same," returned the schoolmaster with a confident air. "It is my purpose that the mission house shall promote the welfare of the church. With so many schisms cropping up all over the country, the church is sorely in need of help."

"I thought you were my friend, Storm," said the parson, mournfully. Only a few moments before he had come in confident and happy, and now all at once his spirit was gone, and he looked as if he were entirely done for.

The schoolmaster understood quite well why the pastor was so distressed. He and every one else knew that at one time the clergyman had been a man of rare promise; but in his student days he had "gone the pace," so to speak, and, in consequence, had suffered a stroke. After that he was never the same. Sometimes he seemed to forget that he was only the ruin of a man; but when reminded of it, a sense of deep despondency came over him. Now he sat there as if paralyzed. It was a long time before any one ventured to speak.

"You mustn't take it like that, Parson," the schoolmaster said at last, trying to make his voice very soft and low.

"Hush, Storm! I know that I'm not a great preacher; still I couldn't have believed it possible that you would wish to take the living from me."

Storm made a gesture of protest, which said, in effect, that anything of the sort had never entered his mind, but he had not the courage to put it into words.

The schoolmaster was a man of sixty and, despite all the work and responsibility which had fallen to his lot, he was still master of his forces. There was a great contrast between him and the parson. Storm was one of the biggest men in Dalecarlia. His head was covered with a mass of black bushy hair, his skin was as dark as bronze, and his features were strong and clear cut. He looked singularly powerful beside the pastor, who was a little narrow-chested, bald-headed man.

The schoolmaster's wife thought that her husband, as the stronger, ought to give in, and motioned to him to drop the matter. Whatever of regret he may have felt, there was nothing in his manner to indicate that he had any idea of relinquishing his project.

Then the schoolmaster began to speak plainly and to the point. He said he was certain that before long the heretics would invade their parish; therefore, it was very necessary that they should have a meeting place where one could talk to the people in a more informal way than at a regular church service; where one might choose one's own text, expound the whole Bible, and interpret its most difficult passages to the people.

His wife again signed to him to keep still. She knew what the clergyman was thinking while her husband talked. "So I haven't taught them anything, and I haven't given them any sort of protection against unbelief? I must be a poor specimen of a pastor when the schoolmaster in my own parish thinks himself a better preacher than I."

The schoolmaster, however, did not keep still, but went on talking of all that must be done to protect the flock from the wolves.

"I haven't seen any wolves," said the pastor.

"But I know they are on their way."

"And you, Storm, are opening the door to them," declared the minister, rising. The schoolmaster's talk had irritated him. The blood mounted to his face, and he regained a little of his old dignity.

"My dear Storm, let us drop the subject," he said. Then turning to the housewife, he passed some pleasant remark about the last pretty bride she had dressed. For Mother Stina dressed all the brides in the parish.

Peasant woman though she was, she understood how it must hurt him to be so cruelly reminded of his own impotence. She wept from compassion, and could not answer him for the tears; so the pastor had to do most of the talking.

Meanwhile, he kept thinking: "Oh, if I only had some of the power and the capacity of my younger days, I would convince this peasant at once of the wrong he is doing." With that he turned again to the schoolmaster:

"Where did you get the money, Storm?" he asked.

"A company has been formed," Storm explained; then he mentioned the names of several men who had pledged their support, just to show the parson that they were the kind of people who would harm neither the church nor its pastor.

"Is Ingmar Ingmarsson in it, too?" the parson exclaimed. The effect of this was like a deathblow. "And to think that I was as sure of Ingmar Ingmarsson as I had been of you, Storm!"

He said nothing more about this just then, but instead turned to Mother Stina and talked to her. He must have seen that she was crying, but acted as if he had not noticed it. In a little while he again addressed the schoolmaster.

"Drop it, Storm!" he begged. "Drop it for my sake. You wouldn't like it if somebody put up another school next to yours."

The schoolmaster sat gazing at the floor and reflected a moment.

Presently he said, almost reluctantly, "I can't, Parson."

For fully ten minutes there was a dead silence. Where upon the pastor put on his overcoat and cap, and went toward the door.

The whole evening he had been trying to find words with which to prove to Storm that he was not only doing harm to the pastor with this undertaking, but he was undermining the parish. Although thoughts and words kept crowding into his head, he could neither arrange them into an orderly sequence nor give utterance to them, because he was a broken man. Walking toward the door, he espied Gertrude sitting in her corner playing with her blocks and bits of glass. He stopped and looked at her. Evidently she had not heard a word of the conversation, for her eyes sparkled with delight and her cheeks were like fresh-blown roses.

The pastor was startled at the sight of all this innocent happiness of the child in contrast to his own heart heaviness.

"What are you making?" he asked, and went up to her.

The little girl had got through with her parish long before that; in fact, she had already pulled it down and started something new.

"If you had only come a minute sooner!" exclaimed the child. "I had made such a beautiful parish, with both church and schoolhouse – "

"But where is it now?"

"Oh, I've destroyed the parish, and now I'm building a Jerusalem, and – "

"What?" interrupted the parson. "Have you destroyed the parish in order to build a Jerusalem?"

"Yes," said Gertrude, "and it was such a fine parish! But we read about Jerusalem yesterday in school, and now I have pulled down the parish to build a Jerusalem."

The preacher stood regarding the child. He put his hand to his forehead and thought a moment, then he said: "It is surely someone greater than you that speaks through your mouth."

The child's words seemed to him so extraordinarily prophetic that he kept repeating them to himself, over and over. Gradually his thoughts drifted back into their old groove, and he began to ponder the ways of Providence and the means by which He works His will.

Presently he went back to the schoolmaster, his eyes shining with a new light, and said in his usual cheery tone:

"I'm no longer angry at you, Storm. You are only doing what you must do. All my life I have been pondering the ways of Providence, and I can't seem to get any light on them. Nor do I understand this thing, but I understand that you are doing what you needs must do."

"AND THEY SAW HEAVEN OPEN"

The spring the mission house was built there was a great thaw, and the Dal River rose to an alarming height. And what quantities of water that spring brought! It came in showers from the skies; it came rushing down in streams from the mountainsides, and it welled out of the earth; water ran in every wheel rut and in every furrow. All this water found its way to the river, which kept rising higher and higher, and rolled onward with greater and greater force. It did not present its usual shiny and placid appearance, but had turned a dirty brown from all the muddy water that kept flowing in. The surging stream, filled with logs and cakes of ice, looked strangely weird and threatening.

At first the grown folks paid no special heed to the spring flood; only the children ran down to the banks to watch the raging river and all that it carried along.

But timber and ice floes were not the only things that went floating by! Presently the stream came driving with washing piers and bath houses, then with boats and wreckage of bridges.

"It will soon be taking our bridge, too!" the children exclaimed. They felt a bit uneasy, but were glad at the same time that something so extraordinary was likely to happen.

Suddenly a huge pine, root and branch, came sailing past, followed by a white-stemmed aspen tree, its spreading branches thick with buds which had swelled from being so long in the water. Close upon the trees came a little hay shed, bottom upward; it was still full of hay and straw, and floated on its roof like a boat on its keel.

But when things of that sort began to drift past, the grown-ups, too, bestirred themselves. They realized now that the river had overflowed its banks somewhere up north, and hurried down to the shores with poles and boat hooks, to haul up on land buildings and furniture.

At the northern end of the parish, where the houses were scattered and people were scarce, Ingmar Ingmarsson alone was standing on the bank, gazing out at the river. He was then almost sixty, and looked even older. His face was weatherbeaten and furrowed, his figure bent; he appeared to be as awkward and helpless as ever. He stood leaning on a long, heavy boat hook, his dull, sleepy-looking eyes fixed on the water. The river raged and foamed, arrogantly marching past with all that it had matched from the shores. It was as if it were deriding the peasant for his slowness. "Oh, you're not the one to wrest from me any of the things I'm carrying away!" it seemed to say.

Ingmar Ingmarsson made no attempt to rescue any of the floating bridges or boat hulls that passed quite close to the bank. "All that will be seen to down at the village," he thought. Not for a second did his gaze wander from the river. He took note of everything that drifted past. All at once he sighted something bright and yellow floating on some loosely nailed boards quite a distance up the river. "Ah, this is what I have been expecting all along!" he said aloud. At first he could not quite make out what the yellow was; but for one who knew how little children in Dalecarlia are dressed it was easy to guess. "Those must be youngsters who were out on a washing pier playing," he said, "and hadn't the sense to get back on land before the river took them."

It was not long until the peasant saw that he had guessed rightly. Now he could distinctly see three little children, in their yellow homespun frocks and round yellow hats, being carried downstream on a poorly constructed raft that was being slowly torn apart by the swift current and the moving ice floes.

The children were still a long way off. Big Ingmar knew there was a bend in the river where it touched his land. If God in His mercy would only direct the raft with the children into this current, he thought, he might be able to get them ashore.

He stood very still, watching the raft. All at once it seemed as if some one had given it a push; it swung round and headed straight for the shore. By that time the children were so close that he could see their frightened little faces and hear their cries. But they were still too far out to be reached by the boat hook, from the bank at least; so he hurried down to the water's edge, and waded into the river.

As he did so, he had a strange sort of feeling that some one was calling to him to comeback. "You are no longer a young man, Ingmar; this may prove a perilous business for you!" a voice said to him.

He reflected a moment, wondering whether he had the right to risk his life. The wife, whom he had once fetched from the prison, had died during the winter, and since her going his one longing had been that he might soon follow. But, on the other hand, there was his son who needed a father's care, for he was only a little lad and could not look after the farm.

"In any case, it must be as God wills," he said.

Now Big Ingmar was no longer either awkward or slow. As he plunged into the raging river, he planted his boat hook firmly into the bottom, so as not to be carried away by the current, and he took good care to dodge the floating ice and driftwood. When the raft with the children was quite near, he pressed his feet down in the river bed, thrust out his boat hook, and got a purchase on it.

"Hold on tight!" he shouted to the children, for just then the raft made a sudden turn and all its planks creaked. But the wretched structure held together, and Big Ingmar managed to pull it out of the strongest current. That done, he let go of it, for he knew that the raft would now drift shoreward by itself.

Touching bottom with his boat hook again, he turned to go back to the bank. This time, however, he failed to notice a huge log that was coming toward him with a rush. It caught him in the side just below the armpit. It was a terrific blow, for the log was hurled against him with a violent force that sent him staggering in the water. Yet he kept a tight grip on the boat hook until he reached the bank. When he again stood on firm ground, he hardly dared touch his body, for he felt that his chest had been crushed. Then his mouth suddenly filled with blood. "It's all up with you, Ingmar!" he thought, and sank down on the bank, for he could not go a step farther. The little children whom he had rescued gave the alarm, and soon people came running down to the bank, and Big Ingmar was carried home.

The pastor was called in, and he remained at the Ingmar Farm the whole afternoon. On his way home, he stopped at the schoolmaster's. He had experienced things in the course of the day which he felt the need of telling to some one who would understand.

Storm and Mother Stina were deeply grieved, for they had already heard that Ingmar Ingmarsson was dead. The clergyman, on the other hand, looked almost radiant as he stepped into the schoolmaster's kitchen.

Immediately Storm asked the pastor if he had been in time.

"Yes," he said, "but on this occasion I was not needed."

"Weren't you?" said Mother Stina.

"No," answered the pastor with a mysterious smile. "He would have got on just as well without me. Sometimes it is very hard to sit by a deathbed," he added.

"It is indeed," nodded the schoolmaster.

"Particularly when the one who is passing from among us happens to be the best man in your parish."

"Just so."

"But things can also be quite different from what one had imagined."

For a moment the pastor sat quietly gazing into space; his eyes looked clearer than usual behind the spectacles.

"Have you, Strong, or you, Mother Stina, ever heard of the wonderful thing that once happened to Big Ingmar when he was a young man?" he asked.

The schoolmaster said that he had heard many wonderful things about him.

"Why, of course; but this is the most wonderful of all! I never knew of it myself until to-day. Big Ingmar had a good friend who has always lived in a little cabin on his estate," the pastor continued.

"Yes, I know," said the schoolmaster. "He is also named Ingmar; folks call him Strong Ingmar by way of distinction."